Battle of Kämärä

Kämärä railway station in the 1920s

Date	27 January 1918
Location	Kämärä, Kuolemajärvi, Finland
Result	White withdrawal

Belligerents

Finnish Whites

Finnish Reds

Commanders and leaders

Adolf Aminoff

Strength

c. 500

500–600

Casualties and losses

18 killed

c. 30 killed

The Battle of Kämärä was a 1918 Finnish Civil War battle fought by the Kämärä (now Gavrilovo, Leningrad oblast, Russia) railway station on 27 January 1918 between the Whites and the Reds. The battle began as a White Guard battalion from Vyborg attacked Kämärä on its march to the White controlled side of the Karelian Isthmus. After taking the village, the Whites ambushed a Red train carrying a large cargo of weapons from Saint Petersburg, but were finally forced to leave the scene as they ran out of ammunition. The Battle of Kämärä is considered to be the first battle of the Civil War, although some minor incidents had occurred through January.

As the violence between the Whites and the Reds escalated in early 1918, one the first fatal clashes occurred in Vyborg, at the time the second largest town in Finland, on 19 January. The Red Guard carried out an inspection at the local shoe factory where the White Guard had stored guns. The incident ended up with three casualties. Four days later, the Vyborg White Guard tried to take over the entire town, but managed to occupy just a few administrative buildings. On the next day, the Red Guard forced the Whites to flee the town. A unit of 500 men, led by the Jäger officer Woldemar Hägglund, marched across the ice of the Vyborg Bay to the small island of Venäjänsaari and settled there for a couple of days.

The battalion had some reinforcements from Vyborg, including a doctor, nurses and kitchen staff. Hägglund was named as the commander of the Karelia military district and was replaced by the 62-year-old colonel Adolf Aminoff. Finally on Friday, 26 January, the group left the island. Their plan was to cross the Saint Petersburg-Vyborg railroad in the village of Säiniö (now Cherkasovo, Leningrad oblast), then head north to Antrea, an important railroad junction 30 kilometres north of Vyborg, and join the local Whites. The Aminoff squad reached Säiniö in the afternoon, only to find out that the railway station was occupied by the Reds. After a short gunfight, the Whites took the station, but soon a train of discharged Russian sailors steamed Säiniö on its way to Saint Petersburg. As the train stopped, the Russians forced the Whites to retreat and one White fighter was killed. Later that same evening, the Civil War is officially considered to have begun, as the Reds proclaimed the revolution in Helsinki.

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Wikipedia