A participant of Olonets expedition, a native of Luopioinen, returns home

August Hellén, a 15-year-old tailor’s son from Luopioinen Parish, who has returned to Finland as part of a group from Soviet Russia on the 26th of last month, is currently in the quarantine of Kellomäki. The boy, who was only 13 years old, in May 1919, along with several other members of the Luopioinen Civil Guard, left Hämeenlinna as a freedom warrior to the Olonets Front, belonging there to Captain Hämäläinen’s Company. When our young hero on July 31 was with a group of five men in Uljalega Village, the Russian Bolshevik soldiers suddenly attacked the Village and because he was on guard duty at the tip of the cape, he could not escape and was taken by the Bolsheviks as prisoner. Red soldier, whose questions the boy could not answer due to his lack of language, kicked his ears and then transported him to Petrozavodsk, whence, after two months in prison, he was taken to the Vologda City together with Karelian prisoners of war. There he stayed in a terrible orphanage for a couple of years, until the Bolsheviks have allowed the boy to return to his motherland.

Aamulehti -newspaper no. 256
November 5, 1921