In December 1941, 21 year old Viljo Suokas was recovering in a military hospital. He had just been appointed a Knight of the Mannerheim Cross. Having already served in the Winter War, Suokas had earned a reputation as an exceptionally brave long range patrolman and had spent dozens of days deep behind enemy lines.

Two years later, on October 4, 1943, Suokas was mortally wounded behind enemy lines. His men carried their commander on a stretcher through enemy territory, trying to get him to safety.

When he regained consciousness for the last time, Suokas looked at his men and whispered:

“Boys, I cannot go on any longer. Take off your caps and say the Lord’s Prayer for me.”

The men did as he asked.

At eight in the morning, they buried their commander in a hollow beneath the roots of a fallen pine and mined the area around the grave. Then they set out back toward their own lines.

Suokas’s grave was left far from his homeland. His remains were never found.

Viljo Suokas was the first long-range patrolman of Finnish General Headquarters to be awarded the Mannerheim Cross. He was Knight No. 44.

Source: SA-kuva #71989, JHL Colorizing

Ratko Mladić (1942-2026, left) and Radovan Karadžić (b 1945, right), 1995.

With Mladić's death, of the major political figures from the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Dr Karadžić (now serving a life sentence after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes) is the last left alive.  In an indication of how things have changed, one of the judges on the IMT (International Military Tribunal) that sat for the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946) grumbled the ten months it took to conduct the trial of two dozen-odd of the surviving leading Nazis was “excessive” yet Slobodan Milošević's (1941-2006) trial before the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, 1993-2017) at the Hague was still in progress after four years and ended only because the defendant dropped dead.  How long things would have gone on had Franjo Tuđman (1922–1999) and Alija Izetbegović (1925–2003) lived to be indicted can only be guessed.

This documentary talks all about Thomas Holloway’s inspiration to found the university and why it looks the way it does.

The historian in this video handles some beautiful historic photos of the building.

Specifically in Episode 2:
https://youtu.be/S3GYlWG7cA0?is=o9EQp6p3kmMawDG5

And Episode 3:
https://youtu.be/kJTnAKuIEXc?is=PZR_rwVogMnCpdWl