Unknown Soldiers

Chapter Thirteen

‘You mean you’re gonna leave Sabine there for Private Russianov to rape?’

‘Let ’er stay. She’s pretty well treated.’

They were packing up, somber-faced and silent. Honkajoki took his pieces of wood, considered them for a moment, and stuck them into his pack. ‘This could set them on the proper path. It could be that they are already as near to a solution as I myself.’

‘Yeah, yeah. That’s right. Back we go. Now that we’ve practically rotted into the ground here.’ Sihvonen was angrily yanking at his pack in an effort to get it shut, as if it were the miserable angles of his belongings that were to blame.

Hietanen stood silently in the middle of the bunker, looking around at the others’ preparations. His own belongings were already packed and ready to go. Three years earlier, he had stayed up waiting for their departure from the burnt clearing barracks, bouncing around boisterously. Now he stood quietly, without saying a word. Koskela was still filling in as Third Company Commander, so Hietanen was in charge of the whole platoon.

Rokka packed up Susling’s gear, as the last guard shift had fallen to his friend. Hietanen ordered Rokka to oversee the first section’s departure, as he himself headed off to the neighboring position to see about the other section. Hietanen had already ordered the machine-gun transport to the side of the road close to the front line.

The phone had been taken away, so they awaited the messenger’s arrival with the command to pull out. When it came, they fetched the machine guns from the nests and left. From the bend in the road, they saw the silhouette of the Devil’s Mound carved against the sky for the last time. A small screen of guys from the infantry company stayed behind to cover as they disengaged.

The transport vehicles waited by the roadside, and when Hietanen had arrived with the second section, they loaded up the machine guns and marched to the company’s designated gathering point. Once the other platoons had arrived and the usual fuss over proceedings had run its course, they began to withdraw.

The road of defeat began quietly. They ceded the Svir bridgehead without any fighting. They passed the abandoned bunkers, products of two-and-a-half years of nibbling away at the earth. The artillery positions were empty. The bitter, silent march led them behind the river that had become so famous. Once over the bridge, Vanhala ran down to the river’s edge, filled a bottle half-full of water and swung it in the air, chuckling, ‘Some of “Onega’s Waves!”’ He hadn’t forgotten the propaganda from Devil’s Mound.

‘Maybe you could stop screeching.’

‘Guess this stream won’t be Finland’s border.’

‘Who the hell cares? At least this goddamn shitshow is done with.’

‘Oh, it ain’t over yet.’

‘Down in Kannas, the guys are running with their tails between their legs.’

‘Wonder what they’re going to make us swallow now.’

‘We’re gonna pay for every last tree we chopped down over here, boys.’

‘Mm-hm. And so are our children’s children.’

‘Well, I know one thing for sure,’ Rokka said. ‘We’re gonna be hungry now that we’re on’na move again. Rations are enough in a positional war since you don’t gotta move, but from now on, fellas, we all better start scroungin’ crumbs again.’

‘We’re a little low on wheat, but chaff we have in spades.’

‘Stop bragging.’

Twilight fell. The path rustled with their footsteps. And off marched the Finnish private – his tilted cap crumpled with the tell-tale folds of its owner, his shirt unbuttoned at the top, his trouser-legs rolled, and his face set in a tense, bitter grimace. One man from the ranks drew in a deep breath, slowed his step into a slack, workaday rhythm, and started to sing. Along with the profane words ringing out into the summer night, there came the cry of his soul, voicing the bitterness of three years’ useless fighting, as if, in this cry, he might scream defiance at all his enemies.

A low rumble filled the hazy, smoke-filled air. Incessant air raids and artillery fire kept the surface of the earth in a state of perpetual shaking. The constant drone of fighter squadrons whirred overhead from every direction. It was as if the whole world were burgeoning with some menacing force that kept bursting forth in howls and explosions.

For the retreat, Sarastie’s battalion was put in a combined combat division commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Karjula. At first they retreated quickly along the poor forest roads, but then the front line caught up with them and the fighting began to intensify.

Bit by bit they ceded back the Eastern Karelian roads they had conquered in such bitter fighting three years before. They were tired and resentful once again – and hungry, just as they had been. The physical exertion took its toll on their food supply, but the poor organization of provisions meant that even the former portions now came irregularly and were often small. Of course, sometimes there was an over-abundance of food, as large quantities of the army’s supplies would occasionally have to be destroyed. Then, even a hungry soldier might manage to sneak into a storage depot and steal all the food he could carry. Rahikainen put his skills to work on behalf of Hietanen’s platoon once more, often keeping them from going hungry and sometimes even improving the state of their clothing. Once he even wormed his way into some barracks that was under heavy artillery fire, boldly risking his life for the ten pairs of new boots he triumphantly emerged with. Had so dangerous a task confronted him in a combat situation, Rahikainen would never have carried it out voluntarily. The only downside to the whole affair was that no one had been able to carry anything with him that was worthy of exchange for such goods, so Rahikainen was obliged to give everything away for free. Every last one of them was short on cash, so even purchasing was out of the question.

The platoon made it through the beginning of its journey without any casualties. The one exception was Honkajoki’s bow, which he had been faithfully dragging along with him. It was left behind at some position when they had been obliged to make a rather swift exit. Honkajoki had been about to grab his weapon as he left, but just then one of the assailants, who had already managed to duck into the bushes beside him, shot a hole through Honkajoki’s shirt. So the bow stayed, and Honkajoki bemoaned its loss, gasping out between breaths as their sprint finally ended, ‘It would give me great gratification to employ an expletive at this moment, despite the gravity of our current situation. At the very least, I must say: damn that Bushki for depriving me of my personal weapon!’

Honkajoki wasn’t bitter. For him, the defeat seemed to be as insignificant and irrelevant as every other worldly circumstance. At one point he went missing for three days. Four men from the First Company disappeared around the same time, and it was decided that they must have left for the ‘pine cone platoon’ – in other words, deserted. But then Honkajoki turned up again. He had simply been carrying out some reconnaissance work a little way behind the camp, he explained. In truth, he had been with the group of deserters, but at some point he had become separated from his companions and decided it might be best to return to the fold.

Otherwise, the platoon’s fighting spirit was probably in slightly better shape than that of the other units. Koskela was away, but he had left an indelible mark on the platoon, and Hietanen and Rokka were not the kind of men you desert lightly. Hietanen never urged anyone on. He would just toss his submachine gun over his shoulder and start walking, and the others would follow suit. It almost seemed as if his eyes had aged. Maybe the change was just more striking in him because he had been so conspicuously rambunctious before. As his solemnity grew, so his bravery seemed to increase. A defiance had appeared within him whose roots were laid bare whenever anybody voiced any political Schadenfreude over the defeat and Hietanen barked out briefly but threateningly, ‘Shut up!’

He wasn’t the type of leader to safeguard the morale of his platoon. No, he was the type who realized, from the moment the defeat came, that his former wayward patriotism had been integral to his whole attitude toward life, and that the blow of defeat was a blow to the very foundations of his being. The man in him had allowed the carefree boy to revel in the times of success, but with the arrival of defeat, he stepped forward and took its burden upon his own shoulders.

Generally speaking, Rokka remained his former self. He might have fought even better than before, but he demonstrated no wasted heroism. When he saw that a situation was hopeless, he, too, would stop trying, as he knew perfectly well that even if he held his position, the guy next to him wouldn’t. Once he even said that a pointless death was higher treason than desertion. The rumors that deserters were being shot struck him more sharply than any of them. It was lucky that he didn’t run into any high-ranking officers during that time, as the rage the rumors had fostered within him might well have landed him in an inescapable stew.

Salo remained steadfast. He believed in their ultimate victory in spite of everything, and the less basis there was for his belief, the more stubbornly he stuck to it.

A few days after Midsummer, they were in the midst of retreating. Low-flying Sturmoviks were harassing the column from the air, and somebody yelled, ‘Run for it, boys!’

‘But our own fighter planes’ll show up purty soon, don’t you think?’ Salo said, his comment pushing one embittered man to the point of rage, as it was precisely the absence of their own fighter planes they were perpetually cursing.

‘Show up, you goddamn fool! They were out there flyin’ round when nobody needed ’em, but where are they now? Those boys up there don’t seem to have any problem keepin’ on our tail.’

In his rancour, the man was just looking for any means of praising the enemy, but Salo retorted, ‘They’ll keep on our tail as long as we keep lettin’ ’em! If we just keep on runnin’ away, whatta you think’s gonna happen?’

‘Shut – shut – shut the hell up! If this road’s good enough for the rest of us, it’s damn well good enough for you.’

The truth was, in terms of his capabilities as a soldier, Salo did belong to that vast majority of ordinary men. He fulfilled his duties, for the most part, but you couldn’t exactly call him a hero. The other men felt his recent words had overstepped his normal frame of operation, however, as the established understanding amongst the group did not afford him the right to accuse others of cowardice. Salo fell silent, but when the ground-attack planes returned, instead of taking cover, he took aim at a nearing plane, steadying his rifle on the side of a tree. He didn’t look at any of the others, nor did he hear Hietanen’s furious command to take cover, he just aimed with movements so calm that the intention behind their contrived performance was unmistakable.

He shot one round and was loading a new cartridge into the barrel when the Sturmovik opened fire. Salo fell, and as soon as the commotion died down, the men hurried toward him. He was pale, but calm. His left leg had been hit, so its bones were badly crushed, and there was no doubt that Salo would walk with a prosthetic leg to the end of his days, if he made it through alive.

Uncomplaining, he endured the horrific pain as the medics removed his boot and bandaged the crushed leg. Beads of sweat pearled on his forehead and his body stiffened frequently from the pain, but he withstood it all without a sound. No doubt he had always wished to be a braver man than he was. Perhaps this incident afforded him some kind of compensation for the feeling of inferiority that had been gnawing away at him the whole war – which his insistent belief in victory had only brought to a head. For the smug superiority with which the others mocked his belief had been facilitated, in a way, by his mediocre abilities as a fighter. The shock brought on by the injury raised him up into a mental state that made it possible for him – this time – to step outside of his usual self. His voice was cuttingly calm as he said, ‘We ain’t gonna start cryin’ over a little leg now, are we? If we were runnin’ away, well now, look, I’m rid of the thing that was makin’ it all worse.’

The men of the platoon bade Salo farewell as the medics lifted him into the ambulance. As they waved him off, and each of them uttered something or other appropriate to the occasion, a note in their voices announced that with his unnecessary sacrifice, Salo had bought their respect. They never saw him again, but those who remembered him recalled him as a brave and courageous man. The last impression covered over all that had come before, and even the faith in victory that had provided them with so much amusement ceased to be stupidity and was transformed into an indomitable will.

The retreat continued. Soon they no longer remembered that there had been this man by the name of Salo in their platoon. The ever-intensifying fighting kept their minds fixed on fear, hunger and the vain hope of rest.

The machine-gunners’ command post was situated beside a winding forest road. There were sounds of firing over by the front line, and heavy shelling was underway between the front line and the command post. Lammio and Sinkkonen were receiving replacements, whose orders the company secretary was filing away. The secretary had been made a corporal as well, and seeing as there were eight young recruits amongst the replacements, he affected a lofty, superior tone of voice as he inquired after their details – never mind the exploding six-inchers making the ground shake even at the command post. It was indicative that the man was clearly aping Lammio’s gestures and intonations in his managerial role.

In addition to the boys, there were also three men over forty who had been called up out of the reserves. All the replacements had dug foxholes to protect themselves from shrapnel, and they crouched down into them every time a shell crashed to the ground.

Lammio stood tapping a stick against his boot as he spoke with the Master Sergeant. ‘It would be best to assign the old men as drivers and have the younger men who are driving now join the infantry. Send four of the new recruits to Hietanen, that platoon’s down several men. Also, I received word that Kariluoto has rejoined the battalion and resumed leadership of his company, so Koskela can return to his own platoon. Only temporarily, of course, since he is to be transferred to company commander of some other unit. They’ll probably move him to the Third Battalion, since they’ve been suffering heavy losses amongst the officers. I know Sarastie doesn’t want to give him up, because he’s afraid we will soon have need of him in his battalion, but under the current circumstances accommodating his opinion is hardly going to be an option. Well, it will all be sorted in due course, and Hietanen is certainly up to the task. These men just need to be fed before we send them out to the line.’

‘Yes sir, Captain.’ Sinkkonen turned to the older men. ‘We’re going to pull the younger men from the supply vehicles and assign them to the infantry platoons, then put you fellows in as drivers. Do you know how to drive a horse? What was your name again?’

Sinkkonen gestured toward the large man with a dark complexion who was sitting beside his foxhole looking glum and chewing nervously on a blade of grass. The man flinched angrily, diverted his gaze from the Master Sergeant and grunted, ‘Hname… hmph… my name… Fuck you!’

Lammio stepped closer to the man. ‘I do hope you know your own name.’

The straw wriggled its way from one corner of the man’s mouth to the other. ‘Papers’s over there… hmph.’

‘Answer me properly. How is the secretary supposed to know which file is yours?’

‘It’s the last one, of course. That one that’s left.’

‘State your name. What kind of game is this?’

‘You oughtta know. Knew it well enough to come drag me outta my home. Hmph… that’s right. So fuck off!’

Lammio was about to raise his voice when he remembered the stern warning he had received about not provoking the men any more than necessary, and so restrained himself. But Lammio didn’t know how to behave except with the overbearing arrogance now deemed inappropriate to the situation – so his voice was helpless and uncertain as he said, ‘Well, you must have a name at least.’

‘Fine, it’s Korpela,’ the man growled, as if angrily throwing his name in Lammio’s face, but only in passing. ‘Private. Hmph.’

Korpela chewed nervously on his straw, then snatched it from his mouth and viciously tossed it aside. He didn’t say anything to anyone, he just stared off into his own world, and when the Master Sergeant took the men to the field kitchen to eat, he threw his pack angrily over his shoulder and followed after the others, muttering something to himself that none of them could make head nor tail of.

After he and Mäkilä had selected which of the drivers would be reassigned to the infantry platoons, the Master Sergeant left Mäkilä to take things from there. Mäkilä was facing tough times. Any attempt at systematic organization was doomed. The book-keeping was a shambles. There was almost never any information about the strength of the food supply, as they frequently ended up having to feed divisions that had become lost or separated. Equipment vanished, as the drivers would quietly take it upon themselves to lighten their loads, and even the horses were dropping like flies under the strain of the incessant air raids on the supply vehicles. All of this only made Mäkilä more tight-fisted, however. The more equipment he saw destroyed, the more jealously he guarded what remained – as opposed to the rest of the men, in whom the situation had inspired something of an ‘easy-come-easy-go’ mentality.

Mäkilä distributed the men’s food and was just assigning them horses when Korpela burst out angrily, ‘Where are the fuckin’ nags, anyway? Ones we’re supposed to drive, I mean. So the fat cats of Finland can make their money in peace.’

Mäkilä wasn’t about to get into something as pointless as fat cats’ finances, so he just showed Korpela to his horse and said with a cough, ‘Well, you take good care of this horse, then. Try to feed him whenever you can.’

Korpela just about exploded. ‘Fuck you! I don’t need you tellin’ me what to do. I been drivin’ horses my whole fuckin’ life! Stop givin’ me your goddamn instructions! You just look after yourself! Yeah, you heard me.’

Mäkilä had flushed red and started coughing. He didn’t say anything more to Korpela, but his speech was more tense than usual as he addressed the others. Korpela looked at the harness, tossing and slapping the reins about angrily as he resumed his incomprehensible muttering. Mäkilä watched his shenanigans sharply out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing. Only when Korpela walked away from the carts did Mäkilä go set the harness in order. Then he asked the drivers, ‘Whose turn for the soup run?’

Shells came crashing down all along the edge of the road, so it was no one’s turn.

‘Uusitalo! Your turn!’

The man in question swirled around angrily and started cursing. ‘Course it is. Maybe you should try it yourself once so you see what it’s like. Anybody can give other people orders.’

Without a word, Mäkilä fetched a horse from beneath a nearby spruce, harnessed it, and lifted the soup vat into the cart. He was just leaving when Uusitalo came over and said, ‘Get the hell away from there and gimme the reins!’

Mäkilä blinked his eyes and looked past Uusitalo, giving the reins a tug as he said, ‘Chuh… so… I’m going. This time.’

Uusitalo could see that there was no point in continuing the discussion, and Mäkilä set off. He walked beside the cart, figuring the horse had enough to carry with just the vat. They had to go over a mile, because the air raids obliged them to keep the supplies further back, as far from the front line as possible. After they’d gone a little way, a messenger cycling toward them got off his bike to warn Mäkilä. ‘Be careful. They’ve bracketed the main road down there. Bad news comin’ down on both sides, little way past the mortar positions.’

Mäkilä didn’t reply, but plodded calmly on, staring directly ahead. He passed the mortar positions and neared the point in the road where the shelling was concentrated, which was in a low, muddy spot at the bottom of a sloping hill. Once he made it over the hill, he paused to wait for a break in the firing. The shells came at short intervals, always in pairs. The boom from the launch was followed by a crackling whistle, which always paused just a second before the explosion. The horse snorted and quivered and Mäkilä held it from the bit. When a pause between launch booms stretched out longer than usual, Mäkilä figured that the artillery had quieted down and climbed into the cart. But just as he passed the halfway point, the booms on the hill started up again. For the first time in his life, Mäkilä struck the horse, who had started galloping frantically down the hill. The shells splashed mud up into the air a few dozen yards off, but the softness of the earth cut down on the schrapnel considerably. The horse reared up on its hind legs, snorted and started pushing the cart backwards. Mäkilä climbed down and began leading the horse on foot.

The next pair of shells exploded a bit further off. The horse flared its nostrils and took a few stiff steps before rearing up onto its hind legs again. Mäkilä patted the horse and tried to calm him, saying, ‘Don’t be scared! Here we go, nice and easy. This isn’t up to people. It’s all in greater hands.’

Mäkilä was speaking to the horse, though the words were actually intended for his own soul. Otherwise he was perfectly calm. His eyes gazed straight ahead, bulging only when the shells exploded, and he gave a throat-clearing cough now and again. The launch booms sounded once more, but this time the whistle was ominously short and quiet. Mäkilä saw the splash of grass-stained water strike his hand, and grasped the quiet whoosh and thump he heard before a red flame billowed up before him from a crater that had appeared in the road. He was blasted in two.

The horse fell sideways onto the pole of the cart hitch. There was a hole in the side of the soup vat, so when the weight of the horse and the downhill slope turned the cart onto its side, soup streamed onto the ground, as the hole in the vat was on the downward-facing side.

The horse managed to raise its head, struggled to get up onto its front legs, and let out a wild, agonized whinny. Then it sank back to the ground, tossing its head weakly a couple of times.

The next set of shells sent mud splashing over both of the deceased.

The machine-gunners were sitting beside their foxholes, awaiting their food. They were all silent and irritable. A few days earlier they had taken up positions along this brook, holding a bit of line connected to Lord knows how many others. The enemy had gone a long time without testing the line’s endurance, so in that sense this situation was exceptional. Normally, their opponents shut down their attempted barricades immediately, forcing them to resume their retreat. They stared at the ground, their unshaven faces filthy, exhausted and creased with lines of bitterness. Sometimes a bullet would nick a tree and they would hear the rumble of a combat vehicle behind the stream. Further off they could hear the booming of an air raid, a sound that was rarely absent.

They were extremely hungry. Just two days earlier, Rahikainen had brought them a massive load of food scrounged from some bombed-out supply vehicle, but their moment of bliss had been short-lived. They couldn’t turn away the men who came from neighboring units, hands outstretched, pleading, ‘Give us just a little, huh? We haven’t had anything to eat for two days.’ Feelings of charity and generosity toward their brothers-in-arms were running even lower amongst these dead-tired men than their will to preserve the established order of Finnish society or the people fearing its demise, but they were so well acquainted with hunger that they shared every last morsel that they had.

It was an anti-tank detachment that came across Mäkilä while on their way to bring a new cannon to a devastated section of the line. The numbers stamped on the side of the soup vat enabled them to identify its owner and they brought him and the vat out to the platoon. So great was the disappointment brought on by their unsatiated hunger that the news of Mäkilä’s death remained secondary to the fact of the shortage of soup. Rahikainen even went so far as to say curtly, ‘That man was stingy all his life and managed to be stingy even in dyin’.’

They received one ladle of soup apiece and crumbled what little bread they had into it, then ate sparingly, as if they might somehow stretch the food that way.

It was Rahikainen who gave a laudatory eulogy for Mäkilä, however. ‘That fellow there’s the one offloaded the officers’ junk into the forest. Did away with those icon-pictures the leader of the First Platoon was hangin’ onto. The shit that nutcase collected! Not worth a damn cent…’

‘We seen stuff better than that fly by the wayside. There’s sacks a wheat flour they had in those supply trucks they drove in’na the lake. Didn’t I tell you all they thought we’d be out here ’til kingdom come? They were still drivin’ supplies out to the line when they shoulda been drivin’ ’em away.’ Rokka was sharing his cutlery with Susling, as the latter had lost his pack in some scuffle with the enemy.

‘I done told you not to take it off your back,’ Rokka added.

The men generally threw their packs on their backs immediately upon hearing an alarm, demonstrating their estimation of their odds of success, as well as the general state of their fighting spirit. Hence Vanhala’s new name for their gear: ‘Panic packs! Heeheehee.’

The others ate in silence. Rokka was the first to spot a group of men coming toward them along the road, and yelled, ‘Damn it, lookit that! Kariluoto’s headin’ over. Well, I guess he’s gonna see for himself now how it is… Got some men with ’im. Hang on, what the hell am I sayin’? Those are just pups’s all those are.’

Kariluoto had returned, bringing the battalion’s replacements with him. He took the men to the command post, where they met Koskela.

Kariluoto was overjoyed to see him after such a long time and burst out, ‘Well hello, old man! Old Koski, still holding down the fort. Weeds’ll outlive everything. God doesn’t want them and the devil knows he’ll get them in the end. I’ve brought some boys with me. Four men for the chatterbox team, too… your old platoon, I mean.’

Kariluoto was a happy man. He’d gotten married over his leave. He had returned to the front deaf and blind to the trains of wounded men streaming past. Newspapers full of the retreat and defeat had passed him right by. He’d grown thinner while he was away, and developed black bags under his eyes, and his lips were literally chafed from kissing. His lady Sirkka had bashfully remarked that he was going to wear himself out if he kept up that way.

With the perfect self-absorption of the lover, he had managed to block out the events that were crushing his entire world. Finland could not possibly capitulate, because that would make him, Captain Kariluoto, unhappy, and how could anyone do that, particularly now, when the wave of his life was at its very crest? Surely everyone was aware that he had just married a woman whose magnificence would astonish the entire world. Kariluoto’s sharp-eyed mother had hinted that her son might have acquired a wife with a tendency toward carelessness, but that was precisely what made Sirkka so attractive to Kariluoto. She had such a charming way of forgetting things – and when Kariluoto found a one-mark coin in her stocking, which had been put there in place of a lost garter button, he melted at her adorable ridiculousness.

‘New weapons,’ his beloved papa had repeated anxiously, having realized that the tides of world history were not going to spare the idyllic corner of Northern Europe in which he had lived so happily. A secure government functionary’s job during the week and exercises with the National Guard every Sunday – followed by all sorts of eager, utterly preposterous dreams about the future, backed by nothing but the untamed zeal and blue-eyed naïveté of a country that had won its independence just one generation before.

If a moment arose in which the son was obliged to take a stance on the developments, as well, he consoled himself with the fact of Rommel, or, in the worst case, with the Western Allies’ friendship toward Finland.

Koskela stood waiting as Kariluoto bounded eagerly toward him, his hand outstretched. He had the glow of leave about him, emanating from his clean clothes, freshly cut hair and gleaming boots, upon which dust seemed out of place.

Koskela clasped his outstretched hand and said, ‘Well, well. Hello, there. And congratulations.’

Kariluoto was suddenly unsure of himself. His boisterousness vanished – and only now did he realize the reality he was being faced with. He could see that Koskela’s cheekbones stood out, that his eyelids were red and swollen, and that his forced smile was strangely contorted.

‘Thanks,’ he said quietly, then asked with some hesitation, ‘How are things?’

‘We’re here. Moved since you been away.’

‘Yeah. Tough times. Why don’t we get these men split up and then go find a place to talk? I’ve got a thing or two in my bag. I can take over the company after.’

‘Yeah, sure. The Second Platoon is on the other side of the road, the First and the Fourth are on this side, and the Third is off in reserve. Our battalion demanded it for its own reserve, but gave in when we heard that its headcount was down to sixteen. The Jaeger Platoon is carrying out patrols on the flanks and there aren’t any other reservists left. Everything feels so helplessly weak.’

‘Sarastie seemed quite hopeful about the line along the brook. He thinks it’ll hold.’

‘Maybe. But both flanks are exposed. Well, they’ve been that way before, too. When there’s no one left, there’s no one left, no matter how unreasonable that seems. If only there were just one strong reserve unit to take the flanks!’

They divvied up the replacements and found a quiet place to talk, out of earshot of the messengers and phone operators. Kariluoto opened up his pack and started making sandwiches.

‘I can offer you a drink, too, if you want.’

‘No, no.’

‘I just meant one.’

‘Not worth it for the taste. But hey, how are things back in the land of the living?’

‘Honestly, there’s not much to report. But how are things here?’

Koskela grunted quietly and then fell silent for a long time before saying, a faint surge rising in his voice, ‘It’s all over. As over as it can be.’

Kariluoto gave a start. Uttered in this strong, bitter voice, the words felt so irrevocable that Kariluoto felt the end was at hand this very moment. ‘I see. Who’d have thought – Germany. And we won’t last on our own.’

Koskela didn’t say anything for a little while. It seemed to Kariluoto that he was deliberately holding something back. He saw a muscle twitch in the corner of Koskela’s eye and realized what kind of strain this seemingly calm man must have been under. Finally Koskela said in a strangely angered voice, ‘This isn’t a war. This is just horror after horror.’

‘Yeah, the deserters,’ Kariluoto said, seizing on the first thing that came to his mind of what this ‘horror’ might be. ‘Have there been many?’

‘Oh, they don’t really have anything to do with it. The ones who actually desert, I mean. There aren’t many of them, and mostly they’re guys whose nerves are so fried they’re no use anyway. But nobody wants to fight. The whole thing’s like sand slipping through our fingers – like water, even. Nothing stays where it’s supposed to.’

Koskela fell silent and his face resumed its former, motionless mien. Kariluoto didn’t say anything either, sensing more from Koskela’s speech than he really wanted to know. He knew him well enough to understand that he must be tottering on the breaking point of exhaustion, as there was no other way that Koskela would have been capable of such an outburst.

A long, embarrassed silence prevailed as they chewed on their sandwiches. Finally, Kariluoto said, ‘How are things going for us?’

‘The battalion, you mean?’

‘All of us. All of Finland…’

‘The way things go for losers. Getting the shit kicked out of us.’

Kariluoto’s jaw trembled. He felt a dampness under his eyelids and his angry voice wavered as he said, ‘No. By God, no! I can’t stand it… I don’t want to see it. Anything but that.’

‘There’s no hope. Not a trace.’

‘So we fight hopelessly.’ A savage note had crept into Kariluoto’s voice.

‘That’s what we’ve been doing this whole time,’ Koskela said, exhausted to the point of apathy. Kariluoto saw that he was embarrassed by the whole tenor of their conversation and wanted it to be over. They shifted into a more practical mode and Koskela explained their situation to Kariluoto. He would go back to leading his former platoon indefinitely, even if he knew it was only a matter of time before they transferred him elsewhere. The shortage of officers was becoming apparent, and they wouldn’t be able to keep lieutenants like him as platoon leaders for long. The battalion actually had a couple of company commander vacancies that were being filled by men younger than him, but they had been filled while he was serving as Third Company commander, and besides, they were regular officers. Koskela had no professional ambitions mixed up in the matter, but he would have liked to stay with his own platoon. There was no way that would happen, however, unless he became commander of their own company.

When they’d finished eating, they set off to check on the positions. Koskela explained a bit about the stages of the retreat, and little by little Kariluoto began to understand just how complete the collapse had been.

The new recruits assigned to Hietanen’s platoon were digging foxholes for themselves. They were four in total, and Hietanen had left them all in the first section, as it was down by more men than the second. Actually, all the squads had been operating short-handed since the war began. It hadn’t really been a problem during the positional war, as it had just meant that they had to stand guard more frequently, but as soon as the retreat began, they struggled to carry all of the equipment. Hietanen was instructing the boys digging foxholes. Three of them appeared to be taking the situation seriously. They said little and followed Hietanen’s instructions with a harried submissiveness attesting to their general uncertainty. The fourth boy, however – a vigorous, blond youth – seemed instantly at home. Once he’d dug his hole, he sat down on the edge of it and said with a swagger, ‘So, where these Russkis at, huh? I wanna start takin’ ’em down.’

Rokka’s head popped out of a pit. ‘Goollord! You all hear this fella? Lissen boy, don’t yell so loud, they’ll hear you, and they’ll all start runnin’ for the hills once they realize you’re here.’

‘How old are you?’ Hietanen asked.

‘Eighteen, Sergeant, sir,’ one of the boys replied.

‘Well, I’ll be damned. We were pre-tty young when we started but we weren’t children.’

‘Mother Finland wrenches babes from her breast and sends them out to protect her,’ Rahikainen said.

Something resembling a smile rose to Hietanen’s exhausted face. ‘That’s the first time I’ve been called “Sergeant, sir”! You all hear that? Just so you know who you’re talking to.’

‘New recruits with the fear of the trainin’ center drilled into them,’ Rahikainen said disparagingly. ‘Now they’re sendin’ us young’uns and grandpas.’

‘Far and wide, our heroes rise up, coming forth to join the line-up… heehee…’ Vanhala, sitting in his hole, hands clasped around his ankles, started chanting the Red Guard’s March again.

‘Fighting on, fighting on,’ Sihvonen sneered. ‘Except that there’s no life out here. Should’ve just made it “death”…’

Koskela and Kariluoto then arrived. Koskela was to stay with his platoon from now on, and Kariluoto stuck around a moment to say hello. ‘Hey. How are you guys doing?’

‘Oh, fine. Ceding land to pass the time.’

Kariluoto spotted a guy from his former platoon and ran off to greet him – it was Ukkola, boiling up some water over a nearby campfire. Ukkola sat with his cap backwards, the bill over the nape of his neck. Machine-gun cartridges dangled from his waistband. He had no pack, just a breadbag and a rolled-up winter coat bound together with some hemp string. He had fixed his canteen to the barrel of his submachine gun and was dangling it over the fire.

‘Hey there… How you doing, Ukkola?’

‘Hey. Well, can’t say there’s anything too great about the job.’ The man glanced over his shoulder and even Kariluoto had to smile. The image of him was so perfectly stereotypical, right down to the response.

‘No, doesn’t look that way. So this is what we’ve come to.’

‘In cards it’s the luck of the draw, and farming’s a goddamn lottery, but this here, this is one hell of a course they sent us out on.’

‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’

‘Sure, we can stir up a little nuisance, but that won’t stop them. If we manage to hold the line in one spot it gives way somewhere else. And those guys move fast. First, they load up the air with iron and then they pounce on you like a pack of wolves. Those fuckin’ Sturmoviks are hell. It’s raining shells and bullets like there were a couple of winged Kirghizs up there with submachine guns.’

Ukkola’s water started to boil. He took the grease box for his gas mask and carefully emptied his packets of substitute coffee into it.

‘This here’s everything I have left. The supply guys have given their notice. We go whole days without seeing a scrap of food. Even the Good Lord Himself couldn’t save this ship from sinking.’

Ukkola stopped speaking as he focused his attention on the boiling coffee. Blowing on his cup, he continued, ‘I mean, once it goes, there’s no getting it up again any which way. So, well. Hey, congratulations by the way. Didn’t you get married or something?’

‘Indeed I did. Thanks very much. Here’s a couple of rye crackers. I haven’t got much left since I already shared some with the guys in the First Platoon.’

‘Thanks. There’s more coffee over there – if you’re interested, I mean. Couple of guys from the unit decided to make themselves scarce back at Pyhäjärvi.’

‘Thanks, I don’t have time right now. Yeah, Rajamäki doesn’t surprise me, but Kuusisto and above all Rauhala was something of a shock.’

‘Kuusisto lost it completely, and Rauhala, well, he was always a little braver than the rest of us, so I guess that’s why he dared run off a little further.’

‘At least there aren’t any more deserters, though, right?’

‘No, no more deserters. But as soon as those fellows ’cross the way start at it again, there’ll be another round.’

Kariluoto continued on his way. It went from bad to worse. His feeling of depression only deepened with each encounter. Ukkola had more of a will to fight than most of them, and he had given up hope entirely. Kariluoto got the same reception from his entire company. The men answered his greetings with whines and whimpers. His former platoon mates congratulated him at least, and showed some kind of happiness at his return, but all in all, the feeble line that he inspected was dismal indeed.