The History of the Jagers

In 1915, during the First World War, the Grand Duchy of Finland had been a semi-independant part of the Russian Empire as the Finns would revolt and the Russians would struggle to control Finland if they didn't give it semi-independance, however Tsar Nicholas the 2nd decided to 'Russianize' Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, the Finnish government was no longer running the country and Finnish was no longer been taught in schools, massive uproars took place, in 1915 about 2000 volunteers ilegally left Finland with risk of execution if caught by the Russian soldiers, they then went through sweden and Denmark down into Germany and became an elite unit within the German Army fighting against Russia to liberate their homeland, they were known as the 27th Royal Prussian Jager Battalion. They fought long on the Eastern Front without even proper equipment until 1916, and yet did serious damage to the Russian forces, the Jagers fought until 1917, when, they left the army (not allowed by the Germans who wanted them to fight on the Western Front now that Russia had dropped out of the war and gone into Civil War), one Jager called Samuli Sihvo wrote the song of "Jääkärimarssi" (Jager March) and had it transported through Norway by a Finnish girl who gave it to Jean Sibelius who was a famous Finnish Nationalist composer who defied the "Russianization" by writing patriot music of Finland to protest. When the Jagers returned to Finland they formed the 27th Finnish Jager Battalion and fought with the 'white nationalists' against the 'red communists' in the Finnish Civil War until the Communist surrender, they became famous in the civil war for recapturing the capital city of Helsinki and the major city of Turku. The jagers continued as an elite unit in the Finnish Army and were renamed to the Kymi Jääkäri Pataljoona (Kymi been a city in Finland that later became part of the larger city of Kotka). When the USSR invaded Finland in 1939 the Jagers were in the most bloody battles, in the Mannerheim Line in the south of Finland and the famous land of Karelia, during one battle the Jagers ambushed a division of Soviet Forces with just 6000 men against 25'000 Soviets, the battle resulted in under 400 Finns dead, 5000 soviets dead or missing, about 1000 Soviets wounded, and 4000 captured, hundereds of soviet tanks were destroyed (the Finns had 39 tanks during the whole war in total). After the winter war the Finnish Jagers remained and still remain just under the name of the Finnish Jagers as an elite unit of Finnish soldiers who now train the Swedish Special Forces for winter warfare. The commander of the 27th Jager Battalion during WW1 was Major Maximilian Bayer (1872-1917) who was killed in action at Verdun (he was not finnish as the finns were discriminated in the German Army unless they aquired German Nationality which was not easy during the war-time, he was killed after being transfered out of the 27th Jager Battalion).

(Note: The reason why the highest rank in the clan is that later during the civil war higher ranks took command of the Jagers during the civil war and later on, the ussual commander of a battalion was/is at the rank of Everstiluutnantti)