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The motorized heavy artillery battalion 1 was formed in Kurikka, Finland on June 19th, 1941. It was under direct control of the Army HQ. Tuomo Aho, whose grand-father served in the battalion, has since 1990 done research on the battalion's time in war 1941 - 1944.

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During the past 26 years he has interviewed heavy artillery battalion  1 veterans, collected and preserved a lot of material about the battalion. He is still collecting information on it and in the future there is a book coming about the battalion's war time.

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In addition to the research Tuomo, in 2011, came up with an idea to run a tribute re-enactment event of a heavy artillery battalion 1. He started to work on the idea, and after four years of through planning an event to demonstrate heavy artillery battalion 1 actions in war was organized and held in Kurikka.

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The first re-enactment event took place in Kurikka August 22nd. 2015. There were 65 men with war time gear, 2 ea. original Canon de 155 C mle 1917 Schneider howitzers, 2 ea. war time International Harvester McCormick T-6 crawlers, 5 ea war time cars, war time telephone, radio, measurement and fire calculation equipment.

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Short Youtube video on the Aug. 22th 2015 event

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The interest in the heavy artillery re-enactment event was huge and exceeded all expectations. Tuomo had estimated around 1 500 - 2 000 people to come and watch the show, but it was more than 4 500 people from Kurikka and the surrounding municipalities in the event.

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It was such great event that the artillery re-enactment activity was decided to continue. The next goal is to have a double size event to celebrate Finland's 100 years Independence on June 28th, 2017. This is the very first time when such a big artillery re-enactment event takes place in Finland.

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The Suomi 100 (Finland 100 Years) event consists of:

- around 100-125 men with war time gear
- 4 ea. 100 years old Canon de 155 C mle 1917 Schneider howitzers (3,3 t) renovated back to wooden wheels!
- 3-4 ea. war time International Harvester McCormick T-6 crawlers
- 1 ea. war time Packard passenger car
- 10+ war time trucks:
Including Citroën T-45, Ford BB 51-157,  Chevrolet Master/4040 and International KB-6.
- War time artillery measuring, telephone, radio, fire calculation and fire observation gear.

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