He was not keen to hog the spotlight, and correspondingly in the group photos of his youth he usually stood at the back, until his later success started to force him to take centre place. He was successful in shooting competitions in the Viipuri Province his home was reportedly full of trophies for marksmanship. Häyhä joined the Finnish voluntary militia Civil Guard ( Suojeluskunta) at the age of 17. He was a farmer, hunter, and skier prior to his military service. He attended school in the village of Miettilä in Kivennapa parish and cultivated his home farm together with his eldest brother. He was the seventh of eight children in a Lutheran family of farmers his father, Juho Häyhä, was the owner of the Mattila farm while Simo's mother, Katriina (née Vilkko) was a loving and hard-working farmer's wife. Häyhä was born in the Kiiskinen hamlet of the Rautjärvi municipality in the Viipuri Province of southern Finland near the border with Russia. Hidden for decades, his memoir was discovered in 2017. The memoir, titled 'Sotamuistoja' ( War memoirs), was written in 1940, a few months after he was wounded, and described his experiences in the Winter War from 30 November 1939 to 13 March 1940. Häyhä estimated in his private war memoir that he shot around 500 enemy soldiers.

He is believed to have killed over 500 men during the Winter War, the highest number of sniper kills in any major war. Häyhä had also used a submachine gun, the Suomi KP/-31. He used a Finnish-produced M/28-30, a variant of the Mosin–Nagant rifle. Simo Häyhä ( Finnish: ( listen) 17 December 1905 – 1 April 2002), often referred to by his nickname, The White Death, was a Finnish military sniper in World War II during the 1939–1940 Winter War against the Soviet Union. Medal of Liberty: 1st class and 2nd class Ĭross of Liberty: 3rd class and 4th class Vänrikki (Second Lieutenant), promoted to shortly afterwards

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