Unknown Soldiers

Chapter Three

The men sat on the roadside and waited, chewing on the bread they’d saved. Gunshots rang out now and again from the front lines. Airplane engines rumbled in the distance, paused, then started up again, accelerating into a querulous whine, occasionally punctuated by the chatter of machine guns.

‘Air combat,’ somebody said, trying to make out the planes overhead.

‘Let ’em fight,’ somebody else said dismissively, with the unimpressed air of the combat veteran. Vanhala sniggered to himself and then finally burst out, ‘Our boys – battling sons of the air!’

Ensign Kariluoto was pacing back and forth along the road. He had posted his letters straight away the previous evening, so he couldn’t get them back this morning, unfortunately. Steadied by a good night’s sleep, he suspected that the letters might have been a little too grandiose, and he would have liked to have revised them, had the mail not been picked up already. For the moment, however, he had forgotten all about them. He joked boisterously with his men, determined to put any jitters about the upcoming combat out of his mind. He was overplaying it and it showed – but anyway, it helped. Thinking about their next attack had made him restless again. He wasn’t entirely sure that the humiliations of the previous day wouldn’t repeat themselves. What if his moment of personal conquest had just been a one-off? But no. No, no, that would not happen again. Never again.

Lieutenant Lammio came up behind them. A disgruntled Mielonen trailed a few paces after. The change in company commander had hit him hardest of all. No more of the Captain’s familiar humming and rambling on, not to mention the squabbling, which was certainly out of the question now. Now, commands came in shrill, hyper-correct contortions, whose every pretentiously crossed ‘t’ made the men wince.

Lammio had no particular business being there, seeing as the machine-gunners had been split up into platoons and attached to individual infantry companies. He was just strutting about for his own amusement, flexing his muscles and enjoying his new position. As soon as he was out of earshot, Rahikainen snorted, ‘So now they’ve landed us with that peacock. It’s just a wonder he didn’t ask us to salute.’

Private Määttä took a drag on his cigarette and murmured, ‘He can ask whatever he wants. Don’t mean we’re gonna do it. My flipper’s feeling pretty heavy these days.’

It was a startling outburst, as up to then Määttä had been the most compliant and obedient of men, never uttering so much as a word of complaint. In the previous day’s attack, every one of them had taken note of his calm, downright cold-blooded bravery. They had also noticed that he never requested a rotation in carrying equipment. It was as if the little guy could haul a machine gun indefinitely. Shifts would stretch out longer when it was his turn to carry, since it was only after a long battle with his conscience that the next guy would finally say, ‘All right, hand it over.’

‘Sure, if you want,’ Määttä would reply. ‘Or I can just keep it.’

Määttä was smoking his cigarette in long, slow drags. There was no mistaking his words. They sensed that instinctively. His wasn’t just the usual talking big while backs were turned. What they couldn’t understand was where this sudden defiance had appeared from. In truth, the matter was simple: this quiet guy, whose reticence tended to relegate him to the fringes of things, had realized that he could stand his ground just as well as anybody else when the chips were down. Death had failed to impress him – and there’s nothing worse than that.

‘My flipper’s feelin’ pretty heavy, too,’ Rahikainen chimed in.

The morning sun was hot. The men were glum and worn out. Can’t the Third Battalion advance?… We’re gonna have to open the road again ourselves… of course we are… no news there.

Booms began echoing from the enemy side. They dragged themselves up to a seated position and listened. The rumbling lasted three, four, five seconds, and then: hoo-ee!

The first shell crashed down on the roadside just in front of them. ‘Get down!’ The order was pointless, as every one of them was already trembling in a ditch somewhere on the side of the road. All thoughts were banished and their heads pounded as they waited for their worst fears to be realized. The ground shook and blasts of air kept pressing their clothes against their bodies. Shrapnel whirred through the air, dropping to the ground with rocks and clods of earth. It lasted scarcely two minutes. When the echo of the last explosion had died away, a frantic scream pierced the silence. ‘Stretchers! Bring the stretchers! Medics!’

Two medics came running from behind, carrying a stretcher. Somebody was lying on the road bank out in front of them trying to get up. ‘Aargh… yeow… help me…’

A couple of men were kneeling beside the wounded. ‘Shh, shh, stop crying, stop crying,’ they kept repeating frantically. The man’s scream was so gut-wrenching that they lost their heads entirely and couldn’t even manage to help him. His shoulders were badly torn up. The medics started binding his wounds, struggling against the man’s frenzied thrashing. He tried to yank himself upright and yelled, ‘Help… shoot me, somebody! Ah… ow… you goddamn pansies! Somebody shoot, damn it!’

‘Ylitalo’s dead.’ A pale-faced man was coming toward them from further down the road, holding his bleeding arm. ‘Could you guys bandage this?’

The overwrought medics were in a panic. One was struggling to keep the wounded guy from thrashing about, while the other was trying to bandage him as best he could. Their words came rushing out all at once. ‘How – we can’t do everything all at once! Where the hell is the head medic? Scaredy-cat son-of-a-bitch is hiding and we’re supposed to be all over the goddamn place.’

The man sat down on the bank of the road. A resolute expression fell over his pale face as he said, ‘Stop whining like a two-year-old, for fuck’s sake. I can wrap this myself. Ylitalo over there in that ditch’s got half his brains blown out.’

The air was still thick with smoke and dust. ‘Scatter!’ Kariluoto yelled. ‘Don’t bunch up all together!’ His face was pale, but a resolute gleam lit up his eyes. In the brunt of the attack, he had lifted his head, just to test himself – and it had risen easily. He felt the same victorious feeling wash over him that he had felt after the previous day’s attack. It didn’t have the same wild abandon this time, though, as Ylitalo was one of his men, as were both of the wounded.

Lahtinen crawled out of his ditch. ‘To the Urals, huh, boys? Well, by all means, why don’t you strike up the band!’

‘You know that chorus even in your sleep, don’t you?’ Hietanen was irritated. ‘Of all the goddamn lies. Sure, just listen to a shell to hear if it’s coming close. Hell of a whopper that is! Biggest goddamn lie I ever heard. It doesn’t make any noise at all. Nothing! Just thwamp! when it blows up on the side of the road. Pre-tty curious if you ask me. They said out on the Western Front you could hear ’em in time to get down. Well, I’ll tell you straight out that those guys have never heard a shell over there if that’s the case. Maybe they’ve got something else.’

Määttä took a drag on his cigarette. ‘The thing’s gonna blow up just the same whether it makes a noise or not.’

Lammio arrived. ‘Scatter! Did you not hear the command?’

‘Oh, shut the fuck up, asshole,’ Rahikainen muttered from his ditch. Just then the enemy artillery started rumbling again and a thump shook the ground as the men dived for cover. Lammio hadn’t moved a muscle. Neither had Koskela, who was still sitting perfectly still. ‘They’re over us, guys.’

Lehto, Määttä and Hietanen pulled themselves together quickly. The bombs whistled overhead and exploded far behind them.

‘Whistling bad news for our artillery battery,’ somebody observed.

Lammio stood on the road and screeched, ‘All of you men had better start believing what you are told. That round could just as easily have struck here.’

His lack of fear made the men hate him all the more, depriving them as it did of the opportunity to despise him. Rahikainen even whispered again, ‘Quit whining, you little bugger.’

Riitaoja was still lying in his ditch, face pressed to the ground. He was like a terrified child. Lucky for him, ambition did not figure amongst his concerns. Neither did any conception of ‘homeland’, so he was at liberty to be just as terrified as he liked.

‘Why don’t you make some more noise?’ Sihvonen muttered. ‘Holler and wave your arms around, why don’t you? That way those binoculars over in that observation tower’ll spot you right away and be sure to shoot all our guts out. And we’ll just stand here like a bull’s-eye. That’s right. Nothing but goddamn blockheads running this show.’

The injured guy had fallen unconscious. Two medics drenched in sweat carried him back on the stretcher. The fellow with the injured arm had refused to let the medic bandage his wound after he’d finished with the other man, snarling angrily, ‘Gi-git…’

‘Hey, hey,’ the nervous medic said. ‘I popped out about twenty years ago and I’m not goin’ back in… Look, bandage it yourself, if you like. It’s not like I want to.’

The man walked off, waving his good arm and calling out, ‘So long, boys! This fellow here is headed home on leave.’ He was happy. Not only because of the leave, but also because he knew that later that night, somebody in a tent would say, ‘Tough son-of-a-bitch, that Rantanen guy. Whew! My God!’

‘Move out!’

They got up. They practically marched on one other’s heels they were so eager to get away. Ylitalo’s head was covered, but some liquid from his canned pork was dripping from his bread sack, as a shard of shrapnel had punctured his emergency rations as well.

‘Enemy directly ahead, behind a barricade about three hundred yards out. Two armed bunkers reported back there, at least. Artillery opens fire for five minutes. Mortars join two minutes after that. H-hour is at 10.48.’ Kariluoto kept his voice low.

The men listened, looking at the barricade visible between the trees. It ran along a rather steep slope and stretched for tens of yards. They couldn’t see any barbed wire, though. Reconnaissance missions carried out earlier had determined that there were several machine-gun nests in dugouts behind the barricade. Two fell in the sector assigned to Kariluoto’s platoon.

A scout about a dozen yards out in front of them whispered hoarsely, ‘Movement behind the barricade. Shall I give it a shot?’

‘Absolutely not. Everyone still.’

Off to the right, the artillery observer was speaking into his radio. ‘Esa speaking. Esa here. Masa, do you read me? Masa, do you read me? Over, over.’

The artillery observer’s low voice sounded as if it were reciting a strange incantation. The men’s anxiety mounted, as his call meant that all hell was about to break loose. The forest was damp with morning dew and humming with the buzzing of mosquitoes. The spiderwebs hanging in the low blueberry bushes clung to their hands unpleasantly as blood pounded through their wrists. Squad leaders whispered final instructions. The men tightened their belts and put their cartridges into their pockets where they’d be easy to reach.

‘Hand grenades at the ready. Who’s got the satchel charges?’

‘Here’s one. Two… Should I launch them?’

‘No, absolutely not.’

The artillery observer was muttering figures into his radio. Nervous explosions went off on their left, here and there, in the Second Company’s sector. The enemy could scent an attack.

It was 10.43. Behind them it seemed like the whole world was being torn to pieces. Shrill cannons, low-booming howitzer fire, and the rolling thunder of the heavy artillery came thumping on one another’s heels as if they were racing. The men clung to the ground as the shower of shells sailed over them, sounding like a clattering train. Their bodies bounced and shook along with the movements of the earth beneath them. Smoke, earth, rocks and wood came pouring down from behind the barricade. Flames flared up in the gray whirl.

‘Jesus! Can a person survive that?’ A pale face rose to watch.

‘And now it’s your turn, buddy,’ another voice murmured low, with vindictive pleasure.

‘They’ve overshot a little,’ Koskela said, kneeling to look up the hill.

Kariluoto’s watch ticked. 10.44… 45… 46… 47… ‘Forty-seven… keep them under fire as you move out… use the barricade to your advantage… if I get scared, just shoot me… we’re going all-out…’

10.47. Kariluoto waited conscientiously until his watch showed 48 minutes exactly, and just at that moment the last shell sailed overhead.

‘Fourth Platoon, advance!’

Kariluoto dashed quickly toward the barricade, keeping low to the ground. The men followed. The scout darted out in front of all of them. Enemy mortars whistled overhead and exploded behind them.

‘Advance! Advance!’ the men urged one another on.

Fighting was already in full swing in the neighboring sector. The scout’s submachine gun rattled away and returning fire hammered straight back. The air whistled and whined, pounded and boomed.

‘All right men, let ’er rip!’ Kariluoto leapt forward. He gritted his teeth and hollered, ‘Move out! Mow them down… the bastards… now we’re going to shove you bastards right back where you came from… Asia for the Asians…’ Kariluoto stoked the flames of his anger to keep his courage up. Maybe it helped him – in any case, he advanced ever further, despite the angry whizzes nearly grazing his eyebrows.

‘Yeeessss, men…’

Because the platoon was still advancing at a crouch, taking cover only now and then, he was hoping to advance directly into a charge, which would settle the whole thing quickly.

Just then, the scout dropped his submachine gun and fell to his knees, pressing his cap to his face. Blood seeped between his fingers. ‘My head… it got me in the head… my eyebrow’s torn up…’

‘Can you manage by yourself?’

‘Yeah, I think so… it’s not fatal… can’t be dangerous… a head wound kills instantly if it’s fatal… but I’m still here… so it’s not an emergency…’ The man was dazed by the blow and kept repeating this thought that had sprung into his mind, which in itself was perfectly correct.

He started to make his way back on all fours as the others continued to advance, though the sight of his injury had prompted several of them to take cover. The barricaded slope lay in front of them. An unbroken stream of infantry fire was coming out from behind it, but the fervor of the fire far exceeded its threat. It basically went straight over them.

About halfway up the slope, however, it began to be more effective. The men pressed themselves low to the ground. Some darted from cover to cover and some crawled, but several were already trapped in the line of fire. Kariluoto was four or five yards out in front of his men. He was crawling on all fours, yelling constantly, ‘Advance, men…! Let ’em have it!’

Then somebody yelled, ‘Watch out for the bars of soap!’

‘Huh?’

‘The soap. Hanging from the logs. It’s TNT.’

‘The barricade’s mined. Watch out for the wires.’

The barricade was hung with little TNT explosives that looked remarkably like bars of soap. They weren’t terribly dangerous, so long as you weren’t right next to them when they went off, since without shells they were basically just pressure explosives.

‘Dismantle them. Be careful!’

They didn’t have any sappers, but somehow or other they had enough training to manage situations like this, which they were supposed to navigate on their own. The sappers were with the neighboring company, as it was the one tasked with spearheading the attack.

The men were wary of touching the wires. The advance came to a halt.

‘We’re stuck.’

‘What kind of sucker’s gonna touch that?’

‘They don’t do anything. They’re harmless.’ Kariluoto detached one of the wires, emboldening the men around him to follow his lead.

Bam!

‘Get anyone?’

‘Nope. Just the world gettin’ a word in.’

Kariluoto rose to a squat. ‘Try to keep clear of the rest. Let’s crawl from here.’

The clamor intensified. It billowed in waves on the right, then on the left. Men screamed out orders and calls to charge. Shells whizzed overhead in both directions as the artilleries battled it out. Bullets whistled, ricochets whined. They began to hear screams of ‘Stre-e-e-tch-ers!’ from the neighboring platoon’s sector.

The barricade provided them with some cover, as did the boulders and hollows in the terrain. The enemy machine guns weren’t just firing off bursts, but whole belts, hammering from one end straight through to the other. The uproar of battle continued as far as the men could make out above the blasts of their own fire. The regiment was attacking the bunker line. And from further off on the right, they could hear the clatter of a neighboring regiment’s attack.

The air trembled as booms echoed through the summer morning. Thousands of gun barrels glowed with heat, thousands of hands loaded and fired, and thousands of men crawled and dashed their way forward, body and soul gripped with anxiety. And in that same anxious grip, thousands of others fended them off, staunchly defending their posts to the bitter end. Tens, hundreds died; hundreds were wounded; there were displays of fear, and there were displays of spectacular bravery. For more than a year, a great proportion of the Finnish people had been quietly awaiting their moment of revenge, fists clenched in their pockets. There was real force behind the attack.

But there was real force behind the defense, too. It was clear to Kariluoto that leading a charge in the face of this fire would mean the end of his platoon, even if he could convince the men to attempt it. They were crawling slowly.

‘Fucking artillery! It’s no help at all,’ somebody gasped.

Kariluoto was desperate. He could sense that the attack was losing its edge. But the thought unleashed a powerful wave of his former drive. Fear lurked in the depths of his soul. Strained, tottering on the brink of despair, he suppressed it, and little by little his will won the upper hand, and he was able to get his anxiety under control. ‘Crawl forward! Take turns firing. Take advantage of the terrain. Squad leaders. Get your guys together and advance in squads, half the guys cover while the other half advance. Give an example for the others to follow!’

Kariluoto was already nearly ten yards out in front of the others. The nearest squad leader ordered his men to fire and rose to make a run for it. He had just come into line with Kariluoto when his sprint was cut short. The man rolled onto his back. A blue hole lay between his eyes, right in the center of his forehead. His hand fumbled for the button of his collar and went stiff, his mouth gasping for air a few times, like a fish out of water.

‘Tyynelä!’

No answer. Kariluoto crawled over and confirmed that the man was dead. Just then a bullet tore a hole through his own cap.

‘Rekomaa, take the second squad.’

A man from the second squad, Tyynelä’s coffee buddy and closest friend, was endeavoring to aim his gun. The sight was blurry. His eyes smarted with tears and sweat. In a choked-up voice, wavering with anger – an anger directed at Kariluoto – he muttered, ‘Example, example. There’s Tyynelä’s example.’

They advanced a few more yards, but Tyynelä’s death had taken a toll on the men.

‘I’m hit!’ Somebody started crawling back on all fours.

‘Medics!’

A minute later, nineteen bullets raked the body of some guy who was crawling. They counted the bullets later, at the aid station.

Kariluoto had a hole in his holster now, too, as well as his cap. He was taut with nervous exhaustion, but he refused to let up. No sooner would the platoon catch up with him than he would start advancing again. Private Ukkola, the guy who had run beside him the previous day, was following close behind him now. Each of them threw a hand grenade, but both fell hopelessly short. Four or five enemy grenades came thudding down in response, though they, too, fell too far off to be effective.

Kariluoto heard someone calling out his name and, spotting Autio lying behind him, crawled over.

‘Can’t you get any further?’ Autio asked.

‘I’ve tried everything.’ Kariluoto’s voice was angry, but not in a defensive way – more despairing. He tried to spit, but the pitiful drop dried up on his lips. His mouth was horribly dry. He wiped his sleeve across his lips and caught a bitter, crushed worm in his mouth. ‘Lost three men and my best squad leader. The barricade’s mined and the lead’s coming down like rain. It’ll be the death of the whole platoon… personally I think we’re done for…’

‘No… no. None of that… The whole battalion’s stuck. The Second Company’s got heavy losses… Two platoon leaders. And from my men, Lilius is out of the game. Took it in the shoulder. I notified the Commander of the situation, but he ordered us to keep at it.’

‘Can we soften them up again?’

‘We’ll never get another attack launched if we pull back now… If you make it, you know… look, I won’t mince words. You make it through, today’s your day.’

Autio knew Kariluoto and his plans to pursue a career as an officer – which was why he was applying every possible psychological pressure. He knew that, of all the platoon leaders, Kariluoto was the one who, despite his weaknesses, would have the hardest time saying, ‘I can’t make it any further.’

‘I’ll do what I can… if I can just get the guys to move.’

‘Give it a shot. It’s not obligatory. It’s just that it would be pretty rough having to turn back now, after all these casualties.’

Autio returned to his men and Kariluoto crawled back to the head of his platoon, which was still exchanging fire. The shooting had died down a little. Every last one of the men would have fiercely denied that it had taken them a full hour and a half to advance these sixty-odd yards. The men were already getting tired. Their lips were parched with thirst. Several were already lying down apathetically behind boulders.

The peat-covered enemy bunker was already clearly visible. Continuous fire streamed out from its black openings. There was another one a little ways off to the left. After that, the line turned a corner and the Second Company’s sector began. There, men had been ordered out of the ranks to assist the medics. Spearheading the attack had cost them many men. The platoon leaders had taken the brunt of it, and two of them were already dead. To make matters worse, the Second Platoon had lost its deputy platoon leader just after its leader.

When the platoon leader fell, the ambitious corporal had envisioned taking over his duties, which would send him straight to the top. ‘All right, boys, this is it!’ He managed to sprint four steps as a platoon leader before a spray of light-machine-gun fire cut short his dreams of promotion for evermore.

In the protected area, there were eleven bodies and eighteen wounded. And more kept arriving. The stretchers were sticky with blood. The head medic rushed about amidst a sea of wails and moans. ‘How am I ever going to get all of these back? Pretty soon half the company’s going to be carrying the other half.’

The men had reached the end of their tether. They were cursing and yelling at one another, ‘Shut up… pick up the fucking stretcher or I’ll just drag him!’

Koskela and the first section had had almost nothing to do since the fighting began. The machine guns couldn’t be brought in for support until they were closer to the bunkers. Koskela could see that it wouldn’t pay to carry such easy prey into the fighting unless they could run the guns straight into reasonable range of the bunkers. This made some of the men happy, but some of them felt uneasy standing around idly while the others were engaged in such heavy fighting. They hadn’t been hardened against that sort of thing yet, as this was their first real battle. When Koskela saw that the men had stopped before the bunkers, he decided the moment had come.

And so they had their first taste of the miserable task of all machine-gunners. ‘It’s easy shit, running in behind?’ the infantry guys would sometimes ask. The easy life didn’t come cheap, however, and they paid for it in the tens of pounds of equipment they had to lug. It was hard to take cover with the equipment, so they tried to slither up the slope on their sides, dragging the gun-stands, but the going was excruciating. Koskela sent Hietanen off with Lahtinen’s machine gun to attack one bunker, and he himself took Lehto’s to the other.

The worst part was that, when you were bogged down with those contraptions, it was hard to stop anywhere you wouldn’t be seen. But, finally, the sweaty ordeal was over, and they were just behind the infantry.

‘Get into position!’

Panting, cursing and urging one another on, they lugged the gun to a small depression shielded by a fallen birch. Vanhala pulled the heavy gun-stand into the ditch. Kaukonen fixed the gun to it. Koskela and Kariluoto agreed that the machine gun would fire at the openings in the bunker, providing some cover for Kariluoto and his men to try to get into the trench.

‘Shoot for the mouths of the bunker!’ Koskela commanded, and Kaukonen started shooting.

Kariluoto rose to a crouch: ‘My platoon: advance!’ The side of the fallen birch crackled beside him, obliging him to press low to the ground again.

Vanhala smiled, in the middle of everything, and said, ‘Those fellows are out to kill us over there. Guys can’t take a joke.’

‘Feed the belts!’ Lehto called curtly, sending Vanhala cowering into silence.

‘You got it, Kaukonen. Aim’s good.’

Kaukonen glowed at these words of praise and lifted his head to see better, but quickly ducked back down again. Kariluoto crawled off.

Several of the men tried to follow, but their venture was cut short when one of the light machine-gunners fell and the guy helping him was wounded in the same burst. A bullet had gone through his throat, which now wheezed grotesquely, its broken whine draining the men of their last shreds of willpower. The gruesome sights were starting to overwhelm them. It was too much to take all at once.

‘They’re sending us out to be killed for nothing,’ a voice came from somewhere. ‘Where are those fucking fancy-pants hiding?’

‘Shut up and adva-h-ance!’ Kariluoto’s angry voice wavered on the brink of sobs as he screamed. He knew ‘fancy-pants’ couldn’t be referring to him, since he had been out in front of his men the whole time, but he still felt as if he had been insulted. Koskela crawled beside him and said, ‘Let it go. You’ll get yourself killed for nothing… you won’t get ’em to move that way… you’ll just get yourself killed, and for nothing.’

‘What am I supposed to do? What else is there to be done? We have to try to advance somehow. Either they come or they don’t… but I for one am not stopping.’

‘I know a trick. We could try to get one guy up close with a satchel charge. It’d work better if some of the others could help him out with some fire. Tiny little movement like that might go unnoticed. If you get the whole platoon to charge, it will cost us several men no matter what.’

‘I’ll try it myself.’

‘Won’t work. I’m going.’

‘But I should be the one… This is my mission, not yours. In any case, a machine-gunner’s not supposed to take the lead.’ Kariluoto was dismayed. Koskela’s suggestion struck him as insulting, and in the same blow it seemed to confirm that he had failed.

Koskela could feel himself getting irritated at this excessive touchiness and egotism, as he himself had never set much store by such things. Nonetheless he replied calmly, ‘It won’t work that way. Somebody’s got to get the men to advance and that’s your job. Otherwise there’s no point.’

Kariluoto realized Koskela was right and ordered his men to bring over the satchel charges. The men had been lugging them along to the right of the formation, and Koskela started binding two of the nine-pound charges together with some wire.

‘Eighteen pounds. You think you can make it with all that?’

No answer. Koskela was running his mouth down the twisted wire to clamp it tight. Finally the satchel charge was ready.

‘Lehto. You keep that rooster crowing non-stop soon as I head out. And the same goes for Kariluoto’s guys. Just don’t shoot me.’

Koskela examined the terrain closely. The men, for their part, just watched him. Quiet Koski’s heading in.

Kariluoto was beginning to have doubts. His mind was suddenly overcome with fear that Koskela would be shot down in his mission, or that the satchel charge would have no effect, in which case Koskela would also be shot. That would make two men lost on his account. Kaarna’s death returned to him now as something that had been his fault.

‘What if the charge doesn’t have any effect?’ he asked, hesitating. ‘Maybe I should just try again without…’

Koskela was no longer looking at Kariluoto. His eyes were fixed on the terrain and his mind was focused on the task before him, as he said, almost in passing, ‘There’s nothing over there but a layer of logs and mud. Eighteen pounds oughtta do something to it. Anyway, it buys you the time you need.’ He set out, dragging the satchel charges at his side.

‘Watch out for Koskela and fire!’ Kariluoto ordered. He had definitely decided to attack immediately – alone if need be – if Koskela was killed, just as he would in the event that he was able to throw the satchel charges. The men accelerated their fire until they were shooting at maximum capacity. The machine gun chattered and rattled.

The water boiled trying to cool the gun, and Kaukonen lifted his head to try to better direct the stream of fire. At just that moment a heavy sigh burst from his mouth – ‘Aa–aah!’ and his head hit the handle as it slumped over the machine gun.

‘Kaukonen!’ Vanhala yelled, half asking, half trying to attract the others’ attention.

Lehto went pale, but resolutely took hold of Kaukonen’s body, lifted it to the side, took hold of the handle, and started shooting. He spotted a man’s upper body swing into view from the enemy trench and throw a hand grenade in Koskela’s direction. He turned the machine gun in the same blink of an eye and watched his fire strike its target. ‘Koskela… watch out,’ he hollered, and then with cruel glee he muttered, ‘Got him.’

The hand grenade went off several yards from Koskela. He lost his cap and hair was flying wildly above his face. He yelled backwards, ‘Just keep shooting like hell, I’m gonna try to get closer.’

He inched his way forward, darting from one bit of cover to the next. The tall grass helped, as did the fact that the barricade had been set too close to the enemy positions. There was a boulder he could crouch behind about a dozen yards from the bunker. Holding their breath, the men firing realized that if he managed to make it behind that boulder, victory was theirs. And when Koskela made it, they watched how he calmly settled his body into position. Then he pulled the fuse and, like a flash of lightning, shot up and swung round, and the charge was flying. It happened so quickly that the men hardly knew how Koskela had thrown it. The moment he rose, the satchel charge was already airborne, and scarcely had it left his hands than he was lying behind the boulder again, hands over his ears.

A few dozen nearby voices screamed at the top of their lungs as the charge exploded directly on the roof of the bunker. The end of a log stuck out of the smoke.

‘Charge!’ Kariluoto dashed forward and his men immediately followed.

‘The Russkis are running… take ’em down, men!’

‘Over there… shoot! They’re pulling out. Don’t let them get away.’

Kariluoto was already in the trench, launching a stream of hand grenades into the mouth of the bunker. Ukkola’s submachine gun purred through cartridges, following them up. The platoon was already in the trench, and the men, drunk with excitement, had begun to overrun it, which was not difficult, seeing as the stunned enemy soldiers had already started to abandon it.

Kariluoto sent a message to Autio requesting a reserve platoon be dispatched on the double to help sweep the positions in front of the Second Company. He sent his platoon out in front of their own company, while one machine gun and one infantry squad went to secure the opposite direction. The defense disintegrated quickly. The neighboring platoon was already in the trench and the fleeing enemy troops were falling along the edge of the forest as they ran for cover.

The squad sent to reinforce the Second Company observed that the enemy had abandoned the second bunker as well, and so started securing it for themselves. The Jaeger platoon Autio had sent from his battalion arrived from the rear and continued the sweep of enemy positions.

Koskela sat on the ground, blinking his eyes and shaking the dirt from his hair. Lehto was on his knees in front of him, bursting, ‘Ho-ly shit! Ho-ly shiiiit! What a stunt!’

‘What?’

‘What a stunt!’

‘I won’t be able to hear anything for a little while. It’s happened to me before. Same thing happened back at Lemetti… But woof, what a blast! Go with Kariluoto. I’m gonna wait here for a bit, till these flaps open up a little. It’s kind of rough out there when you can’t hear anything…’

Bodies were strewn about the trench, many with their pockets already flipped inside out.

‘Look guys, insignia.’

‘Wow, that revolver’s a Nagant…’

‘It’s mine. I saw it first.’

‘Guys, stop scrounging. Keep moving.’ The machine-gunners went back to see Kaukonen’s body. The medics already had it on a stretcher.

‘Where did it hit?’

‘Went in through his cheek. Came out the back of his neck.’

‘Better to go quick.’ Lehto’s voice had an almost cruel pleasure in it.

‘So ends the war for the Kaukonen boy,’ Rahikainen said, and even he seemed solemn, though the deaths of the others didn’t interest him much.

‘Let’s get moving. We’ll be left behind.’

In truth, they just wanted to get away from the body as quickly as possible, as they’d known the guy for more than a year, after all. The fighting of just moments ago still held them in its grip, but even so it felt strange to contemplate this yellowish face. One eye had fallen shut, but the other was bulging out, glassy and empty.

‘You guys go. I’ll be right there,’ Lehto said as he headed off to the rear.

‘Riitaoja.’

A man appeared from the bushes and stood at attention. ‘C-c-c-corporal, sir,’ Riitaoja obediently replied, like a new recruit, smiling an idiotic smile.

‘You motherfucking piece of shit! What are you grinning at?’

‘I’m not grinning, C-c-c-corporal, sir.’ Riitaoja’s smile disappeared, and his terrified eyes started darting about furtively, though he was still standing stiffly at attention.

‘C-c-c-corporal, sir! C-c-c-corporal, sir!’ Lehto mimicked him furiously. ‘You’re not going to get out of this by calling me “sir”. Fuck, I’d make hash out of you – if it was worth it.’

Riitaoja took a few steps backward and stuttered, his voice wavering: ‘It scares me, C-c-c-corporal, sir. When it whistles. That noise it makes.’

‘Oh wah-wah, you miserable piece of shit!’ Lehto was furious and disgusted, but he stopped bullying the poor wretch. He despised Riitaoja’s fear as he despised all weakness – just as he had despised all discussions of anything ‘spiritual’ back in the barracks. He didn’t even know why, as the question had never crossed his mind. He just had this feeling and he responded accordingly. It certainly wasn’t out of any obligation as squad leader or supervisor that he came back to punish Riitaoja, as Lehto couldn’t have cared less who performed his duties and who didn’t. At most he might have forced the others into submission on some point or other just because he couldn’t stand anything that went against his will.

‘You go to the road and you get two cases of ammo from the trucks. Then you come back with the medics from the Third Company. They’re carrying the bodies to the roadside. You’re such a worthless fool you won’t know how to get anywhere otherwise. And don’t you dare just mess around here hiding.’

‘Yessir, C-c-c-corporal, sir.’

Relieved, Riitaoja flew off toward the rear, and Lehto hurried after the company. As he was about to cross the trench, he spotted a mess kit lying on the ground, half-filled with bread-and-water mush. Beside it lay a dark-haired, slant-eyed corpse. The attack had obviously caught the guy in the middle of a meal. At first Lehto started to jump over the trench, but then he lowered himself into it and kicked the mess kit, sending mush flying into the dead guy’s face. Then he gave a cruel laugh and left.

He met up with the company advancing through the forest. The other section had joined back up with them, as Lahtinen’s machine gun was there too. It hadn’t actually been of any use, since by the time they had reached the enemy positions, the defense had already collapsed.

Hietanen was feeling blissfully carefree, fired up with the elation of victory, and smoking some horrible Russian mahorka as he chattered away. ‘Well, that was one bloody day, boys. How’s it go, that song they taught us in school? “When Lapua’s glorious day was done, von Döbeln rode to see the brave ranks had been sadly thinned…” Or was it a poem or something like that?’

‘Oh, please. Nothin’ glorious ’bout this day. I’m thirsty as hell and there’s not a sip of water to be had anywhere.’

‘Urho Hietanen, poet extraordinaire! “The brave ranks had been sadly thinned…” God damn this bread bag! It keeps slipping down and whacking me in the gut.’

The others poked good-spirited fun at Hietanen’s poetic efforts, which cracked them all up, Vanhala in particular. The tiniest thing was enough to make them all burst out laughing. The drone of death had been ringing in their ears for the past three hours – and yet here they were, still alive. That was reason enough to smile. Hietanen did not appreciate being the butt of the joke, however, and said irritably, ‘Yeah, yeah. That’s what they taught us in school all right. Why in the world I remember it so well is beyond me. I’ve certainly got better things to do than memorize shit some fool made up off the top of his head. All that stuff’s a big waste of time if you ask me.’

‘Quiet! Open field just ahead,’ the scout yelled from out front as he threw himself to the ground.

‘Houses. It’s a village.’

‘What village?’

‘Dangerville, of course. All the villages round here’re dangerville to us.’

‘And this one, too. Everybody down!’

Ta-ta-ta. Phiew phiew phiew.

‘There they are again, the little fuckers.’

‘Shut up!’

‘Cover!’

They heard the rumble of the first shot from the enemy side. Koskela crouched down as he saw the men throwing themselves to the ground, as he still couldn’t hear anything. The forest shook as shells exploded behind them. Faces were anxious, eyes fearful of what was to come.

‘Shouldn’t it be our turn to go into reserve now? We’re the ones who broke through the line. The others were all off somewhere just hanging out.’

‘Dream on. Our esteemed officers’ve got medals to earn.’

‘Machine guns in front! Hurry! Enemy on the right.’

The sight almost took their breath away. On the right, the field sloped down to a small pond. Some forty Russians had emerged from the forest and were calmly heading toward the village, entirely unsuspecting. They were clearly unaware of what was going on. The men quickly set the machine guns at the ready.

‘Get them in your sights. But let the machine guns start,’ said Kariluoto. Burning with excitement, he grabbed a gun from one of the men, saying, ‘Give me a rifle, too… pistol won’t reach.’

The enemy hadn’t noticed anything yet. Lehto settled himself at the gun to shoot, aiming at the densest part of the group. The flesh of his cheeks moved as if he were eating. Calm and expressionless, Määttä aimed the second machine gun.

‘All right, men. Drop the needle. Valse triste,’ Kariluoto said, registering the horror of the situation, despite his excitement.

The enemy group fell to the ground. Some men crawled into ditches, but about ten of them immediately fell motionless in the tall sedge. Unfortunately for them, the ditches faced toward the oncoming fire, and soon cries of despair pierced the air, even through the rattling of the guns.

‘Good, that’s the way.’

‘Done deal.’

‘I definitely got at least two.’

‘Listen to ’em howl!’

‘Give ’em some more, that’ll put ’em out of their misery.’

The guy Kariluoto had taken the gun from tugged on the sleeve of the fellow next to him. ‘Let me get one. Give it here. Lemme get at least one. Damn ensign took my gun.’

‘Stop pulling on me! I’m trying to aim.’

‘C’mon, lemme get one of ’em, too. I haven’t gotten any.’

‘Get your own gun… I’m gettin’ that crawler over there.’

Lehto was focused and firing away. He called out to Määttä and, as always happened when he was excited, his voice rose into a falsetto that would eventually break into a piercing scream. ‘The bottom of the ditches, Määttä! Rake the bottom of those ditches. One at a time.’

‘Well, what does it look like I’m doing?’ Määttä was talking to himself. He loaded a new belt and took aim, squinting his eye strangely. When he aimed, he basically squeezed one eye so tight that it seemed like his cheek was right on top of his eye.

The firing died down. A few stray shots rang out and then they heard a voice moan something from the field, which sounded to their ears like a word: ‘Va saaa… va… saaa.’

Only then did they realize that they had been under continual fire from the village. Wild with excitement, one guy rose up on his knees shouting, ‘I got at least four for sure! Almost got the fif—’

A bullet struck. The others heard it clearly, followed by the man’s weak cry, right in its wake.

‘Medics!’

‘It’s no use. He’s done for.’

Faces grave, they crawled to cover and grimly answered fire.

A deluge of explosives descended upon the village. Six-inchers shook the ground. The roof of some hay barn went catapulting into the air.

‘Are we attacking?’

‘Of course. Everybody quiet!’

When the barrage was over, they were surprised to hear the crashing of combat coming from behind the village, but any wondering about what it might be was cut short as Kariluoto shouted, ‘Advance!’

They received only weak fire in response. It wasn’t a question of an organized opposition line, but rather the remnants of the village’s local defense forces, fighting for their existence with neither direction nor organization. They were cornered behind the village, trying to retreat through the trees in a scattered swarm. Heavy fighting had been taking place behind the village all day, as the Second Battalion had penetrated through to the main road that morning, racking up enemy positions as it made its way through the backwoods. The din of their own fighting had prevented the men in the First Battalion from hearing anything of it.

As they neared the closest building, they saw a courtyard with a team of horses that had been shot, a destroyed field kitchen and a grenade launcher, beside which lay several bodies.

A few men appeared in the village square, advancing at a crouch. Then a string of pistol shots rang out from here and there, ending the lives of at least a few unlucky souls. The clean up was underway.

Autio’s runner met up with Kariluoto’s platoon and notified them that the Second Battalion was behind the village, so they should be careful not to shoot their own men. The news broke the tension, as it meant that things were beginning to improve. Many men disappeared in search of booty, and the officers had their hands full trying to get even a few of the men to scour the terrain that hadn’t yet been searched.

Rahikainen staggered out of one of the buildings with a huge sack on his back.

‘What did you find?’

‘Sugar. Whole blocks the size of your fist.’

‘Gimme a little.’

‘Gimme, gimme. No sooner do I find something and go get it than I got the whole regiment on my back. This here’s for me and my squad. The rest of you can go find your own sugar.’

‘What’s up?’ Koskela asked, looking interested but just sort of gawking since he still couldn’t really hear when people spoke softly.

‘Bag full of sugar,’ Hietanen yelled into Koskela’s ear. ‘But he’s only sharing with his own squad.’

‘Well, the way it goes is basically that you’re not allowed to scrounge. So these don’t really belong to anybody. So, just keep your mouths shut and eat quietly. In any case they have to be shared amongst the whole platoon.’

‘Well, okey-doke! But I’m not luggin’ this whole thing around by my—’

Rahikainen’s sentence was cut short as he and his sack thumped to the ground. As did the others. A stream of light-machine-gun fire whistled over them.

‘Little bugger’s tryin’ to get his share, too.’ Rahikainen raised his head behind his sack. ‘There, he’s runnin’ over there. Disappeared into that thicket.’

There was a low willow thicket growing out of the stony field of rubble, with mounds of haystacks rotting along its edge.

‘Don’t shoot! Let’s take him prisoner.’

They dispersed into a half-circle around the thicket. ‘Make sure he doesn’t escape.’

‘Rookee veer! Hands up!’

A shower of submachine-gun fire answered back.

‘Idzii surdaa! Idzii surdaa! Come out! We’ll give you some sugar. Tovarisch, idzii surdaa!’

The thicket was quiet. Then they started hearing noises, which, dumbfounded, they realized were sobs. The men looked at one another. Somebody burst out, an unnatural harshness in his voice, ‘Give it to ’im. Even the goddamn devil couldn’t listen to that.’

Bolts clicked and weapons rose, but just then a hand grenade thumped in the thicket.

‘Who threw that?’

‘Nobody.’

‘He blew himself up, guys.’

‘Good God!’ somebody said in shock. Cautiously, they approached the thicket.

‘There he is. Guts all splayed out. Blew up right under his gut.’

Some of them lingered, but most of them went straight back to the village, stealing a furtive backward glance or two as they left.

‘Nice image.’

‘War’s brutal.’

‘—and fighting the cavalry’s futile.’

‘When Lapua’s glorious day was done, von Döbeln rode to see the brave ranks had been sadly thinned…’

‘Got something to chew on there, have you?’ Hietanen said, petulantly. ‘All right, now stop gawking at the guts and get going! We need to get in contact with the Second Battalion. I’ll carry the sugar.’

They scoured the edge of the village. Here and there a shot would go off somewhere, as the enemy were still refusing to give themselves up. Even in this hopeless state of affairs, they just kept trying to shoot, almost without even aiming, blasting away desperately to the end, in whatever direction. These desperate deeds garnered not one word of admiration from the men. When somebody commented on them, Salo said, ‘They’re scared. Wouldn’t you be, if you knew they were going to shoot your relatives if you surrendered?’

‘Yeah, that’s obviously the case,’ Sihvonen confirmed.

The others weren’t at all sure about this theory, but in any case they didn’t start any arguments over it.

Behind the village, they heard somebody cry, ‘Don’t shoot! We’re Finns.’

‘What unit?’

‘Fourth Company.’

The men were lying on the ground, silent and morose. They’d been having a pretty rough time of it the whole day, resisting the enemy’s breakaway attempts as well as its efforts to get reinforcements in from the rear. Even the end of the fighting hadn’t raised their spirits – they just responded irritably to the others’ questioning.

‘Did you guys break through the main road?’

‘Yup.’

‘How’d you get up to the road?’

‘Uh, from the roadside.’

‘We broke through the bunker line.’

‘That so.’

‘Nearly one in three guys knocked off.’

‘Well, thank lady luck you made it through. No use crowing about dead guys round here. We got ours over there, lined up by the root of that spruce. The wounded’ve been lying there since morning. Can’t do anything for ’em but stick needles in their arms.’

‘Got any bread?’

‘Nope.’

‘Neither do we.’

‘What’s Sarge got in his sack there?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing? You scrounged something. I can see it.’

‘Wouldja listen to this guy? First he asks and then he says that he knows. If a guy says he knows something, then why’s he gotta ask? Pre-tty strange if you ask me.’

‘Oh spare yourself, Sarge.’

‘I’m pretty pleased I was spared, now that you mention it! And if you keep askin’ for it, it might be more than I can say for you!’ Hietanen was wound up and the argument might well have continued if Kariluoto hadn’t turned up.

‘Whoa, whoa, there. What’s to get all worked up about? Look, it’s all over now. Food’s on its way.’

‘Well, Jesus! What’s he pickin’ a fight for, then? What’d I ever do to him?’

The two men parted ways, joining the others as they began bunching into groups. Now that the danger was past, their spirits revived quickly, and soon they were even chatting about the more comical aspects of the day’s events. Hardly anybody was thinking about the guys who had fallen. They were just happy they were still alive themselves.

When the platoons assembled on the road, Kariluoto said to Koskela, ‘I still haven’t had a chance to thank you. You diffused that whole situation back there. We’d have been dead in the water if it hadn’t been for that maneuver of yours.’

‘Time was it’d be called mischief.’ A flattered smile flashed across Koskela’s face, but he banished it quickly and resumed a serious air as he said, ‘Well, anyway, it was your platoon that did the work today. Good guys. Wouldn’t have taken ’em for first-timers.’

Now it was Kariluoto who smiled with pleasure – and he was in no hurry to wipe it off his face. Koskela’s thank you meant more to him than the others could possibly have understood. In the past two days, Kariluoto had developed a sort of inferiority complex toward this quiet ensign, whom he, like many of the other officers, had previously written off as rather clumsy and lackluster. Now Kariluoto could afford to recognize the man’s merits – for although Koskela’s satchel-charge stunt had been most decisive in saving the day, Kariluoto’s own charge on the bunkers was not far behind. Kariluoto had led his platoon into hand-to-hand combat, which for him sufficed as definitive proof that he was up to the tasks he’d been called to.

Full to bursting, he set off toward his men, congratulating them as soon as he arrived. ‘Men, remember this: we are the ones who made the breakthrough for the battalion today. Good old Platoon Four here ran the show. And Ukkola, that was some first-rate work you did with the second squad’s submachine gun. You keep it up just like that from here on out.’

The men were pleased. They stopped whispering snidely amongst themselves about the Ensign’s posturing. Kariluoto had gained a foothold in the minds of his men. That fellow’s not half bad when it comes down to it. Yeah, but he’s still got some of that cock-a-doodle-doo about him. Look! Look how he swaggers when he walks!

The field kitchen was distributing pea soup. The soup was no worse than usual, but somehow or other the men had understood that this meal was to be a victory celebration of sorts, so the sight of pea skins floating along on that dishwater-gray surface made them rather bitter. Famished as they were, they had rejoiced in their victory and the knowledge that soon they would get to eat in peace – so the half-raw pea soup hit like a ton of bricks. The cook received curses in exchange for each bowl he ladled out.

‘You’d think that with a whole day they could have cooked it till it’s done,’ Rahikainen moaned, staring into his mess bowl. ‘I’ve got one little pea looking for a friend, but alas, his efforts are in vain.’

Mäkilä, standing next to the field kitchen, coughed and said, ‘All the peas that are supposed to be in there are in there. And it’s a kind of pea that doesn’t get soft.’

‘Oh please, pea soup gets soft if you shove some firewood under it.’ Hietanen angrily snatched his bowl out from under the ladle.

‘It’s not worth mouthing off about it. Look, we’re all in the same boat here. The artillery and the mortars haven’t stopped pounding all day. And the First Company lost their cook.’ The fellow dishing out the soup defended himself staunchly, but his efforts only earned him more abuse.

‘Well, why the hell did they choose the First Company? They should have come to us!’

Vanhala alone kept his mouth shut. Meekly, he requested just a little more: ‘Maybe just a little of the broth?’

The cook appreciated Vanhala’s conciliatory attitude in the midst of the general fury and uproar, and so topped up his bowl, scraping the ladle against the bottom of the pot. Vanhala struggled to suppress his smile as he scuttled off to enjoy his bounty in solitude.

Even Lammio’s arrival didn’t put a stop to the heckling until he announced, ‘Anyone who finds the provisions unsatisfactory is welcome to do without. Eating is not mandatory.’

The chaos died down, but a low murmur rumbled on, asserting the general discontent. ‘If that guy turns up on the line, he’s dead. If they don’t get him from out front, I’m gettin’ him from behind.’

‘Now if you could just stretch your neck out for me…’

‘Little bastard crowing like he was somebody. Fuckin’ beanpole. That man’s like bait squirming on a hook and yet he goes mouthing off like a big shot.’

A mysterious rustling was emanating from the Third Platoon. They had retreated into a dense clump of alder trees to divide up the sugar. Hietanen was counting out the lumps into piles.

‘Guys, let’s make a rule that if somebody gets knocked off before he has a chance to eat his sugar, then the group divides up equally whatever he’s got left. Then we won’t have to fight over it,’ Lahtinen suggested.

Grunts of consent sounded above the quiet crunching and grinding of teeth.

‘They’re not gonna send us into any more scuffles for a long time. We’ve done that bit already,’ somebody said.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ Lahtinen said. ‘Nobody got off easy today. The whole world was shaking as far as my ear could hear. And I don’t know if you saw what kind of shape the guys from the Second Battalion were in.’

Lahtinen was always ready to chip in with his sobering two cents lest the general happiness get out of hand. It wasn’t that he wanted to trivialize the men’s accomplishments exactly, it was just habit that made him feel obliged to take things down a notch.

‘If they don’t come out even, I get whatever’s left,’ Rahikainen said. ‘Since I’m the one who found the bag, see.’

‘Wasn’t there anything else there, where you found it?’

‘Couple of carcasses and a bag full of cabbages. But what’cha gonna do with cabbages? Take too long to cook.’

‘Man, if only there’d been some flour and butter, we could have made pancakes.’

‘Yeah. With jam.’

‘Lay off, lay off, wouldja? You guys are killin’ me.’

Then they started rolling cigarettes with the mahorka they’d scrounged from the dead enemy soldiers’ pockets. They lay out on the grass and shot the breeze. It seemed as if the whole world was at peace, as if the war didn’t exist at all. The landscape around the village had been left to run wild, and it was beautiful. Several shades of wildflowers had sprung up in the uncultivated fields, and the smell of the coarse grass was pungent. The men drew in deep breaths of the crisp, evening air. Wide stretches of clouds spread across the sky as it faded into dusk. Rain was in the air.

‘Hey, guys! Lottas!’

‘And the Commander!’

The Battalion Commander was coming down the road, accompanied by an aide and two Lottas. They had taken a tour of the battlefield, and the aide had taken some pictures of the Lottas posing beside the captured mortars. They had gone to see some fallen Russians, and the Lottas, shuddering at the corpses, had said, ‘Phew, how dreadful!’

‘Oh, how terrible!’ they had exclaimed, seeing the fallen man whose brain had been partially torn out of his head by a piece of shrapnel.

‘Dear Lord, what pain those boys must be in!’ they had said to one another as they watched the ambulances drive the Second Battalion’s wounded off to the field hospital.

‘There was no time to take care of all of this beforehand,’ the Commander apologized. ‘The Second Battalion was encircled itself after cutting off the road.’

‘Oh, war is so terrible!’ Lotta Raili Kotilainen reminded herself that, as a woman, she was more or less obliged to make some such sympathetic remark. Truth be told, she was so happy that any feeling of pity on her part was quite superficial. For the duration of their tour, her interest had been directed toward the aide, who was a very handsome and upstanding officer indeed – quite cultivated. He even spoke four languages.

Was he the one? This Raili Kotilainen had had a dream, which led her to join up as a front-line Lotta, a role that was connected to some image of the mythic Lotta heroine conjured up by the Winter War, some dim-witted foreign journalists, and the patriotism of a countryside telephone operator with five years of elementary education.

‘The German advance has been astoundingly swift,’ the aide said, remembering the news broadcast. ‘Even the most wishful thinkers hardly dared hope for so much.’

‘Wishful thinkers, no. But careful calculators, yes. German military leadership has one golden tradition: it does not hope, it calculates. Russia has just one crucial asset: the apathetic endurance of a donkey. But the value of plain stamina is decreasing as war is becoming increasingly technological in nature. And when it comes to technical prowess, no one can compete with the Germans.’ The Battalion Commander, Major Sarastie, enjoyed talking about war and war operations ‘scientifically’. He had read quite a bit of military literature, and his own sympathies aligned, quite traditionally, with the Germans. But this scientific orientation genuinely suited him, and you really could see a spark light up in him on occasions like this. He tended to make sense of things by taking small incidents and abstracting from them to formulate maxims.

Major Sarastie was a very tall man. His stride bore the ungainly awkwardness typical of men of his stature. His neck was ruddy with health and vigor, as was his face. He carried a stripped willow branch that he was continually whacking against the leg of his boot.

The machine-gunners were lying about by the roadside, averting their eyes so as to avoid having to salute. They hadn’t yet mastered the art of ignoring the obligation altogether.

But the Major paused and asked, ‘Have you men had something to eat?’

‘Yes, we have, Major, sir,’ Salo responded, rising to attention.

The Major knew perfectly well that the men had eaten, but a commander had to make some kind of affable inquiry on a night like this. He had spent the entire day in a state of nervous anxiety, receiving nothing from the battlefield but one piece of unpromising news after the next. The number of casualties had soared and the enemy line remained unbroken. All in all, the day had stripped the battalion’s ranks of over a hundred men, and it would have been a formidable casualty count to report, were he not now striding down the main road of the village. But there he strode, and, somehow or other, could say he was in the best of spirits. He felt as if some life force had doubled within him, compounding all his capacities and making him downright impatient to set off on a new assignment. A good-natured benevolence rang in his voice as he addressed the men – ‘Strapping bundles of Finnish ferocity’.

‘Ah, good. And do you men have anything to smoke?’

‘Yes, we do, Major, sir,’ Salo responded again, but Hietanen cut in, ‘We’re rolling mahorka.’

‘Ah, I see. How’s it taste?’

‘Like home-grown tobacco, Major, sir. Tastes the same everywhere.’

‘Yes, indeed. Well, have a good rest. You’ll need all the strength you’ve got.’

‘Would you take a look at those hips?’ Rahikainen said. ‘Ah, the treasures stored up in those pistons… but what’s a private supposed to do about it, huh? Boys, there you see the sweetest goods in the world, packed up into five feet and three little inches. And yet Rahikainen here’s just left to eat his heart out. There’s another thing they’ve got divvied up all wrong. Some guys got more’n they need and others got nothin’ at all.’

‘Light field mattress, 1918 model,’ somebody said.

‘If I was a general, I’d set up a girly house for those little ladies,’ Rahikainen mused, ‘and pass out tickets on payday.’

The idea caught Rahikainen’s interest, and he said almost seriously, ‘You could do good business with those tickets, actually.’

‘Ha, ha, ha, Rahikainen doing business with those tickets? You mean, buying ’em all up? Pretty sure you’d never see him selling those off.’

Riitaoja had also turned up to eat, lugging his ammunition boxes. He blushed and smiled his childish smile. ‘There are bodies by the side of the road at the aid station. K-k-k-kaukonen’s there with the others. There are dozens from the Second C-c-c-company. The minister was breaking off the ID tags. Death tags. Some horses were killed in a blast. And lots of boys from the utilities staff. But one of the wounded guys k-k-k-kept screaming, over and over, “Forgive me… Forgive me.” He k-k-k-kept saying it again and again, muttering ugly things in between.’

Lehto turned away from Riitaoja in disgust, but the others looked at him indulgently. His childishness was disarming.

‘What kinds of ugly things?’ Rahikainen asked.

‘I wouldn’t dare to say.’

‘If a dying guy can say it, why can’t you?’

‘Jesus fucking C-c-c-c-christ, go to fucking hell.’

Riitaoja flushed with embarrassment as soon as the words left his mouth, but Rahikainen just shrugged nonchalantly, ‘Probably figured if he was headed south it’d be nice to have some company.’

‘You shouldn’t talk that way. The medics were almost c-c-c-crying.’

‘Crying’s not gonna help anybody round here. Better just man up and push on like hell. It’s pretty rough when horses are getting popped off, the ground’s shaking, and fences are all being torn down.’

At that, Mielonen arrived, yelling, ‘Everybody rrready!’

‘Ready for what?’

‘To move out, to move out.’

‘Move out where? Where are we going?’

‘To attack, to attack. Where do you think? Back home?’

‘No, goddamn it! Is this the only battalion in the Finnish army?’

‘It’s not our turn.’

‘We’ve done our share. Let the other guys go. What about the reserve regiments, the ones that were all along the roadside?’

‘I don’t command the rrregiments. I’m just a miserable corporal. But these are the orders from up top.’

‘That Major must be looking for a promotion. Goddamn giraffe. I bet he asked if we could take the lead again.’

Hietanen was as irritated as any of them, but his position as deputy platoon leader obliged him to try to help out one way or another. He hadn’t thought about what to say at all, but a keen instinct brought the words right to his lips. He turned the whole thing into a kind of game, knowing that would be the quickest way out. ‘Prepare to die on behalf of your home, your faith and your homeland! Packs on your backs, men! “Once more the Finnish bear lives on, he lifts his claw and strikes.”’

‘“When Lapua’s glorious day was done, von Döbeln rode to see the brave ranks had been sadly thinned,”’ Vanhala giggled, lifting his pack over his shoulder. Lehto’s group was silent, observing that their leader had tossed his rifle over his shoulder without saying a word. They could tell they had better keep their mouths shut. Hietanen caught sight of a fellow here and there smiling at his charade, so he continued, ‘Sure, just like Döbeln if that’s what you want! C’mon, what’s wrong with you guys? Your bread bags are full of sugar. We are Finland’s young heroes! They’ve promised to write songs about us for the generations to come! Yes, onwards we march – to eternity if necessary!’

‘You must want another stripe really badly.’

‘And why not? Every man here has been hankering after them for days now.’

‘To the road, double file!’

The whole sky was hidden behind the clouds. Cannon fire boomed somewhere far off, and flames flared up along the horizon. The first drops of rain were already beginning to fall. The road crunched beneath hundreds of feet as the ranks filed off into the thickening darkness.