There may be more to it than you noticed. Note that all four are wearing the ribbon decoration for the Iron Cross, Second Class, making it likely that they were runners for the 27th Jaegers, the German unit assisting the *White Finns* just as Russian Soviet units assisted the Reds.
In 1939 when a million Soviet invaders crossed Finland's borders, it's likely that these four were among the reservist NCOs who helped their fellow citizen-soldiers cut their numbers down to size. Of the Million and a half who invaded, Nikita Kruschev [a junior political commisar during the Finnish invasion] claimed Russia had lost a million soldiers in the attempt, almost certainly an exaggeration, but certainly true in another way.
After Hitler saw how Finland's amateurs had more than decimated Stalins ranks, he thought about what his more professional, better equipped and trained wehrmacht could do, and reconsidered his *non-agression* pact with Stalin. And then he attacked. The result was some 30 million dead Soviet citizens.
And that blue-and-white swallowtail flag of Finland those four young troopers fought under? It still flies over Finland. The red banner of the old Soviet Union never did, and has been torn down in its homeland as well.
Well done, lads....
i get stuck on their eyes, in truth...
good additional info Sir...they very well may have been assets at demonstrating what a few 'guys with guns' were able to accomplish against a monstrous and well equipped force...
still saddened that young men such as those had to witness and participate in such things...being a father and all...