Unknown Soldiers

Chapter Four

‘Watch your intervals… Do we have contact on the left?’

‘What?’

‘Do you have contact on the left?’

‘Yeah, they’re stumbling along over there all right.’

Panting, puffing, cursing and tripping, the two extended lines advanced through the dark forest. The somber spruce grove and low-hanging rainclouds made the night even darker. Water sloshed in the men’s boots. Their wet, scratchy clothing clung to their skin, steaming with body heat. Dizzy with hunger and exhaustion, each man stared fixedly ahead at the gray ghost stumbling along in front of him. He thought neither of where he was coming from nor of where he was going. He had no information on the latter point, anyway. With each step, he concentrated all his efforts on surveying the terrain: step on that moss hump, there’s a pothole over there, keep clear of the shrubs.

The noise of battle was rumbling somewhere further off, but he paid no attention. He just nurtured the hope that the submachine gun of the scout out in front of him would not start rattling. That the enemy was far away and heading even further. All the way to hell, ideally. Otherwise, he consoled himself with visions of a road opening up before them, with tents and a field kitchen assembled beside it, awaiting their arrival.

Had it really only been twenty-four hours since they’d left the village?

They had pushed the enemy out of its positions the night before. They didn’t have much information about the skirmish that had taken place under cover of darkness. Firing, whistling bullets, muzzle flashes. Somebody had called out for medics, but it wasn’t until the following morning that they learned it was Virtanen, a fellow from the neighboring platoon. ‘Oh, that Virtanen guy.’

They had also come across a few dead enemy soldiers and stripped them of their badges, despite the darkness and the rain. They had advanced over the course of the day, stopping frequently, ignorant of the general situation. A few men were lost in an artillery and mortar barrage. Around mid-morning the day before, they finally received some food. Experience had already taught them that they could have absolutely no certainty when the next opportunity to eat would be, so they broke their bread in half: this one I eat and this one I save.

Then they would start picking at the piece they intended to save a little at a time, finally wondering, ‘Well, what good is it going to do me over there, anyway?’ And then they would ask, ‘Does anybody have any bread? I’ll trade half a cigarette.’

‘Nope. Did yesterday, but it’s all eaten up.’

‘Haven’t got any bread left, but I haven’t got so much of that soul-crushing hunger, either!’

It was one of their better jokes.

They’d lost their sugar to the rain. They had scraped the wet, crumbling gunk from the bottoms of their bread bags and eaten it, but their hunger remained.

In the evening, they had turned off the main road and pressed into the dark forest, trudging onwards with no idea where they were being taken or why.

‘Do we have contact?’

‘Rotate!’

‘But that shift was shorter than the one I just had carrying.’

‘That’s a lie.’

‘Who the hell can carry this thing?’

‘Quit whining all the time! You wimps! Here, give me the gun-stand.’

It was Lehto.

One guy used his shoulder to push a spruce branch out of his way. It whacked the guy behind him directly in the eyes.

‘Watch what you’re doing, asshole!’

‘Why don’t you look where you’re going and shut up?’

‘Oh, come off it!’

The verbal jousting never led to any serious brawls, or even real rifts between the men. As soon as the cause of the spat disappeared, and the strain and nervous tension passed, it was as if nothing had ever happened.

No one ever launched any of these invectives at Koskela. This was because he never took any rotations out, but carried one machine gun or other the whole time, to lighten the rotations for the others. Somebody had protested at the start, as a matter of formality, but they were all happy about it. Not to be outdone, Lehto insisted on carrying the whole time as well, just like Koskela.

‘Where’s the second machine gun? I’m supposed to take that one now,’ Koskela said.

‘Määttä has it.’

‘So where’s Määttä?’

‘Määttäää!’

‘He was walking right there just a second ago.’

‘Keep moving… can’t search now.’

‘Of course Määttä’s lost! With all you guys avoiding him so you won’t have to carry his gun!’ Hietanen exploded.

‘Shove it. Every man here’s carried it,’ Sihvonen hissed irritably.

Prrrrrrrr…

A long, sharp string of submachine-gun fire cut the conversation short.

They dropped to their knees. Bodies trembling and hearts pounding.

‘What’s over there?’

‘A Russki, of course.’

‘Bullet’s already nicked that tree.’

‘Get the machine guns into position.’

They lugged the weapons down the line. The second machine gun was missing and Lahtinen was about to set off in search of Määttä. Being a fairly conscientious leader, he considered himself at fault for the fact that Määttä had gone missing from his team.

But Koskela stopped him. ‘You won’t be able to find him searching in a dark forest like this. He’ll be able to find his way from the sound of the firing.’

Enemy fire flew out of the darkness, striking here and there, and the men answered fire just as haphazardly.

‘As far as I know,’ Koskela whispered, ‘we’re supposed to be securing things from this side. We might be waiting here a while. Let’s rotate taking half-hour shifts on guard so the others can relax behind. It’ll be a little nicer that way.’

It was a welcome suggestion. The guards were assigned and the others gathered further back at the base of a few large firs. Water dripped from the branches. Bracken and blueberry twigs dripped water onto their already soaking-wet boots. Pale splotches had already appeared in the sky, and the men could make out each other’s faces in the dim light. They weren’t pretty. Blank, expressionless eyes stared out of dirty, stubbly faces, quivering with anguished creases around the corners of their mouths. Was it really only the fourth day of war now dawning?

They wrapped themselves in their overcoats, but the cold still kept them awake. Whenever the firing grew more intense, they would get to their feet with a start and look at one another inquisitively, but as soon as the fire died down they would sink back to the ground, the anxious look in their eyes extinguished.

The rain let up and the sky grew brighter. A gust of wind shook droplets of water down from the branches. Their wet clothes collected debris from the decades of pine needles carpeting the base of the fir trees. A bird broke hesitatingly into song and artillery fire boomed somewhere further off.

Rahikainen leaned against the trunk of a tree, staring at his sopping-wet boots and squirting the water around between his toes. He started crooning in his rich, gentle voice:

Up in the sky there’s no dyin’

no need for cryin’, no dark of night…

Generally speaking, the men were not very tolerant of singing or whistling when they were worn out and ready to aim their ill will at any available target, but this time they let Rahikainen sing in peace. They were happy to listen, as his voice was easy on the ears. Lehto put a stop to Rahikainen’s singing, however, glancing at his watch, which he’d won in a card game. ‘Go relieve Salo and Vanhala.’

‘’Sit my turn already?’

‘Yep.’

‘Well, hell’s bells. Whatta ya know? Without me this army’d never reach Moscow.’ Displeased, he threw his gun over his shoulder and headed toward the guard posts with Sihvonen. Their steps had hardly died out when a rustling came from the forest. The men grabbed their guns and listened.

‘Stop! Password?’

‘Can’t remember. But I got the day before yesterday’s if you want that one.’

‘You Määttä?’

‘That’s me. You the machine-gunners?’

‘That’s us. Yeah, that’s Määttä all right. And with the machine gun, too. Welcome to Camp Finland!’

Everybody was glad to see Määttä back, though they hadn’t been overly concerned about his absence, as they knew he could look after himself. He arrived soaked to the bone, but just as calm as ever. He looked around, silently taking stock of the situation, as he tried to manage without asking questions. The questions came from the others.

‘Where have you been?’

‘Lost.’

‘How’d you find us?’

‘Guessed from the shooting.’ Määttä sat down at the base of a fir and started taking off his shoes. He wrung out his drenched boot flannels and said offhandedly to Koskela, as if in passing, ‘Seems to be some Russkis over there in that forest. Might be reason to send word upstream. We’d better keep an eye out, too.’

‘Where?’

‘Over that direction. Half-mile, mile maybe. Hard to say.’

‘How many?’

‘I saw about a dozen or so.’

Koskela dispatched a runner to send word, but the runner came right back, saying that the Second Company was supposed to scour the terrain in that direction. That calmed them a little, but they still kept their weapons close. As their anxiety eased, their hunger mounted, and the conversation slipped back into its old grooves.

‘Would you boys believe it? I’m hungry.’

‘Now, where could that hunger possibly be coming from? When we ate just yesterday morning! But would you guys believe it, I’m freezing and soaking wet?’

‘No, but would anybody believe that I’d happily go back to being a civilian?’

‘Civilian! All I’m asking for is a slice of bread. And we can’t even get that.’

‘How long do those stuffed shirts think a deep-forest warrior can last out here on these rations?’ Vanhala asked.

Lahtinen was maybe the most wound up of all of them, and muttered with biting disdain, ‘Think? They don’t think. They know. They’ve counted the calories, or whatever the hell it is that’s supposed to be in the stuff you eat. Go complain about being hungry and they’ll go and wave some kind of form in front of you that proves you could not possibly be hungry. And besides, who’s gonna dare complain about it? Don’t you remember what they did to Isoaho?’

Lahtinen was referring to a certain guy from the First Company who had stepped forward once at the main inspection to complain about the lack of food when the General asked if there were any concerns. It had gotten the man into such a stew that he nearly went out of his mind. They weighed him two, three times a day, dragged him from one medical exam to the next, and made such a laughing stock out of him that he deeply regretted ever having opened his mouth. He suffered the typical fate of the Messiah, in other words. For the complaint had not been personal – they had all put him up to it – he had merely been the bravest in taking up the common cause. They all remembered the ordeal, which had been designed to demonstrate to them all that a private has no rights whatsoever, and that even those he is theoretically granted can be easily disposed of.

Hietanen tapped his palms on his wet knees and said, ‘I don’t know the first thing about calories. My gut’s just telling me that whatever they are, they’re pre-tty scarce.’

‘Hm… Yeah, maybe they’re telling you. But do you think those bourgeois gentlemen up there can understand your rumbling stomach? This nation’s guts have been rumbling so damn long those guys have forgotten what that sound even means. Especially since their own bellies are full.’

Lahtinen was just a die-hard proletarian, but Hietanen burst out laughing and said, ‘Hey, I got it! Aren’t there some kinda actors who make it sound like their stomachs are talking? Let’s train ourselves, guys! Then every time we’re all out there in front of the officers, see, we’ll have all our bellies belch out, “Brehhhd!”’

Vanhala was literally shaking with laughter. Lahtinen’s lesson for the day was drowned out once again, just as it had been thousands of times before. And right there a limit appeared – drawing a line between griping and any actual idea of rebellion. They were all ready to howl in protest and jeer at their country and its ‘stuffed shirts’ however they wanted – but if somebody tried to steer the sneering into something that smacked of an agenda, they would drown him out with roars of laughter. There was a degree of seriousness that remained off-limits, that lay behind a line the men would not transgress. It was the very same aversion that made them avoid that particular type of patriotism that bears even the tiniest glimmer of mania. ‘Fuckin’ fanatic’ was their preferred term for the welfare officer guilty of this particular sin.

Vanhala was laughing so hard that he shook for a good while before gasping out, ‘Our deep-forest warriors’ bellies appear to be rumbling, heehee! What would the stuffed shirts say to that?’

Lahtinen descended into the irritable funk these encounters inevitably left him in. But this time he was so annoyed that he picked it up again, rather than sulking in silence. ‘What would they say? They’d stick you in solitary confinement and give you the New Testament to read! If not The Tales of Ensign Stål! There’s a hell of a hunger story for you. I mean, it’s all this same glorification of hunger. It’s like our cultural heritage, hunger. And the bourgeois gentlemen up there would like this nation to believe it’s a very sacred thing. This army’s been fighting half-dead with hunger for six, seven hundred years straight, with all its bald asses peeking out between their rags. First I thought they had to make some sort of story for the Swedes, something to warm their spirits and all, and now I guess it’s our own upper crust that needs it. Wealthy old men and their wives need that kind of stuff. Gives ’em a reason to squeeze out a tear or two. They even like the fact that there are poor people! Otherwise, who would they help and cheer up out of their own goodness and decency? Same way that if we had bread and clothes, we couldn’t possibly be heroes! What kind of a hero is that?’

‘Starving to death in sub-zero climes is the path to victory, heeheehee. A Finnish warrior on the hunt and a Suomi submachine gun is a terrifying combination. Heeheehee!’

The bantering stopped short as they turned to Lehto in astonishment. He had opened his emergency ration tin and was using his knife to lever the better part of its contents out of the can.

‘Don’t you know that’s not allowed?’ Hietanen said.

A thin, dry smile flashed across Lehto’s lips. ‘So’s killing. Fifth Command, wasn’t it? Can of food’s a pretty minor offense when there’s skulls busting open all over the place.’

The others turned to Koskela, as if waiting for him to take a stance that would resolve this dilemma so that they could follow suit. Koskela had been listening to the men in silence. They amused him greatly, though his amusement never revealed itself beyond the subtle crinkles at the corners of his eyes. His face remained stiff and expressionless, with just a trace of a smile hovering in and around his eyes. He felt a certain revulsion all of a sudden, when the men turned to him awaiting his judgement. In the first place, he had no desire to make other people’s decisions for them, generally speaking, and in the second place, he sort of despised the men for not being able to just take their rations and eat them. He diverted his gaze and said rather abruptly, ‘Far as I’m concerned it’s fine. We can’t get much hungrier than we are now. It’s after twenty-four hours that the edge wears off and you go kind of numb, right? So sure, this is the emergency the rations are meant for, anyway.’

He realized that his reasoning was incoherent, and he knew the men were no less aware of it, but somehow it still sort of veiled the event in his shadow, making the rest of them feel less like they were going against orders.

A general feeding frenzy began, and although he personally would have endured his hunger, Koskela joined in with the others for precisely this same reason. His action legitimated theirs.

A broad smile spread across Hietanen’s face as he dug his fingers into the canned pork and shoveled it into his mouth. They all lit up with the familiar, mischievous joy that comes of breaking the rules, which in Hietanen overflowed into the grandiloquent declaration, ‘I’ve fought on a lot of battlefields, but I’ve never seen gluttony like this before!’

They smoked the mahorka to top off their meal, and a feeling of contentment settled over them. Määttä picked at his teeth with a match. Somebody asked for more details about his adventure, and the feeling of well-being induced him to talk about it at greater length than he normally would have. He burped first, then, slowly, he started to speak. ‘Bastards nearly got me back there.’

‘How’d you get lost?’

‘I was just going around some bushes. Seemed to me the line was turning right, so I thought I’d just cut straight through, but then there I was standing all alone in the middle of a dark forest. Only way I can figure it out is that the company must have turned left. And I just went straight.’

‘And you saw Russkis.’

‘Well, I heard some rustling and decided to go see who was over there. ’Bout a dozen of their big shots were all crouching down, and I’d already yelled out ‘Hey guys!’ before I realized they all had helmets on. They asked something, but I can’t make head or tail of those foreign languages. Didn’t have much to say back to ’em, either. I just made a run for it. They fired after me, but I zigzagged and they missed.’

‘Shit, guys. We better keep it down. The bushes are crawling with Russkis.’

‘Bushkis! Heehee,’ Vanhala giggled, thus coining right there in their group the term that would become so widely used.

Määttä’s story set them on their guard and then, to crown it, Koskela whispered, ‘Get down!’

He pulled his pistol from its holster and signaled to the men. ‘Somebody’s moving.’

They loaded their guns and cautiously clicked the bolts shut. The guns turned in the direction Koskela had indicated. ‘Get in formation! Advance quietly!’

They darted from tree to tree. Each twig that snapped underfoot felt like an explosion, and would prompt one’s neighbor to shake his head angrily. Then a shot rang out.

Vanhala was firing. ‘Vanhala’s shooting!’ rippled down the line.

‘What’s over there?’

‘Somebody’s running.’

A brown-clad man was making a dash for a tree. He tripped and fell to the ground, but recovered and kept running.

‘Rookee veer! Hands up!’

The Russian emerged from behind the tree, his arms raised. He glanced from man to man and took a few steps toward them. His filthy face was exceedingly pale, and a dreadful trembling shook his body. His eyes darted from one man to the next as he scanned those closest to him, but you could tell from the expression in his eyes that he was too focused on some strenuous internal effort to actually see anything. His intense, anxious shaking and darting eyes laid bare his whole mental state. He was clearly terrified at the sight of the raised guns pointed in his direction. He awaited death with each step, but hoped, at the same time, that it would not come.

‘Check the bushes! Case he’s got friends with him.’

There were no others to be found, however, so they gathered around the captive, who was growing discernibly calmer. He stood with his trembling arms raised, trying to force some kind of distorted smile. The smile intuitively sought the humans behind the soldiers. It was as if he wanted to say, ‘Don’t hurt me. Let’s smile and be friends. I’m smiling, see? Just as if we happened to be meeting in peacetime.’

The man was maybe in his thirties. His face bore traces of long suffering and heavy exertion. He wore a moss-brown shirt and the same color trousers, the knees of which had been reinforced with triangular patches. Below them he wore black legwarmers and leather shoes.

‘His belt’s made out of cloth.’

‘Even the superpower’s gear is looking a little ragged.’

‘Got any comrades with you? Tovarisch?’

The prisoner shook his head.

‘Tovarisch, tovarisch. Understand? Ponimai? Are there any others? No ponimai?’

‘Nyet tovarisch,’ the man mumbled indistinctly.

‘Got any weapons in your pockets? Vintovka plakkar? In here, in here, any vintovka?’

‘Don’t ask, check!’ Lehto started patting down the prisoner’s pockets. He found a hand grenade in his breast pocket. ‘Hey bud, what you doing with this little guy?’

‘He could have blown himself up and taken us with him.’

‘He’s not one of those guys. You can tell just by looking at his head,’ Koskela said. ‘The guys who pull those stunts are different. And of course he’s got a hand grenade on him – we all do.’

‘What do we do with him?’

‘Take him to the command post, I guess,’ Koskela said, looking around inquiringly at the men. ‘Who wants to go?’

‘I’ll take him,’ Lehto said. ‘This way!’ He signaled the direction to the prisoner, who hesitated as if he was afraid he’d misunderstood, then started walking. Lehto followed behind with his rifle under his arm, and the others began heading back, keeping an even sharper lookout. Lehto and the prisoner had just disappeared from view when a gunshot rang out from the same direction. The men rushed to the site. The prisoner lay face-down on the ground and Lehto was yanking an empty cartridge from his gun.

‘What did he do?’

‘Died.’ Lehto’s lips were stretched into a thin line.

‘Did he try to get away?’

‘Yep.’

Koskela looked at Lehto out of the corner of his eye. His voice was not really accusatory, it was more evasive as he said, ‘You didn’t have to do that. He wasn’t one of those guys.’

‘Damned if I’m going to sort ’em out.’ Lehto laughed his cutting laugh, the same laugh that had always evoked a certain revulsion in them.

‘You shot him in the back. He didn’t try to run anywhere.’ Hietanen seemed pretty worked up. The desperate scream had upset him, and because experiences immediately cut to the quick with him, more so than with any of the others, the prisoner’s pleading smile had already managed to stir up his sympathy. The man really was a human being to him, not just some creature that had been regarded as a concept so it could be killed without any pangs of conscience.

Lehto flew into a rage. ‘From the back!’ he snarled viciously. ‘Better that than from the front. Ends quicker that way. Go on, why don’t you snivel over the bastard, for fuck’s sake. Read him “Our Father”.’

Riitaoja turned away, trembling. He couldn’t look at the body, which had two bullet holes between the shoulders. Hietanen turned his back to Lehto, and said, ‘Shoot, shoot, for all I care. I’m not the court martial. But that man had been damn well scared enough.’

‘Yeah, but that don’t mean we gotta whimper over him,’ Salo said, with contrived machismo.

‘What’s all the fuss about, then?’ Lahtinen asked, looking rather contemptuously at the lot of them. ‘One man pulls the trigger over there, a grenade lands on somebody else dozens of miles away, and there’s nothing you can do about any of it. But we’re gentlemen, huh? We don’t shoot guys who aren’t armed. Ha! Those bourgeois officers are just trying to put some kind of noble seal on killing. War is senseless enough all by itself without us adding all kinds of rules about courtesy and politeness.’

‘OK, OK. Let’s head back.’ For the first time, they detected a note of irritation in Koskela’s voice. His gait was a bit stiffer than usual, too. Some of them figured it was Lehto who had irritated him, and others assumed it was Lahtinen, but in truth it was all of them. The event and its aftermath had stirred up feelings in Koskela he thought he had buried beneath the snowdrifts of the Winter War. He had tried to forget about death – his own or anybody else’s – and to maintain a certain tranquility. This tranquility was dear to him, and he was angry now that it had been upset. Nothing had been quite brutal enough to desensitize him to the insanity of war. He fought, and he fought better than countless others, but each despicable deed and show of pride in killing awakened the judge in him. He had tried to fulfill his duty, blocking out its insanity, and now this equilibrium had been upset – which was why he was walking jerkily several yards in front of his men. But soon his heaving breath evened out. He calmed down. The lingering shock of the experience fell away and Koskela was his former self once more. The baseness of what Lehto had done had affected him most deeply of all of them, probably – but after a few minutes, it ceased to trouble him. And so, one more incident receded into the past. Nobody learned anything from it, and everybody, by forgetting, condoned it.

Their spirits remained low for quite a while, however. Lehto was sullen and quick to glare back defiantly at anybody who happened to catch his eye. He set off to relieve the guys on guard duty, their shift having gone over-time because of the disturbance. An occasional bullet would emerge from the forest here and there, but Lehto stayed standing behind the machine gun, smoking his mahorka in long, furious drags. Kariluoto ordered him to take cover, but Lehto just flashed him a contemptuous, thin-lipped sneer.

Rahikainen returned from guard duty with Sihvonen. ‘You boys ate your emergency rations while we were on guard!’

‘Well, why don’t eat yours too?’

‘Oh, I already ate ’em back on the other side of the border.’

‘Shoulda guessed.’

‘Well, why didn’t you guess, then? You boys shot that Russki.’

‘Wasn’t the first.’

‘Oh, I’m not keepin’ count. Just makin’ small talk with ya.’

‘You should have seen how scared that guy was,’ Hietanen insisted. In his mind, the prisoner’s fear had established the degree of humanity with which he should have been treated. The amount of pity they owed him was determined by the amount of fear he demonstrated, in other words. A natural response from a child of nature.

‘They’re afraid we’ll shoot ’em if they give themselves up,’ Salo explained.

‘Well, you shot him, didn’t you? The guy wasn’t scared for nothin’!’ Rahikainen shouted over in passing, digging his sugar out of his gas mask. ‘You boys are all out of sugar, aren’tcha? I rigged up a storage method to keep mine dry.’

Salo’s comment had set some of the others laughing as its comedy dawned on them. Salo’s simple-mindedness wasn’t news to anybody, of course, as it was clear that he, more than any of them, had swallowed the national curriculum hook, line and sinker. This instance struck them as particularly amusing, though. Even Salo perceived it, and started protesting defensively, ‘Well, it’s not like we poke their eyes out and chop their tongues off! And Lehto said he tried to make a break for it. When that happens, you’re allowed to shoot. The Code of Military Justice gives you permission.’

The duty guard walked by shouting, ‘The infantry is moving out! Get ready to head out!’

‘Whistles in your pockets!’ Koskela said as he headed into position. And so the men followed suit, leaving their new impressions to pile up on top of the old, with one more inoculation against humanity down.

The rain clouds dispersed into ever fainter strands. The gray morning gave way to radiance as sunlight pierced through the clouds. Droplets glistened in the wet forest, and even if the grass drenched the men’s trousers up to the knee, it was still nice to walk. Their damp clothing began to dry in the warmth of the sun, and the crisp summer morning washed away the heavy mood of the rainy night.

Stray shots rang out now and again, and then an engine rumbled somewhere out in front of them.

‘We’re coming to a road, guys.’

‘Rookee veer, idzii surdaa! Come out!’

A man emerged from the bushes, a white rag in his hand. Others followed behind him – about twenty men in all. They belonged to the same wandering, lost detachment as the men Määttä had seen and as the prisoner Lehto had shot. Nobody really knew what was going on, but the men understood that something decisive must have taken place if these prisoners were surrendering. The enemy was scattered, and the artillery fire had moved during the night and now seemed to be firing from somewhere far out in front of them.

Then they spotted the main road. They approached it with caution, but quickly confirmed that it presented no danger. The morning sun had already dried out the road’s surface, which had been torn up by tank treads. They had barely made it to the road when a fleet of cyclists appeared, on their way from the border.

‘Unit?’

‘Jaeger Battalion. Neighbors far off?’

‘Got about twenty of them in the bushes over there.’

‘Don’t get smart with me. Where’s your company commander?’

The helmeted Jaeger lieutenant stepped off his bicycle. He was an extremely militaristic-looking fellow, in his helmet and rolled-up shirt sleeves, with his submachine gun slung around his neck. His men were just the same. They evidently imagined themselves to be some sort of elite unit, and they clearly did not belong to the tattered ranks of the infantry.

Kariluoto hurried over. Eagerly, he greeted the visiting officer, ‘How do you do? Where are you gentlemen headed?’

‘Lake Onega. Next stop’s Loimola. Are you the company commander? I was told I would find units from your regiment here and was ordered to make contact.’

‘No, I’m not. That’s Autio, over there with the Second Platoon, round the bend in the road.’

Kariluoto was in a splendid mood. He felt some sort of unfounded camaraderie with this lieutenant, though the man was a total stranger. This morning had brought Kariluoto one of the most glorious moments of his life. He had realized that their breakthrough was a fact, and that now they were preparing to advance into Karelia. He chatted on eagerly, pumping the Lieutenant for every possible bit of information, brimming with such excitement that he failed to note the man’s seriousness. The Lieutenant, preoccupied with his upcoming mission, said little, but that didn’t stop Kariluoto from trying to inject some of his own enthusiasm into the man.

The Jaegers were leaning on their bicycles, eyeing the infantrymen loitering along the roadside.

Rahikainen headed over to test the waters. ‘So you boys haven’t got any field kitchen, huh?’

‘How’s that?’

‘Each guy just carries one pot on his head, I mean.’

‘Don’t you have helmets?’

‘No, we don’t. Nothin’ but hunger here. Don’t suppose you boys got any bread, do ya?’

‘A little. They distributed some dry rations last night.’

Rahikainen reached for his wallet. ‘How much would you give me for one of these badges?’

The Jaeger shoved his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a fistful of red stars, asking, ‘What do you think we are, rookies?’

‘Well, would ya look at that. I didn’t have the time to gather up many of those. I had to do some fightin’ in between. But these here are officers’ badges. What would you give for ’em?’

‘I’ve got some of those, too. Triangular kind.’

‘That’s just a puny NCO badge.’

‘OK, let’s trade. Two triangles for one rectangle.’

‘You crazy? What’s an NCO compared to an officer? But here, you can gimme three crackers to make up the difference.’

‘You can have two.’

‘Show me what kind they are.’

The Jaeger rummaged around in his bread bag for the rye crackers.

‘Those are the thin ones,’ Rahikainen sniffed, with the air of one who has lost interest in the whole deal. ‘Three of those. Nothin’ doing for anythin’ less.’

‘OK, hand it over.’

They wrapped up the deal and Rahikainen looked down at his crackers as if he regretted it. ‘Dandy badge gone awful cheap… But, oh well, let it be. Got these anyway.’

They asked about one another’s experiences fighting, despite their exhaustion.

‘Whereabouts you fellows been?’

‘We’ve been round over there. Broke through the bunker line.’

‘There were bunkers along this road, too.’

‘I bet there were. Russians are pretty handy with their shovels. Ten scoops in the air and another on the spade.’

Lahtinen sat up on the bank of the ditch, watching the Jaegers out of the corner of his eye, as if scanning to see what their response would be as he said, ‘Yeah, there’s been talk about the misery of the Russian people. But just about every Russian we’ve met we’ve had to chase down to his hole to kill. I mean, they’re a tough lot, that’s all I’m sayin’… At least against us they have been,’ he continued, as if to pre-empt any possible objections from the Jaegers before they could even launch them. The Jaegers didn’t take issue with anything he said, though. It was Rahikainen who jumped in, combining his urge to brag in front of the Jaegers with his desire to mock Lahtinen’s over-earnest idealism, saying, ‘Well, it’d be nothin’ if we only had to kill ’em once. But there’s some we’ve had to kill a couple of times! That’s how tough those boys are. A cat’s got nine lives, so they say. Though I wouldn’t guarantee it, mind you.’

The Jaegers joined in the banter as well. They joked and laughed, and even gave the others some of their rye crackers for free. They could spare them, having just received several days’ rations. The sunny morning revived all of their spirits. A handful of days had already taught them to seize the pleasure of a few minutes’ pause on a fresh summer morning. When any hour might be your last, you learned to be grateful for even the minutes.

When the Lieutenant returned and ordered his men back onto their bikes, the Jaegers grew serious again. The joking stopped, and the men, adjusting their gear, awaited the command to set out; though as soon as they received their next break, they would kick back and laugh again, just as they had here.

‘All right. Onward!’

‘Get going, then! And mind we don’t catch up with you just behind the next bend in the road.’

They took off, and more came down the road to follow them. Bicycle units, tanks, motorized artillery.

Kariluoto was mesmerized. Just like German Storm Troops! Why weren’t we assigned helmets too? he wondered. How stern and masculine their faces look in them! Kariluoto did realize, on the other hand, that even if they had been assigned helmets, the men would have cast them off into the forest last night at the latest. Indeed, he was proud to be a Finnish officer, an officer of the greatest army in the world – but it had its downsides too. This army had no military bite. These Jaegers were a slight exception, but even his unit was getting quite a bit sloppier. And the reserve regiments were particularly bad. The beckoning, sunlit road to Eastern Karelia was right there. But where were the rigid ranks of iron-clad Storm Troopers? That was what Kariluoto was yearning for this morning, in his overblown fervor. He would have liked to have seized upon the momentum of their opening success by thrusting forward with bold, thundering troops, who would look as if they were cast out of steel as they drove past, singing ‘The call to arms… has sounded for the final time! And we’re prepared… to head into the fray!’

But no, there were no Storm Troops. There was nothing but a circus of scruffy wisecrackers, scrounging for food like a pack of homeless people. They were cursing and griping and wagging their tongues, desecrating every last sacred thing. They even had the gall to mock the noble and dignified manner in which the Marshal issued his Orders of the Day. They were almost like communists. They downed their emergency rations at the first pangs of hunger, and when they felt like singing, it was not ‘Die Fahne hoch’ but some rowdy rendition of ‘Korhola Girls’ that rang out from the ranks. And less inspiring, if more illustrative, were the names they gave themselves, such as ‘the pack’, ‘the gang’, ‘the herd’, ‘the shit-shebang’, ‘the loony platoon’ and ‘the desperadoes’.

Then infantrymen began trickling down the road. New units kept streaming through the breach in the Russians’ defensive line. You could tell from the look of the reservists marching in their ranks that Finland was really giving this everything she had. There were work-worn, hunchbacked guys with pained expressions on their faces, struggling to keep up. Kariluoto noticed them, but he didn’t find them depressing. On the contrary. ‘Now every man has taken up arms.’ Wasn’t that just how the song went? ‘All who are able are wielding their swords!’

Kariluoto no longer wrote to the families of men who died in his platoon. The combat of the last few days had made him grow up somehow, stripping him of many a superfluous gesture. But this morning he was overcome with his former idealism once more. He straightened up his thin, boyish frame, smoothed his shirt, and strode off toward his platoon. His step was brisk, despite his fatigue.

Jalmari Lahti, a day laborer, was walking down the road, his unshaven face creased with pain and exhaustion. He wasn’t even bitter anymore. He had just settled into a state of hopeless dejection. The ditch job wasn’t finished. Sure, old man Kantala had promised to settle up with the missus, but it’d be nothing short of a miracle if that man forked out the sum he owed for the work that was already done. And how would they get the hay out of the ditch? Who’s going to cut it, he wondered? How will they find a man to do it, assuming there’s a man left to be found? And here I’ve taken eighty marks that I don’t really need. And borrowed a pound of butter from our neighbor for the provisions. Well, that can be paid back when the cow gives birth. The boys’ll be some help, at least – but then, which of the youngsters is actually still around? The eldest was already enlisted. He was a Jaeger, pedaling his bicycle around just these parts, heading toward Lake Ladoga. Or so Papa Jallu thought. Actually, the boy had ceased to be a Jaeger two hours earlier, and his bicycle was a mess of metal coils. A tank had shot him down from behind a bend in the road. But, at the moment, Jallu still imagined that he had this son, his eldest, who was serving in the army’s youngest division, while he, Jallu, was serving in its oldest. He tried to pick up his pace, noticing that all the men around him belonged to the platoon behind his. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the others. Jallu could feel his old back pain starting to set in again.

The Storm Troops advanced.

The First Battalion cut through the passing troops to meet up with their regiment, which was advancing down a different road. It felt strange to find the regiment out in front of them, at a fork in the road a few miles out. They’d been fighting for three days without the faintest idea what was going on beyond their immediate surroundings. Now they heard vague rumors that the enemy lines had been broken, and that the Jaegers and the division next to theirs had already penetrated far into enemy territory very early that morning. They were happy, as it seemed they might be allowed some time off the line as a reward for the relentless campaign of the past three days. When they glimpsed their own field kitchen coming toward them, their elation was almost as great as Kariluoto’s had been as he watched the Jaegers streaming by, ready to drive back the enemy.

‘What’ve we got?’

‘Pulp porridge.’

‘Fucking hell!’

‘Pulp porridge’ was a kind of mush made of whole-grain wheat pulp, which the men hated with particular fervor, but which unfortunately composed a solid portion of their diet. Once again, Mäkilä and the kitchen staff had to bear the brunt of the men’s anger at the poverty of their homeland and the inefficiency of its primitive provisions department. Their outcry was so obscene that Master Sergeant Korsumäki nearly lost his temper. He did understand their resentment, though, and so began consoling them that plans for organizing cigarette sales had finally gotten the go-ahead. And that they would be getting increased wages now, just like the reservists, starting from the date of mobilization.

‘Well, swell! So we’ll get to play cards,’ Hietanen said, sprinkling saccharine over his porridge. ‘I guess we’ll stay in reserve. They oughtta be able to manage with that endless stream of guys they’re sending out here.’

‘Humph. They’ll shove us out in front again soon as things heat up. You’ll see,’ Lahtinen replied. ‘That’s always why they keep the good units in reserve.’

‘Naw… so we really are a good unit then, huh? Well, I’ll be damned!’

‘Humph. Well, there aren’t actually any good units… what I mean is, we’re young and we’ll go wherever the hell some blockhead orders us. I mean, those reservists aren’t going to go just anywhere. And I have to say, if we’re in as desperate shape as it seems from the look of those fellows back there, I don’t think we have any business setting out to build some kind of superpower. They’ve rounded up every last man whose mouth can still melt butter.’

‘But look, pal, all you hafta do is choke down mush! Who needs to melt butter?’ Rahikainen exclaimed.

‘Well, there’s some prisoners over there. Why don’t you go take a look? Real live heroes. There, by the side of the road. Those guys aren’t looking so hot, either,’ Sihvonen said, gesturing toward the prisoners.

Salo went one better, pointing out, ‘Their belts look like they’re made of thresher straps. And they’ve got strips of torn-up black bags tied on as gaiters. Plus, they’re enlisted by force.’

Lahtinen stretched out on his back. ‘I don’t know about that. I mean, sure, so long as everything is going well. But you don’t fight with belts. What I mean is, they’re a tough lot, that’s all I’m sayin’. And judging from the way they kill, I wouldn’t be too sure anybody’s forcing them.’

‘Maybe you oughtta change sides, Yrjö-boy!’ said Hietanen, laughing mischievously. ‘If I took all this as hard as you do, why, I sure wouldn’t be here yapping about it. I’d go over to the other side and give us hell! But Lahtinen is a radical. He wants to give everybody land and money. So that nobody has to work, just keep his health. So much for the radical. But gee whiz, am I clever or what? I even know all about radicals!’

‘Yeah, or if Lahtinen is just fanatical! Heehee,’ Vanhala hesitated cautiously for a second, then burst into giggles. He won the day. The other men began to laugh, rolling their mahorka in newspaper as Lahtinen angrily turned his back on them.

Even with their ravenous hunger, the men were so disgusted by the porridge that they left plenty for the prisoners to eat. The latter were sitting huddled in a group, taking turns to eat since they didn’t have enough cutlery. The ones awaiting their turn looked on hungrily as the others ate. A group of curious onlookers had gathered around them.

‘Look at them down that porridge,’ somebody said.

‘They’ve been starved,’ explained Salo, who had also come over to gawk at the Russians.

One of the young, blond prisoners started to smile and suddenly said in Finnish, ‘Ah! Three days with no vood.’

‘Do you speak Finnish?’

‘Ah! Of course. Pure Vinnish. I’m Ingrian. From Rääpyvä, near Leningrad.’

‘How do you know Finnish?’

‘How could I not know Vinnish? My mother hardly spoke a word of Russian.’

The men barraged the prisoner with more questions than he could answer. He gestured wildly as he explained how his company had been split up, and how some sub-lieutenant had gathered together some of the men and assembled them into a unit, which he planned to lead through the forest to the road. But they had been drawn into some fighting during the night, and the sub-lieutenant had been killed, so they surrendered, having no idea where the rest of their units even were.

‘But weren’t the Ingrians sent to work camps in Siberia?’

‘What vor? We didn’t do anything.’

‘Is living in Russia better than living in Finland?’

‘Ah! How would I know? I have never lived in Vinland.’

‘Have you seen Stalin?’

The man stretched his arms wide. Then he said something in Russian to the others. The prisoners nodded, looking sly, and then one struck the ground with a stone and repeated, ‘Stalin, Stalin!’ pointing at the spot on the ground. The Ingrian exclaimed, ‘Go give it to them! We were vorced into the army.’

The prisoners’ clumsy ruse didn’t fool anybody, except maybe Salo. Somebody asked what names the Russians had for Finns, and the Ingrian hesitated for a moment before he laughed, ‘Tsuhna’, which made the other prisoners laugh too. Vanhala was shaking with laughter as well, shuffling his feet as if he couldn’t stand still he was so amused. He whispered the name to himself over and over, eyeing his companions as if trying to determine how it suited them: ‘Suhna, suhna, heeheeheehee…’

When the prisoners realized the name could be laughed at so easily, they went wild, gleefully pumping their heads and chanting, ‘Tsuhna, tsuhna!’

‘Russki, Russki,’ Rahikainen joined in, coming toward the group, pumping his head in time.

The men were so gratified at the idea of staying in reserve that they couldn’t bring themselves to go to bed straight away, no matter how exhausted they were. ‘We’ve got plenty of time for that.’

The blow was all the more devastating, then, when Mielonen appeared, walking through the camp and calling out, ‘Get rrready to head out! Make sure your feet are well wrapped! Gonna be a long march.’

‘Stop screeching, damn it!’

‘Somebody shoot that screaming son-of-a-bitch.’

‘To the road, double file!’

‘Route step, march!’