Erna Raid The Erna Raid ( ) is an annual international military exercise and competition , one of the longest and most difficult in the world , held every August since 1995 in Estonia . It is organised by the Erna Society and commemorates the actions of the long - range recconnaisance group ' Erna ' in the summer of 1941 . Composition . The traditional parts of the competition are : Participation . Foreign teams have always been welcome to partake in the competition . In 2007 , 28 teams from nine different countries participated : Estonia ( 18 teams ) , Czech Republic ( one ) , Denmark ( one ) , Finland ( two ) , Germany ( one ) , Norway ( two ) , Portugal ( one ) , Sweden ( one ) and the USA ( one ) , of which Portugal and the Czech Republic are newcomers . Teams from the United Kingdom have participated in earlier years ( most recently , a British Territorial Army team in 2006 ) , but only observed in 2007 . A team from Cyprus also observed . Teams from The People ' s Republic of China have been traditionally successful in the competition and took 1st and 2nd place in 2002 . Other successful teams have come from Finland and Norway . Due to the home advantage attributed to the intimate knowledge of the terrain by the local teams , the venue for the competition may be changed next year . History . The competition is named after the Erna long - range recce group ( ) and themed after its activities in the summer of 1941 . Erna Society . In 1993 , a group of enthusiasts followed the historical route of the Erna group of 1941 , and came up with the idea of organizing a commemorative competition . A first try with only Estonian participants was held in 1994 . In the autumn of 1994 , the Erna society was founded , and in 1995 , the first international competition was held , and has been so annually since then , growing in size and the number of participants over time . Past competitions . The table below records the final results for the year ' s competition . It does not include retired and disqualified teams . DL is the acronym for the Defence League . Soviet claims . Since the Stalin era , the official Soviet stance was that the original Erna team participated in the mass murder of Soviet political activists . Sometimes this included a claim that the letter ' E ' was cut onto the backs of the victims . These claims were reinforced in the 1980s as a way of distracting historians analysing the Kautla massacre , and have been repeated in the Russian media throughout the 2000s . Recent official Russian accusations of glorifying Nazism . Since the competition ' s initiation , sectors of the Russia n media claimed the competition ' s namesake was an attempt to glorify collaboration with Nazi Germany . In 2007 , high - ranking government officials sharply criticized the competition , calling it " glamorization of Nazism " and expressing outrage over NATO members participating in the competition . Estonian officials attribute this recent development to the ongoing campaign for the Russian presidential election of 2008 . Russian officials claim that commemoration of the Erna group today is part of alleged efforts by the Estonian authorities to glorify the Nazi past ( other parts of it being the relocation of a memorial to Red Army invaders and an official greeting from the Minister of Defence to veterans of a unit of Estonians conscripted into a division organized within the " Waffen SS " to defend Estonia ) . An analyst of the US - based think tank Jamestown Foundation believes this view follows Soviet and post - Soviet Russia ' s official logic on two counts : first , that resistance to the Red Army was inherently illegitimate and conflatable with " fascism " in an occupied country or one targeted for occupation ; second , that Estonia should be criticized for remembering an act of national resistance and its casualties . Estonia ' s Minister of Defence , Jaak Aaviksoo called the accusations " regrettable " and recalled that the Erna group saved the lives of many civilians from the vengeful Soviet paramilitary units , and specifically pointed out cases of burning farmers alive along with their farms in Kautla .