Christopher Lee volunteer in winter war- photo of him?

Is it him or not? Hmmmm...

When Lee visited Finland in 2002 to present the films The Lord of the Rings, he was hosted by Antti Toiviainen, who was then responsible for informing the film distribution company FS-Film in Finland.

After spending the day, Lee told his host about his experiences of the Winter War at Hotel Kämp’s bar counter by the nightcap.

“They were such a group of boys. They went on a bit of an adventure trip and came to Finland with the idea that they will now help the weaker and the smaller, ”Toiviainen recalls Lee.

Lee and his partners ended up somewhere in eastern Finland, where they had been handed their skis. However, it quickly became clear that the British could not ski at all. The end result was apparently thanks to the beautiful idea and the announcement that they are free to go home.


HS Helsinki A surprising discovery was revealed from the war photos: In the middle of Helsinki, which was plagued by the Winter War, stands a man who may be the actor of Christopher Lee | tellerreport.com

 

Without doing a comparison with known photos of him, I think it could be him. If it is, that is a nice find.

 

...was he in the SAS, SOE, or not? he was attached to them?..wow--I never knew that ...salute to him

Christopher Lee's wartime record was even more exceptional than his acting
.....he was 6' 5''....4 inches taller than Roger More who played opposite Lee in The Man With the Golden Gun
....if the guy in the picture is 6 '5'', I'd say it's a good chance it's him

..a good actor....

 

I couldn't find a pic of a younger Lee where he is looking straight at the camera. However, here's a decent photo of a younger Christopher Lee for comparison with the pic above. I think it looks pretty close.

 

I recalled my sister has a copy of Lee's later autobiography "Tall, dark and gruesome", which includes the briefest of references to his time in Finland.

"The Army was even less bothered about enlisting my services than the City had been. Along with a few other recent schoolboys who felt neglected by the War Office, I took a journey to Finland. Our idea was that we would rescue the Finns from the Russian invaders. Our surprised hosts affected to be delighted by this callow set of volunteers, and touched that we had paid our own third-class fares. They gave us some white uniforms as camouflage in the snow, and took us up front to a perfectly safe area. We never saw any Russians and went home after a fortnight. It was clear that the tiny Finnish army was doing quite well against the Russian colossus, without our help". pgs 67-68.

Gary

 

I think many of the volunteers were more useful for propaganda purposes than actual battle. If you cannot ski in the winter you can only use the roads and the Finnish "secret" weapon was to ski and surround the Red Army troops. You could also make surprise attacks and vanish in the forest within a heartbeat. The Forest is a scary place to those that have lived in the city all their lives. We start to have young boys coming to the army who cannot drive a bicycle or use skis.