Battle of Vilppula

The first clash in Vilppula occurred on 31 January, as 200 Reds attacked the industrial community of Mänttä which was held by the local White Guard. The conflict was solved with the help of the village priest, and both sides were disarmed. On the next day, the White Guard from nearby Keuruu entered the scene, and the Reds were forced to retreat to the railway station of Lyly, about 15 kilometers south of Vilppula. Later the same day, a White unit led by the prominent warlord Matti Laurila, later killed in the Battle of Länkipohja, advanced towards Lyly, but was stopped by a demolished railway bridge. By chance, a train carrying the staff of the Romanian embassy evacuated from Saint Petersburg arrived to the other side of the bridge and the Whites were able to continue by commandeering their train. Finally, the Whites had to turn back before reaching Lyly, as the Reds had broken the railway in several places. The Whites now settled to the Vilppula railway station, while the Reds gathered their troops in Lyly.[2]

The Russians got involved with the events as the Whites had captured more than two thousand Russian soldiers who had surrendered their weapons. Mikhail Svechnikov, the commander of the Russian 106th division in Tampere, was forced to take action against the Whites as the captured were under his command. Svechnikov sent a group of 500 volunteers to fight with the Reds. This unit was led by the second lieutenant G. A. Stolbov, but the Russians were soon sent to the Battle of Kuru, which was fought 40 kilometres west of Vilppula.[2]

The Reds launched their first offensive against Vilppula on 2 February with the support of Russian troops and an armoured train. The Whites had built a defensive line behind the two bridges crossing the river Vilppulankoski. During the next five days, the Reds attacked several times, but all efforts failed. As they got reinforcements from the Helsinki Red Guard and the Saint Petersburg Finnish Red Guard, three more attacks were made in the next two weeks, but the Reds could not break through.[2]

On 21 February, the Red general offensive was launched, but the Vilppula Reds did not join the attack as the White artillery had stopped their armoured train. Fighting settled down, both sides now focused in firing each other with artillery. On 13 March, the Reds performed a peculiar operation as they loaded a train full of explosives and sent it towards the Vilppula station. The ghost train ran over the roadblocks and finally stopped at the rail yard, where the Whites managed to make the overpressured locomotive harmless and prevent the explosion.[2]

In the beginning of March, a train carrying the personnel of the British embassy in Saint Petersburg arrived in Tampere. The British had left Russia in the aftermath of the October Revolution and were now heading back home through Finland and Sweden. The Finnish-American Reds, August Wesley and Verner Lehtimäki, negotiated with the British and the Reds agreed to let them cross the front line in Vilppula. When the British convoy reached the White lines, they were greeted with gunfire as the Whites did not notice the white flag against the snowy background and assumed the Union Jack was some kind of socialist banner. Eventually, crossing the front line succeeded and the British returned safely home.[3]

The Red cavalry commander Verner Lehtimäki at the Lyly train station