and 2 million cartridges, which the commander-in-chief Ali Aaltonen had purchased from the Bolsheviks. The Reds also had six armoured trains and a couple of aeroplanes which were flown by Russian pilots. The general staff was located in Helsinki, with major subordinate staffs in Tampere and Vyborg. The infantry was divided into regiments and battalions but in practice, the largest commanded units were companies. A Red Guard company usually consisted of the men of some trade union local. For example, the Helsinki Red Guard had units composed of shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, sheet metal workers, plumbers, stonemasons and so on. Also some working-class sporting clubs formed their own squads. In the rural areas, the units were assembled by the men of the same locality. The Red Guard fighters received a salary that was sometimes even bigger than what they were paid for their usual work. As there was high unemployment, money was one of the reasons for joining the guards. Very few Reds had any kind of military background. The ones who had served in the Russian Imperial Army were usually voted as company leaders. The Red Guard fighters had a short military training before they were sent to the front line. The battles were usually fought like an ordinary working day. The fighting begun at the dawn and as the Sun set, the men returned to the base. On the Tavastia Front, some troops even spent the nights in Tampere, returning to the front by train in the morning. The Red Guards' major problems were a lack of equipment, poor leadership and training, and food shortages at the front. The practice of electing officers democratically made discipline lax. Sometimes this led to a general unwillingness to go on offensive operations or to operate outside their local areas. The Red Guards did not have a clear command structure. Local commanders developed plans of their own, which did not always coincide with the ones composed by general staff in Helsinki. As there were very few trained officers, battlefield tactics had to be kept basic. War As the war started on 27 January, the Red Guards occupied the capital, Helsinki, and the largest towns of industrialized southern Finland. The front line was soon established, stretching from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Karelian Isthmus, 30–50 kilometres north of Pori, Tampere, Lahti, Lappeenranta and Vyborg. The Whites occupied rural northern Finland, where the few