To Train Ski Fighters

THE SKI SLOPES of Hanover will have a martial air this winter. Lieutenant Piltti Heiskanen, former Finnish army officer, has joined the Dartmouth staff as Instructor and Director of Recreational Skiing, and a number of his classes will be organized along military lines, with regular fighting equipment such as that used by his men last year in the Russo-Finnish war.

This training in the techniques of ski fighting will be but a part of the enlarged program of ski instruction which the College has been contemplating for some time and which was undertaken at present largely because of the growing importance of ski fighters to the national defense program. The new classes will be open to all interested undergraduates on a voluntary basis.

Lieutenant Heiskanen is a journalist by profession but has spent a great deal of his free time skiing in his native land of Finland. From 1935 to 1937 he trained Finnish recruits for ski fighting, and last year he was called to active duty against the Russians, serving as first lieuten- ant in a ski division engaged in the Karelian Isthmus campaign. When demobilized last year he was awarded the Freedom Cross with Swords.