Unknown Soldiers

Chapter Fourteen

Vo… ooo… oooooo…

Ground-attack planes were flying over the front line toward the command posts and artillery positions. The sudden roar overhead rent the atmosphere of normality and sent the men scurrying instinctively to the shelter of their foxholes. The unusual moment of calm had lulled them into that self-deception hope can induce, in which a man can imagine that, for some unknown and mysterious reason, the fighting might cease for a while. A couple of days of the quiet life had soothed their minds, but their tension was still so close to the surface that they quickly descended into the panicky anxiety that had become characteristic of the retreating troops. When the planes had passed over, they began to rise up in their holes, but quickly ducked back down again when an unbroken stream of low booms started sounding from the enemy side.

They had a few seconds to hope the barrage might miss before the first explosions exposed the vanity of such hopes. The ground lurched and shook. Screeches and moans filled the air and the miserable men’s hearts pounded nearly to pieces in the midst of the grinding upheaval. They tried to hold themselves against the earth as tightly as they could. They dug their nails into the sand at the bottom of their pits, and somebody was even digging himself deeper into the ground with his shovel, like a child, one scoop at a time.

‘Stay down!’ a choked voice screamed somewhere, before being drowned out by the crashing explosions. Trees snapped like twigs as fire and columns of smoke rose up to the height of the treetops. Shrapnel, tree branches and clods of earth rained down in one flash flood, and somewhere a hot, whizzing shard struck a panicked man, who began screaming between cries of pain, ‘Medics! Medics! I’m hit!’

Hietanen was lying face-down in his pit. He clenched his eyes shut, his strained consciousness registering each nearby explosion as it landed: ‘And again… and again… and again… and again.’ It was some kind of method of protecting himself, a way of banishing all the horror that this crashing and trembling awakened in his mind. He began to make out a pitiful wail and cry for help a few yards from his hole, and after wrangling with his fear for a few moments, he lifted his head to look. A few yards away, one of the recruits who had just arrived was struggling to crawl forward, dragging himself and screaming for help with a crazed, desperate look of horror on his face.

Hietanen leapt up. He grabbed the man and started pulling him into his hole, his face blue with anger as he yelled, ‘I told you to stay in your fucking hole! And you got up!’

He had just given the boy a stern warning about not leaving his hole, because he knew from his own experience how hard it was to stay down in a barrage. As soon as terror got the upper hand on self-control, it brought about exactly this kind of stupid mishap in the middle of a onslaught. The heavy-handedness of Hietanen’s warning might even have been partially responsible for provoking the man’s action.

Hietanen pulled him along almost brutally, the fear in his mind having transformed itself into a blind rage directed at the boy. The whirr of shrapnel filled his ears, dirt rained down on them, and waves of pressure kept whooshing their clothes right up against their skin. Hietanen was on his knees, pulling the man by his hand and his belt. The man screamed ceaselessly, though more from the shock than from the pain, as his wound was not dangerous.

A hot wave of air struck Hietanen in the face at the same moment as a shard snapped the cartilage of his nose and tore open both of his eyes. He slumped over the recruit, who froze into a petrified silence as he saw these sliced, bloody eyes bulging out of their sockets.

The man tried to roll Hietanen off him, but he was so paralyzed with fear that he couldn’t muster up enough strength. He turned his head away so he wouldn’t have to look at the terrible, bloody face, and when he was finally able to get his vocal cords to function, he let out a long, horrible cry.

It startled the others. Koskela and Vanhala were closest and crawled over to help. They lifted Hietanen off the man and dragged them both into the nearest foxhole. Just then the barrage started moving further back. Koskela yelled to the recruits, ‘New guys! Bandage the wounded, and if an order comes to retreat, then carry them with you.’

The others hurried to their positions, as they could already hear the rumble of a tank somewhere behind the stream, accompanied by rapid firing. A charge call rang out just then as well, but it became clear fairly quickly that it was a bluff. The enemy didn’t attack, and both the yelling and the shooting gradually died down. The men wondered what the taunt was supposed to mean, but weren’t able to make much more of it than that the enemy wanted to scare them rather than launch a genuine attack. This type of thing had actually happened before, so they weren’t terribly concerned about it. Koskela ordered Rokka to keep an eye on the platoon and headed back to see Hietanen. In the previous moment’s rush he hadn’t actually had time to see what had happened to him. He had the impression that only one of the eyes was lost.

Hietanen had a bandage wound around his head, and he was just regaining consciousness as Koskela reached him. Hietanen moved his hand, touched the bandage, and murmured, ‘What’s the damage?’

Koskela took his hand from his face and said, ‘Don’t worry. Be still now.’

‘Koskela?’

‘Yup. Don’t move. Got you in the nose a bit.’

Koskela turned to the men and drew his fingernail in front of his eyes. The men nodded. Then he raised two fingers and they nodded once more. The blood on Hietanen’s shirt sleeve drew their attention to a small wound on the back of his elbow as well. They had bandaged it, trying to make it seem as important as possible so that Hietanen would direct his attention there. ‘It hurts,’ he grunted. ‘Say, why’s my forehead wrapped?’

‘They got you in the nose. It’s not too bad…’

‘I know. I haven’t got eyes anymore.’ Hietanen’s consciousness was returning ever more fully, increasing his pain along with it. The blow had anaesthetized him against the wound, but as the shock wore off, Hietanen was realizing what had happened. He squeezed his hands into fists and then straightened out his fingers. He held in his cry for a long time, but then there came a long howl that forced the frightened new recruits to turn away.

Cautiously, Koskela lifted Hietanen’s head. ‘Can I get you some water? Stretchers’ll be here soon. I’ll come with you to the side of the road.’

‘No, I don’t want any. Where are the guys?’

‘At their positions.’

‘Are we still there? Same old spot?’

‘Yup.’

Hietanen lifted himself onto his side, letting out another howl. Then he went limp and fell onto his back. His breathing was quick and uneven.

‘Are there other guys here?’

‘The new guys.’

‘Gimme a pistol!’

‘Don’t worry. They’ll get you to the aid station soon.’

‘I’m not gonna make it. My head’s burning. Somethin’ awful. Somethin’ awful. I’m not gonna make it much longer… give it here… I’m gonna die anyway.’

‘I’m not going to give it to you, you can be sure of that. There’s no point. You’re not going to die. You’re totally fine otherwise. It just cut them open. Your nose’s broken, but nothing else.’

Hietanen began writhing again. Koskela ordered the new men to run over to the medics and urge them to hurry up. They had already carried a few of the wounded over to the roadside.

Seeing as the enemy appeared to have calmed down, Koskela allowed the men to come and say goodbye to Hietanen. Nobody could think of anything to say, as they all fully understood the enormity of Hietanen’s misfortune, and felt the inappropriateness of the niceties they usually mustered to boost one another’s spirits. Silently, they each passed through, touching the hand gripping the side bar of the stretcher. Between howls, Hietanen tried to make jokes, as even he could sense the paralysing tension of the situation. ‘No eyes. No crying, then!’

When nobody answered, Hietanen sensed their sympathy, and as if to fend it off, he started chattering on in his old way. ‘Well, it doesn’t make any difference to me. Jesus, I’m not worried! I’m just a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Little thing like this doesn’t matter to me.’

The medics lifted the stretcher and started to carry it away. The last noise they heard was a long, pained howl. They knew quite well what it would take to get such a noise out of Hietanen, and so could guess what severe pain his torn eyes must have caused.

Koskela accompanied the stretcher to the roadside. The others who had been wounded in the barrage were already assembled there – six in all. Kariluoto had asked the aid station to send out an ambulance, and as it happened the vehicle was already there, having been just over at the supply post, where it had been sent to pick up the service guys wounded in the earlier ground attack. The doctor decided that the front line’s wounded should come in the same load, so the ambulance had come directly out.

A bus that had been converted into an ambulance teetered toward them, swerving down the terrible road. The wounded men watched in horror as the driver snaked his way around the rocks with seemingly reckless abandon. They were afraid the bus would break down and leave them without transportation, and every one of them had a burning desire to get out of there before the enemy attacked again. Their fears were unnecessary, however, as the driver knew what he was doing. Generally speaking, these ambulance drivers had, over the years, learned to navigate even this kind of terrain, which no normal person would have dared attempt with even a horse. They knew they were in a race against death, as a wounded man’s survival frequently hinged on his making it to the operating table in time.

The most seriously injured were placed in front. The vehicle’s shaking was worse in the rear and it made Hietanen’s head burn with pain, but he stayed in the back nonetheless, letting some guy wounded in his mid-section pass in front of him. The pain radiated from his brow straight through to the back of his head, burning into his back and down his arms as well. The medic even whispered to Koskela that Hietanen might die if the shard had cut deep enough.

Koskela refused to believe it, figuring that if Hietanen was conscious, his wound couldn’t be as dangerous as that. He grasped his friend’s arm and said, ‘Take it easy. Life doesn’t depend on eyes. If we make it through, we’ll meet up again for sure. I’ll come by sometime.’

Hietanen was in so much pain that he couldn’t really focus his attention on Koskela any more. Turning his head away, he muttered over the moans and the cries, ‘Keep in touch… Send my greetings to the guys! You take care of yourself…’

The driver ordered Koskela out of the ambulance and he stepped down to the ground. He stood there silently for a long time, even after the bus had disappeared around the bend in the road. Then he lit a cigarette and started slowly back to the platoon. The desolation that enveloped him now was deeper than it had been before. He’d been away from his platoon for a long time, but he hadn’t drifted away from the men for all that. With each man that went, the platoon lost something. To him, the old platoon maintained a certain spirit, connected with the early part of the war and their success and energy in it. Each man they lost took a piece of that spirit, leaving in its place nothing but hopelessness and the meaningless absurdity of fighting. And Hietanen had been the closest to him, of all the men. And of all of them, he seemed the very worst suited to blindness.

But Koskela knew what he had to do. He would keep his thoughts fixed on what he wanted and away from what he didn’t. Once again he shook off the discomfiting feeling that this senseless killing and suffering induced in him – the same one that had sparked his rage back when Lehto had shot the prisoner and the others had carried on about it like a pack of vultures. This was not the place for a human being. Koskela turned his thoughts toward the machine guns’ new positions.

Major Sarastie was sitting on a moss-covered rise, getting through one cigarette after another. Black bags sagged beneath his eyes, and the hand grasping his cigarette flinched nervously. His shirt was wrinkled and filthy. The swamps and the forests had rubbed the color off his boots. The bootlegs gleamed greenish-white. ‘Shitty horse leather,’ Sarastie thought in passing, as his eyes passed over them.

The command post was unremarkable. There was a phone and a campfire for making coffee. Messengers and signalmen huddled off to the side. There was no aide-de-camp, as the former one was now leading a Jaeger Platoon that had lost its leader. No replacement had arrived yet, and God only knew if one ever would.

Grenades whistled overhead. Ground-attack planes rumbled further back, harassing the supply train. Their own mortar choked out three coughs from somewhere nearby. The munitions shortage was affecting them as well. There were some transportation difficulties. The Sturmoviks were making sure of that.

Sarastie was worried about the exposed flanks. Encirclements were as established a part of this Russian advance as they had been of their own three years ago. But what could they do about it? They would have needed a proper reserve unit to take the wings, but where were they supposed to find one? There was the Jaeger Platoon, but they were carrying out the patrols, and there was one platoon from the First Company, but it was stationed out by the front line, just in case it should break. He couldn’t take any more men from the line along the brook itself, as it was weak to begin with. And where was that going to land them – having guys everywhere, but spread too thin to do anything anywhere? Daring maneuvers had, of late, become a matter of necessity. He had been promised a sapper company as a reserve unit as soon as it finished laying some road, but as far as he knew, those guys were still over there. The combined combat unit’s commander demanded ‘iron-fithted operationth only’. As far as Sarastie was concerned, the Lieutenant Colonel was an idiot. Little love was lost between them, and in his irritation, the Major considered the Lieutenant Colonel’s inability to pronounce the letter S just one more instance of his idiocy. The quarrel between them was nothing more than a typical manager–subordinate squabble, in which one party demands more than the other thinks reasonable. Whenever Sarastie was unable to hold back the enemy with his worn-out battalion, the Commander saw only one possible cause: that they had not pushed vigorously enough. What difference did it make how vigorously he, Sarastie, steamrolled onward if his men had run out of steam? There was nothing a commander could do about that. He had done everything he could. He had tried to understand the men, he had stressed to the officers the importance of their attitudes toward them, and he had given Lammio a strongly worded talking-to. It was time to give up the lofty stance of an officer, grab a pistol and join the ranks. Sarastie had read a great deal of military history, and a quote from Napoleon now came into his mind: ‘I have been Emperor too long. It is time to be General Bonaparte once more.’ Sarastie had been a hard-liner when necessary, but exercising the right to shoot his own men was something he considered unreasonable – immoral, even.

Yes, indeed. If he could just rally the men’s spirits, then the line would stiffen up too. Everything hinged on that. There might even be some possibility of organizing operations once he could take stock of things. At the moment, everything was just resting on chance. The line might hold just as well as it might break. The men’s ability to hold it was a hazier variable than it had been previously. A staunch, shared will was missing. There were just little spurts that might be flattened at the slightest opposition.

The Jaeger Platoon had just returned from a patrol off to the right, in an area that backed up to a broad stretch of swampland. Sarastie didn’t trust the swamp, however, as he himself had carried out encirclements through tougher terrain than that, and experience had already made it clear that the Russians were just as capable. The returning patrol reported that all was quiet, but how much could one trust those kinds of reports these days? That slight uncertainty in the reporter’s voice was a tell-tale sign that the men hadn’t gone out quite as far as they were supposed to.

The defeat had increased Sarastie’s tendency toward the philosophical. He had striven to take everything ‘scientifically’, even being a bit proud about it.

The Major took a swat at the mosquito that had just been buzzing in his ear, trying to smack it against his neck; but it slipped easily out of danger into the gust of air beneath his hand. His stomach gave a spiteful growl and a bead of sweat pearled on his brow as a momentary faintness washed over him. Diarrhea was endemic.

A guard suddenly emerged from the forest, gasping, ‘Major, sir! The enemy!’

‘Where?’

‘Over there! In formation. With submachine guns under their arms.’

Sarastie ordered the messengers and signalmen into positions and set off himself in the direction the guard had indicated. He understood everything the moment he saw the enemy line advancing through the forest with men carrying machine guns behind them. They must be up against an encirclement, as a normal patrol wouldn’t transport machine guns.

Sarastie ran back and ordered the hesitating men into position.

A couple of shots announced the fighting.

‘I’ll notify the front line and ask for back-up,’ he yelled. The messengers and signalmen had taken to their heels and Sarastie spotted an enemy soldier behind a spruce. He pulled out his pistol and emptied the magazine. His hand had just reached the telephone handle when the first Russian shot off a long string of bullets. Sarastie was dead.

The ambulance swayed with its moaning cargo down the potholed road. The driver watched the road carefully and turned the steering wheel, trying to gauge which potholes were the worst. The medic checked some wounded man’s pulse. He got up and whispered to the driver, ‘He’s not going to make it to the aid station.’

The driver didn’t respond, as the road demanded his undivided attention, and in any case there was nothing he could do with such information, seeing as he was already driving as fast as he possibly could.

Hietanen was lying at the back of the bus. He devoted all of his strength to keeping his body still, as every jolt sent sharp pains burning through his head. The pain shut out any possibility of pondering his unfortunate fate, and anyway his future life lay well beyond the reach of his concerns. He hoped merely that the drive would end soon, or else that he would die – just so long as he could escape this excruciating pain. Frequently, when the pain and misery became unbearable, his long, despairing howl would rise amidst the moans of the others.

As they neared the rise that led to the command post, they began to hear shooting over the roar of the engine, but it no longer aroused their interest. There was a bend in the road at the bottom of the hill, and just as the vehicle turned round it, the windshield shattered. The driver slumped down against the steering wheel, then rolled on top of the medic, who had fallen beside the gear shift. The ambulance hit a ditch and came to a halt. Bullets clinked through the body of the bus and flames began to flutter up from beneath the hood.

When Hietanen recovered from the stupor brought on by the vehicle’s sudden halt, he got up. Screaming and moaning surrounded him. He groped about with his hands against the back door and pushed it open. The movement brought a new round of bullets sailing into the side of the ambulance. Someone was crawling by his feet and yelling, ‘The ambulance is on fire! It’s on fire! Help me out of here!’

‘Where’s the driver and the medic?’ Hietanen yelled.

‘Dead. Help…’

Hietanen pulled the man out and fumbled his way back to the rear of the ambulance, yelling, ‘Anybody who can’t get out, just grab my hand here! I’ll pull you. But anybody who can make it, try to get yourself out. Everybody behind the bus!’

Somebody grabbed hold of his outstretched hand, and though the effort brought a sharp pain to his head, he pulled the man along the floor of the vehicle. The man screamed and wailed as his wounded pelvis dragged along the floor. There were six wounded men, but the two positioned up in front had been killed in the same shower that took out the medic and the driver. As he was dragging the man out, Hietanen heard the last of the survivors screaming for help. ‘Help me! The car’s on fire! I don’t have legs! I can’t get out!’

The screaming turned to choking, as the ambulance was beginning to fill with smoke. Hietanen made his way out of the back door with the wounded man and yelled, ‘I’m coming right back! I won’t leave you!’

The man who had made it out first, who had also been in the back of the ambulance, was the same new recruit that Hietanen had been wounded trying to help. He was actually in better shape than Hietanen was, but he was in such a state of shock that he couldn’t think of the others and just tried to crawl to cover behind the bus. A bullet aimed straight at his head cut short his escape, though.

When Hietanen got the other man to the door, he lowered himself from the vehicle and pulled him out. The man suddenly panicked and started screaming, ‘Get down, get down! He can see you! Over there!’

That was as far as he got. The shower struck the open doors of the bus and the man fell limply between them. Hietanen sank slowly down onto his side. His body shook for a long time as a shower of machine-gun fire tore through it. Sergeant Urho Hietanen was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy.

The ambulance burned, crackling and sparking. For a long time a choked coughing and crying rose up over the din, calling out, ‘Come and help me! Why did you leave me? Can’t anybody hear me? I’m burning. My blanket’s on fire!’

The coughing went on for some time, then changed into a wild bawling. First came a long, drawn-out scream, and then, the voice clarified into words. ‘Where the fuck did you go? I’m burning! Get me a submachine gun. I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna kill everybody!’

The fire hissed. The voice choked and receded into coughs, and then, finally, a pleading whimper. ‘Stop… stop… this is the Red Cross… Ladies and Gentlemen… stop, no more… I’m on fire… no more… This is the Red Cross…’

Then the voice was drowned out by the crackle of the flames. The organs of bomb squadrons boomed through the clear blue of the summer afternoon. In the south, toward Ladoga, an artillery barrage was rumbling.

Kariluoto was sitting at his command post eating a garden tomato – the last of the food he’d brought from home. He had come from the exultation of love smack into the middle of this misery, and the shock had sent his spirits plunging to a painful low. He had had enough of hearing about all the phases of the retreat. They attested to a total collapse. Columns harassed by ground-attack planes, destroyed supplies, the mood of hopelessness, the deserters, the reluctance to fight at all.

It pained Kariluoto to listen to these reports. On top of everything else, the defeat brought shame. He had thought the army would pull out fighting with everything it had, but the stories he heard revealed the truth, recounted in soldiers’ bitter, sarcastic slang.

They had fled before as well. Been scared, run away – but at least they had been ashamed and tried to make up for it. Now no one thought anything of it. The men themselves would laughingly tell about how they’d run away, making a joke out of it. To be sure, there was not a thing in the world they were not willing to make into a joke, but it still pained Kariluoto to hear it.

He didn’t actually condemn fear, having recognized the fear in himself long ago. He had even looked back on that baptism of fire and seen it for what it was, stripped of any self-protective shield. If he weren’t company commander, who knows? Maybe he would be running away too. It was his position that compelled him to pull himself together.

He remembered the ghost that had haunted him. The gray-haired captain who had advanced under fire, body angled, shoulder high. Many times that broken voice had echoed in his ears: ‘Give it another go, Ensign. They’ll take off all right.’ It had always made him groan with shame and agony. But eventually the specter had forgiven him, as Kariluoto came to realize that he himself had issued the same exhortation dozens of times. Kaarna’s frame of mind from that day was well known to him now.

He did envy the men to whom bravery just came naturally. But he had devised careful protection against that. He had resolved for himself that that kind of bravery was merely pragmatic – it had no moral or ethical merit. Once, when they had been talking about Viirilä’s insane bravery, he had smiled almost contemptuously, saying, ‘Well, sure, and the horses out here are the least frightened of all.’

No, fear he was prepared to understand. But indifference – this bitter, biting mockery of their misfortune – it brought tears of anger to Kariluoto’s eyes.

At first it didn’t occur to him to pay any particular attention to the sounds of shooting coming from somewhere further to the rear. Only after some time had passed did it suddenly strike him that someone was fighting over there. A patrol, maybe.

Kariluoto cranked the phone handle, but there was no answer from Battalion Command. He called over a battle-runner and ordered him to go and get the Third Platoon leader from the reserves. When the man arrived, Kariluoto ordered him and his platoon to go and secure the main road heading toward the battalion’s command post, and no sooner had the man set out on his task than the shooting started up again. This time the shots were coming from a Russian machine gun, a weapon that was rare in their experience. The sound made Kariluoto think of the ambulance. It must be just around that vicinity now. Then an even more important fact occurred to him. If there was a machine gun involved, whatever unit had turned up on the road was bigger than just a patrol. He tried the phone again, but to no avail.

He rounded up more men and sent them to help the Third Platoon as he himself headed for the artillery’s observation post.

‘Phone line’s down. Mortars, too. We’re trying radio.’

‘Ask them to get me the Commander.’

When they finally got a connection, the artillery battery’s firing position reported that connections were down at Battalion Command. According to their information, men had come from that direction saying that Sarastie was dead and that the enemy had cut off the road. The Jaeger Platoon was in the midst of trying to set up some kind of barricade on their side of the cut-off point. Then they reported that they had received more information. The mortar positions had been seized by the enemy and Captain Lammio had ordered the supply train to pull out while he rounded up all the men available to help the Jaeger Platoon.

Kariluoto’s breath quickened. His hour of trial had come. He was the eldest company commander in the battalion save Lammio, and Lammio was on the other side of the cut-off.

‘Ask them to get me the Detachment Commander.’ Kariluoto lit a cigarette and took a long drag on it in an effort to calm himself. He tried to hide the trembling of his hands as he took the radio transmitter from the Ensign.

Conversation was difficult, as they had to avoid giving clear information for fear that someone might be listening in. The Commander gave his order briefly: ‘Cut to minimum edge. No delay. Erecting barricade wetht. Help negligible. Pothition retention imperative.’

‘I can curve.’

‘Objective not curve but pothition retention. I am confident it ith not very thtrong. Quick attack will clear up. Hit hard. You choothe method. Over.’

There wasn’t much left for Kariluoto to decide, actually. The Second Company and all the machine guns would hold the line along the brook. The First and Third Companies he would round up to carry out the attack.

When Koskela and the company commanders arrived, Kariluoto explained the situation. He assigned Koskela to take command of his own company. Koskela was looking at the map.

‘If we pull off the line gradually and curve round between those ponds, we can slip out like a dog through a gate. They can’t have many men securing that area, so far from the road. And as for holding the brook line, there’s no way. They’re not going to sit back and let us open the road just like that. The line can hardly hold with the men it’s got on it now, much less with just the Second Company and the machine guns. In any case we’d better make a plan to destroy those two anti-tank guns.’

‘The command was clear.’

Koskela clapped the map shut. ‘Yup. But it doesn’t change anything about the situation.’

‘The Commander knows the situation. Explaining it to him isn’t going to help anything.’

‘Of course not. That’s not what I was suggesting.’

The companies split up and the Second Company spread out to try to cover the areas the others had vacated. Koskela took Rokka and Määttä’s machine guns with him. He knew, of course, that the weapons would make little difference in this attack, but he wanted the men with him, Rokka particularly. Rokka even left Vanhala in charge of the machine gun and promised to join the firing line himself. The men moved swiftly and determinedly. No questions, no dilly-dallying. The gravity of the situation had restored their old edge. They had wondered over Hietanen’s fate for a moment, realizing that the ambulance must have been in a danger zone, but time had cut short their musings. Tonight, their lives were on the line, more precariously than ever before. Many of the men assigned to stay on the brookline asked to join the attack detachment, and Kariluoto took a few of the best.

The groups were set. The Third Company on the left side of the road, the First on the right. His own former platoon Kariluoto held in reserve.

Koskela had explained the situation to the company, adding, ‘Guess there’s just one way out of this fix – the old-fashioned way.’

But before setting out, he turned to Kariluoto and said, ‘Soon as we set in, the neighbors are going to do the same. It won’t make any difference how quick we are. They’ve been ready this whole time. The barrage earlier was just a cover for this encirclement. It’s been three hours since then and you can see how they’ve dug their heels in all over the terrain. They’ve already got two or three loads of logs over there that they’ve started building bunkers with. Slipping into the forest is the only way out.’

‘You know the order.’

‘Yeah, I do. And I also know that the Commander has no idea what he’s asking. He should come and open the road from his direction. But he has no idea how to do it. Problem is, it’s even harder for us. Two hours from now you’ll see what the situation is. When we have the Second Company retreating at our backs and the First and Third lying in shreds under the spruces by the command post. Good luck to any man trying to get out of that.’

Kariluoto diverted his gaze. He knew that Koskela was right, but while he had courage enough in him to make personal sacrifices, going against a commander’s order was something that was beyond him. His voice cracked as he said curtly, ‘There’s an easy way out. Only hurts once.’

Koskela stole a glance at Kariluoto. It was the first time he had heard him take such a personal tone with him. Up until now, Kariluoto had always deferred to his views. Koskela knew it went back to those very first days of the war, and sometimes he had even been a bit embarrassed by it.

Koskela said nothing. Then, as Kariluoto left, a thought flashed through his mind, as if it were an axiom: That man will die today.

And then he banished the thought. ‘Who knows? Maybe it’ll work. And if we’re going through with it, then in any case we have to do it like we believe it might succeed. Otherwise there’s no point at all.’

Rokka was shoving hand grenades into his belt. He was on his knees beside the crate when Koskela found him. ‘You think many fellas gonna die tonight?’

‘I dunno. Anyway, now we just do the best we can.’

‘Oh, you don’t need’da pump me up. I ain’t the pep-talk type. But Lord I hope you know how to pray!’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘Well, try, y’hear? Sankia Priha the Great, he just laughed when’na fellas started puttin’ their packs on, but it don’t strike me we got much to laugh at.’

‘Guess a straight face might be best for all of us this time. By the way, you can decide yourself which way you want to go. It would actually make sense to get together one shock troop, but we don’t have time, and I guess the stronger guys will figure out what to do regardless.’

‘Oh, I’ll be all the shock troop you need, right here.’ Rokka set off, humming as he went. ‘Take my darlin’ by the arm…’

Koskela knew Rokka’s singing was just for show. He knew their effort hardly stood any chance of success, but there he went nonetheless, humming away – humming to say that he was ready for anything, hopeless as things might be. In other words, the song meant: Come what may – no time to worry about that now.

‘Move out!’

A faint creaking sounded in the forest. No one said a single word. The men knew the drill. Holding their breath, they made their way through a security layer of men positioned in front of them, expecting shots at any moment. Sometimes one of them would glance at the guy next to him as if to ask something, and his neighbor’s face would answer, ‘Not yet.’

It was seven o’clock. A breathless hush reigned over the silent forest. They could hear shooting further out in front of them, on the other side of the enemy’s encirclement. Evening sunlight bathed the bark of the trees. Winding through the forest was a cow path teeming with ants dragging twigs and pine needles to their nest. Occasionally a stripped, sun-bleached spruce branch would snap as a scratched-up boot happened upon it. Nobody was observing the beauty and quiet solemnity of the wo0dland, however. There were plenty of grave, searching eyes voraciously scanning the forest, but they were looking only for signs of the enemy so that they could strike first. Their scout was out in front. He slipped from tree to tree, bush to bush, trying to remain invisible. Suddenly the men following saw him drop to the ground and at the same moment came a shrill Pi… piew… pieew…

Prr… prr… prrrrrrrrrrrr…

It was the scout’s submachine gun.

‘Enemy ahead! Enemy ahead! Positioned on the slope! Alert down the line!’

The platoons fell into formation and the artillery observer ordered his men to fire. The barrage came quickly, but rather feebly, as the artillery positions were being harassed by planes overhead. No sooner had their own artillery fallen silent than the enemy started answering fire from behind. They were so near, however, that the Russian artillery observer couldn’t fire close enough for fear of hitting his own men, so the barrage landed about a hundred yards behind them. It was still underway when Koskela’s voice cried out, ‘Shut ’em up, boys!’

‘Shut ’em up… Shut ’em up… Shut ’em up…’ The words spurred the men on, and they repeated them down the line verbatim, as somehow or other the command struck just the right tone for the situation. The men had decided that tonight they weren’t messing around. And no wonder – for the situation was precisely the kind to ignite a Finn’s fighting spirit. A mighty roar rang through the forest. ‘Whooo-aaah! Mothuuurfuckuuuur! Hoooo-raaah!’

Viirilä’s roar was easily distinguishable from the others, as he had his own, personal battle cry. Once, Kariluoto had mentioned in passing that the Catholics’ battle cry in the Thirty Years’ War had been ‘Holy Christ, our Savior’. Viirilä had adapted this into the national style, which was better suited to his particular spirit. After that, the others’ shouts were frequently drowned out by his blaring, inhuman roar of ‘Holy crap, it’s Satan!’

The roar sparked a deafening racket. It was as if a funeral pyre of dry juniper had been set on fire. Only at many times the volume. Three men in a row fell beside one root, and the others were searching for cover. The sides of the trees crackled and snapped, sending bits of bark and wood flying into the air, and constant, angry whistles hailed down onto the tufts of grass carpeting the forest floor.

Koskela was all the way in the back, surveying the situation. He could tell right away from the sound of the firing that the enemy’s forces were spread at least as wide as theirs, and perhaps even wider. There was nothing to do but yell ‘Straight on!’, but the fire raining down from the gently sloping rise was so intense that the operation looked impossible.

‘Soften them up with some fire first, guys,’ he yelled to the men nearby, who then began searching for targets. Koskela himself located the machine-gunner, whose head fell as Koskela’s submachine gun opened fire. A new head quickly rose in its place and the weapon started up again. Koskela got the new gunner in the sight and the man fell, but remained visible. They pulled the body away, however, and a new helmet rose into view. When it fell, no fourth followed, but Koskela knew that the men on the hill also understood what fleeing would mean. They weren’t going to give so much as a yard without leaving their dead upon it. That much was clear from the beginning.

The firing didn’t last long, though. The men were on the verge of losing all initiative, the first wave of enthusiasm having vanished. Something had to be done. He would probably have to intervene personally. Before he’d had a chance to drum up a plan, he heard Rokka yelling a couple of dozen yards off to his right. ‘Hey lissen, you with the light machine gun! Shoot at that mess’a sticks over by that pine. An’ shoot like the devil!’

‘What for?’

‘They gotta light machine-gunner over there, see. And I wanna git me behind that stump. They’ll kill me if they’re left’ta shoot in peace. So you shoot real hard!’

The light machine-gun opened fire and Rokka got up. There was a flash of gray as he made a dash for the root, and only once he’d ducked behind it did the hail of bullets start whistling after him.

Rokka needed no more than a blink of the eye to figure out what was concealed in the mass of alder bushes he’d ordered the man to keep under fire. There was a pit in there with three men inside. One guy with a submachine gun and a light-machine-gunner with a fellow helping him. The latter had his light machine-gun, one of those Soviet ‘Emma’s, hammering away on his trail, but he himself was safely under cover of the stump. Flames fluttered from its fire damper, and Rokka could clearly see the man’s broad-boned jaw pressed up against the butt of the light machine gun. He took a hand grenade from his belt and felt a wave of smugness wash over him, prompted by his perfect confidence that his target was toast. When his eye caught sight of a smooth pine cone, he snatched it and threw. He regretted it instantly, of course, but he just hadn’t been able to resist, so what of it? The unexpected pine cone sailed smack into the pile of sticks. One of the men noticed it, but by then Rokka’s hand grenade was already airborne. A panicked scream came from the pit, and the heads disappeared. The pile of sticks exploded into the air and Rokka made a dash for the pit. One of the six hands moved and Rokka shot it down as he ran.

Dirt flew up around the rim of the pit and Rokka pressed himself low, yelling, ‘C’mon, fellas! I’ll fire! You all know what’s out there in front of us? Finland! C’mon fellas! Now!’

He determined which direction the firing was coming from, and as soon as it paused, raised his head and shot. No more danger from that pit. He glanced backwards long enough to see the platoon leader, Ensign Taskinen, rise up to yell something and fall in the same blink of an eye. Then he saw the guy with the light machine gun lying dead in the spot he’d just passed. Further back was yet another fellow, his head rolling back and forth gruesomely as he fell to the ground. Rokka cleaned out another pit whose dwellers hadn’t yet caught on to what was happening.

As soon as he had stopped shooting, Rokka whirled around, as someone had thudded into his hole. It was Viirilä. He was making room for himself amidst the bodies and tore open one of the Russians’ packs. He found a long, untouched loaf of bread inside, which he promptly shoved down his shirt, against his bare chest. He didn’t have an undershirt. ‘Ain’t worth sporting an undershirt round here, like this job was better than it is, phahahaha!’ Lice had taken over Viirilä’s undershirt, and he had burned it over a campfire. ‘Phahahahah!’

Viirilä’s arrival had not gone unnoticed, and both men ducked their heads as dirt flew up about the edges of the foxhole. Viirilä stomped his feet on the floor of the pit and hollered, ‘Hey, you over there! Yeah, you! What the hell do you think you’re doin’? Uh-huh… Cut it out! Either that or I’m gonna come over there and take that gun off your hands myself.’

‘Lissen. We clear out a couple a foxholes so the fellas can git in ’em… Then we steamroll ’em, see? You take the right, I take the left. You got any hand grenades?’

‘Yeah, I got a two or three potato mashers… You know the French for “black cat”?’

‘No, dunno… Lissen, now ain’t the time…’ Rokka was irritated, as the spot they were in demanded a quick follow-up, but he knew from experience that talking to Viirilä was like talking to a lunatic. The man had his own way of doing things.

Viirilä suddenly raised his submachine gun and fired a short burst, finishing off some man who had just raised his helmeted head above the edge of his pit.

‘It’s a dark miaow. Phahahaha!’

A hand grenade sailed toward them. As soon as it went off, Rokka raised his gun, knowing that its throwers would also be watching to see where it landed, and took out yet another of the most dangerous enemy soldiers. Viirilä peeked out at the terrain and squatted down in the pit ready to sprint. Then he commanded himself, ‘Private Viirilä. Man the foxhole of the enemy soldier you have just executed, then fire at the Soviet soldiers’ machine-gun position that is located at the base of that pine. The pine is situated in the eastern portion of the Greater Finland. In order to paralyze enemy morale, you are to strike up a spirited battle cry.’

Rokka had also spotted this same machine-gun position. It sat in the protection of a boulder that prevented any of their fire from reaching it. The same rock meant that the machine gun couldn’t shoot at them either, but it was perfectly capable of annihilating anything in the pit Viirilä was eyeing. Rokka decided to shoot at the rock to subdue the men as Viirilä made his dash, and as soon as Viirilä rose, he opened fire.

Viirilä bolted off. Seeing him in his normal state, nobody would ever have imagined that this hulking beast of a man had so much speed and power in him. His army boots – two sizes too large – thudded down two or three times as he leapt between the pits. With his last thump, he roared, ‘Holy crap, it’s Saaaataaaan!’

Rokka kept the rock sparking with continual fire. The machine gun was silent and thus condemning itself to certain destruction. Viirilä’s monstrosity of a head rose from the pit and he emptied the drum of his submachine gun into the enemy position. One of the wounded machine-gunners tried to crawl to safety, but Viirilä had already reloaded his gun, blurting as he fired, ‘Stay with your group! Private Viirilä’s orders.’

Just then Rokka took off. He made it to a strong shooting position as well, and the two of them cut an opening in the line of defense along the slope. It was no more than thirty yards across, but it was enough. When Koskela saw that Rokka and Viirilä had opened up the possibility for a charge, he joined the men himself and then, ordered it. The moment was, above all, psychologically opportune. The men closest had seen the feats of their two comrades and, fired up by their success, they pushed forward.

Hand grenades burst on one side, then the other. Fierce hand-to-hand combat filled the foxholes. Four hours later, Koskela’s company was atop the slope’s ridge, but its force of sixty-eight men strong had shrunk to seventeen.

They made it to Major Sarastie’s headquarters and found his body stripped down to its underwear. There, a fierce counter-attack took them by surprise and fending it off proved no easy task. Määttä and Vanhala had to shoot through the belt of every last assailant before the attack was put down.

Kariluoto was crouched beside the remains of the ambulance. The bodies reeked something terrible. The ones inside had been burnt to a crisp, but Hietanen and the new recruit who’d made it out of the vehicle hadn’t burned, only their clothes had. Hietanen’s leather belt still smelled like it was smoldering.

The First Company had also managed to advance somewhat. The enemy had pulled back their position as well, when Koskela’s attack pushed it out of its positions south of the road. But it had dug in its heels again and skirmishing had given way to heavy fighting.

Casualties were high. There was no blaming the men for any lack of effort this evening. The head of the First Company, Lieutenant Pokki, had fallen almost immediately. He had made the error of yelling condescendingly at some men who had halted in their advance, ‘Come on, boys, move out! Nothing over there but a couple of loose-stooled Russkis.’

‘Well, fuck, why don’t we just kick ’em to death so we can get back over to our own side?’ the men had muttered.

The Lieutenant lost his temper and stepped out in front, where a bullet promptly lodged itself in his throat.

The situation demanded some sort of solution. The firing had diminished perceptibly and Kariluoto knew from experience that this meant the men had lost their initiative and were lying under cover, shooting randomly. Koskela’s word of the counter-attack had just reached them, and Kariluoto listened fearfully for those savage cries ringing out through the ceaseless shooting.

Something had to be done. Should they leave? Round up the battalion and curve around, pulling out through the forest? But there was the Lieutenant Colonel’s command – which was also supported by the Second Company commander’s recent message that the enemy had calmed down along the brook line and seemed to be stopping there, contrary to expectations. But pressing onward looked difficult. There were three bodies lying over there, side by side. Some wounded man was screaming and moaning as the medics hurriedly dragged him to cover. Then Kariluoto saw a man being dragged from the line on his side, and heard the man’s panicky, trembling voice repeat, ‘It’s over, boys… the Virolainen boy’s war is over… Virolainen’s heading off.’

For the first time, Kariluoto felt that the responsibility for the men’s deaths was his. Then he swallowed his feeling of doubt and yelled, ‘Fourth Platoon, join the First Company’s advance and take the enemy position directly ahead.’

Stopping here would mean that all the casualties incurred up to now had been utterly in vain. And besides, Koskela needed relief. Now was the time to strike. There were two options. Succeed and clear up the situation, or else… not curve around through the forest, but die.

The Fourth Platoon got itself into formation. Kariluoto had it join the First Company’s clearly diminished line, hoping that the additional force would get the operation moving again.

Something of Kariluoto’s mood took hold within his platoon. The men had seen how this slope devoured lives, but it hadn’t crushed their spirit. On the contrary – it made them feel they had no right to be spared any longer either. They knew that Kariluoto had kept them in reserve because shared experience had made them a bit closer to him than the others. They were the last shot. Everything depended on them.

Kariluoto stepped beside them into the line. A savage call to charge rang out, and a terrific clatter ensued, swallowing up all individual voices.

Napoleon and the Old Guard at Waterloo. The comparison wasn’t nearly as feeble as it might have seemed. Three years earlier, this same platoon had broken through the bunker line, and Kariluoto could still spot a few of the same men in the line: Ukkola, Rekomaa, Lampioinen, Heikinaro and a few others.

The men of the First Company joined the attack. Kariluoto yelled and shot with his gun under his arm, though he hadn’t yet caught sight of the enemy. Just lead rain lashing against the branches and the ground.

‘Yes, Ukkola!’ he cried, seeing the man leap forward, shooting and howling. But right on the heels of his shout, a cry of panic escaped Kariluoto. Ukkola dropped his submachine gun and staggered to his knees behind a hill of blueberry bushes.

‘Ukkola!’

‘In the chest… I’m weak… so much for this boy’s sprint…’

Ukkola didn’t die, however, though he had thought he would. The medics pulled him to safety. Kariluoto continued to advance. He was soon forced to take cover, as the enemy was beginning to notice him.

Then Rekomaa and Heikinaro fell, one after the other. The men searched for cover, and Kariluoto was afraid the advance would get stuck again. Yelling, he rose to his feet and dashed to the root of a pine tree, shooting at the enemy, but with little effect, as their opponents were well hidden.

Cries for the medics rang out once more. Some guy from the First Company rose to his feet and threw a hand grenade. Kariluoto saw clearly how the shower struck him, and heard the man grunt softly as he died. Word came from the right that the squad leader had been killed.

Kariluoto urged the men on, but garnered nothing but a couple of short sprints. What was wrong with them? Then Kariluoto realized that in the space of the last ten minutes, the line had diminished almost to the point of non-existence. The terrain was empty to either side of him. And two more wounded men were crawling to the rear.

The enemy had been shooting furiously the entire time. They shot even though no one was visible, and the bullets brought up moss in ceaseless swirls. Kariluoto’s mind was numb. The attack had failed. The First Company platoons attacking on the right sent word that they couldn’t advance any further. The losses were disproportionate.

Banging and rattling rang in Kariluoto’s ears in one heady, chaotic jumble. His consciousness swirled with panic. I’ve killed the company. I drove them to their deaths… I knew myself that this wouldn’t work. I can’t manage anything more with these men… Now they’re even shooting Rekomaa’s corpse.

The Sergeant’s body was lying in plain sight, and some enemy soldier was pummeling it with his light machine gun so that the body shook with his fire. The sight was too horrific to endure, and Kariluoto turned his eyes away. Just a moment ago the man had been yelling and shooting, and now he was lying there bloody, shaking like a limp pile of meat as the bullets pounded into his back.

Firing was weak on their own side. Good God! There was hardly anyone left shooting. Kariluoto was terrified. His impression of the situation was more desperate than it actually was, as death had hit his immediate surroundings hardest, the men there having attempted the charge at his impetus. His former platoon was now more or less finished. As was the First Company’s second platoon, which had attacked with them. Though in truth, neither unit had had more than a dozen men to begin with. And there were a few men helping the wounded.

One consolation did come, at least. Koskela’s runner arrived from the south side of the road, announcing that the counter-attack had been put down and that there was a strong channel open in front of Määttä’s machine gun. Even so, Koskela had said that he couldn’t continue right away and, moreover, that his impression was that the operation was a lost cause. Kariluoto was to wait until they could both try again simultaneously.

‘Wait! For what?’ Kariluoto had surrendered to complete despair. Koskela wouldn’t be any help. The enemy was strong enough to take on both of them. It didn’t even need to move men. If he didn’t make it through now, he wasn’t going to make it through later either.

He pulled back slightly and headed down the line to the right. That would be the place to try from, in the Third Platoon’s sector. Its leader was wounded, and Kariluoto took command of the platoon.

‘Let’s try again, men.’

No one replied. But the men silently prepared to charge.

‘Advance!’

The movement sparked the enemy to fire full blast, and Kariluoto saw once more how the death of two men can bring their comrades screeching to a halt.

‘I will not stop… I will not stop…’ Kariluoto wasn’t stepping forward, he was crawling. His face was snow-white, and his voice was stiff and strangled as he yelled, ‘One more time, men…’

When the bullet struck, his mind burst with a strange release. He had three seconds to realize that he was dying, but in those three seconds he feared death less than he had in the entire war. He was almost content, as he realized, his consciousness fading, ‘That’s it… Now it’s over…’

Jorma Kariluoto had paid his dues into the common pot of human idiocy.

As had Virolainen, Rekomaa, Heikinaro, Pokki, Vähä-Martti, Hellström, Lepänoja, Airila, Saastamoinen, Häkkilä, Elo, Uimonen, Vartio, Suonpää, Mikkola, Yli-Hannu, Kuusenoja, Kalliomäki, Vainionpää, Ylönen and Teerimäki.

They were all mourned as soldiers killed in the line of duty. The names of Kariluoto and Lieutenant Pokki, the First Company’s commander, appeared on the walls of their former schools. Russian work teams buried them all, along with the battalion’s other dead, beside the swamp, not far from Sarastie’s command post.