Winter Sniper 07 Raid on Russia, page 1
part #7 of Winter Sniper Series
Raid on Russia
By James Mullins
©2024 James Mullins Published By: Longinus Publishing All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
ASIN: B0CKQ4GPMJ
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Mid-Morning
Juntusuranta Road, Near the Soviet Border, Central Finland
November 30th, 1939
Lieutenant Maki Elo nervously peered over the barricade that he and his men had hastily cobbled together. Elo's oversized platoon, which was normally tasked with guarding the border, recently received orders to defend the road. Elo and his men had worked for three hours to construct the roadblock, which stretched across the length of the Juntusuranta Road. They had constructed the barricade just west of the border with the Soviet Union.
The Juntusuranta Road they were defending ran parallel with the Raate Road. Both roads joined with the major north-south running highway of the area, the E63. Separated by Lake Kiantajarvi, the Juntusuranta lay thirty kilometers to the north of the better known Raate Road. The Juntusuranta Road led to the town of Palovaara, whereas the Raate Road lead to the town of Suomassalmi. The E63, which ran through both Suomassalmi and Palovaara linked the two towns together.
Er.P 15, which stands for detached battalion number fifteen, was a battalion in name only. Er.P15 normally consisted of twenty-five regulars charged with guarding Finland’s border. On a typical day, the worst they could expect to face was a smuggler or two armed with antiquated weapons. Today, they would face the might of the largest and most modern military in the world, the Red Army.
With the addition of reservists, the ranks of Er.P 15 had swelled to fifty-eight men. This number was more than double the unit’s peacetime size but still well short of the numbers of soldiers a battalion should field. Lieutenant Elo, a recent university graduate, and now a twenty-two-year-old schoolteacher, felt ill-equipped to lead men into battle. The young officer had taught the children of his school for barely more than a month before heeding the call to defend his nation against possible Soviet aggression.
To hold the road against the Soviets, Elo ordered his men to fell several trees so that they fell across the road creating a crude barricade. Elo’s men had worked to lash the trees together to form a wall that came up to their breasts. For the last half an hour the platoon had heard the distant rumble of approaching engines from the Soviet side of the border. The men of Er.P 15 glanced nervously at their leader who tried to appear stoic in the face of the hopeless odds they would likely face.
Lieutenant Elo was mostly successful in maintaining a stern-looking visage for his troops, the same expression that he had learned to give his students whenever they displeased him. The young lieutenant was of average build, with gold-colored wire-rimmed glasses. His most prominent feature was his eyes, which were a striking shade of blue. The color was reminiscent of the clear Finnish lakes that dotted the countryside. His eyes held a mixture of determination and anxiety, reflecting the weight of leadership that was pressing down upon him with ever increasing weight as the enemy approached. Elo had a neatly trimmed brown colored mustache with a traditional style which helped him look closer to thirty.
Elo made eye contact with his senior sergeant, Jari Mäkinen. Mäkinen was an old soldier that was blooded in the crucible of the Great War. Over the ensuing two decades he had earned his stripes serving in the Finnish Army. His face was a sharp contrast with Elo’s smooth skin. Mäkinen bore the deep etchings of experience, with a weathered complexion that spoke of years spent outdoors, enduring the brutal cold of Finnish winters.
The sergeant was of average height but had a solid, robust build forged through the physical demands of military service. His hair, once dark, had faded to a distinguished looking salt-and-pepper hue. His appearance was rounded out by a neatly trimmed mustache that adorned his upper lip.
Elo, Mäkinen, and the other men of Er.P 15 heard a sound they had been hoping to never hear, a sound that sent a shiver down Elo’s spine and made him nauseous. Elo now regretted the hearty breakfast of sausage and hardtack he had eaten several hours ago.
The sound that every infantryman dreaded steadily grew louder. The noise was a combination of mechanical clanking and the occasional squeal. As the noise from the metallic abominations drew nearer, the Finns started to feel a vibration rumble through the earth.
The grizzled veteran gave his young officer a nod of encouragement. Elo exhaled sharply and gave the sergeant a slight smile. “Do not fire until ordered to do so,” Elo ordered in a stern voice that belied the butterflies dancing in his stomach.
As the sound grew closer, snow from the fir trees that loomed over the road began to trickle to the ground. The snow was being dislodged by the vibration of the approaching column. Every Finn in the platoon focused their gaze on a bend in the road about fifty meters to the east of their barricade. Elo’s eyes widened as a tank suddenly rumbled into view.
Upon seeing the barricade, the tank rolled to a stop. Through an open observation port on the right side of the tank, one could see the driver's head. Upon seeing the Finnish barricade, the man reached out and pulled the steel door of the port closed. The tank’s commander, whose upper torso was visible jutting out of the tank’s turret hatch, raised up his hand, a signal to the armored car immediately behind the tank to stop.
The Finns took in the sight of the first tank any of them had ever seen. The tank had a low, compact silhouette slightly taller than a large man. The tank's dark green coloration was a stark contrast against the pristine white of the snowy terrain that surrounded it. The shadowy maw of the 45mm gun pointed at the Finns sending a shiver down their spines. The much smaller barrel of a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun jutted from the turret, just to the right of the main gun.
Sergeant Mäkinen glanced at two men standing to his right and said, “Get ready.”
The two privates nodded in acknowledgement and dropped to their knees. They both reached forward and picked up a bottle of spirits with a white fabric wick jutting from the top. The bottles were pre-positioned at the base of the barricade in anticipation of this moment.
The entire Finnish Army possessed roughly forty anti-tank guns in their entire nation to use against the largest armored force in the world. They had deployed most of the guns on the Mannerheim Line. With so few guns with which to stem the tide of enemy tanks, the Finns had to find an alternative to killing enemy armor. To solve this problem, General Mannerheim brought the military’s brightest minds together to devise a means of fighting tanks.
Though they had satchel charges, those heavy bags required a soldier to either physically attach the charge to a tank hull or get close enough to heave the twenty-pound bag onto or into the path of a tank. The officers determined that either methodology would likely result in the death of the soldier using the charge. Knowing that they couldn’t afford to waste the life of any of their soldiers, they invented a different way to attack a tank. This new invention was about to be put to its first test.
The weapon devised by the Finns was light enough to throw from a safer distance than the satchel charges yet provided a means to penetrate a tank’s armor. This simple weapon, inexpensive, and easy to manufacture, would ignore a tank’s armor. The weapon could by-pass the armor of any armored vehicle and find its way into the crew compartment through even the smallest of openings. This weapon was an equalizer that created the means for anyone to kill a tank and changed the course of warfare for the next ninety years.
In tribute to the lead negotiator for the Soviet Union, the man who demanded the impossible in exchange for a piece of paper promising that the Soviet Union would not invade their home, the Finns named the new weapon the Molotov Cocktail. Finland’s liquor factories were quickly converted to produce the so-called cocktail in quantity. Now every Finnish unit would receive a steady supply of the weapon to combat the invaders.
The tank’s engine roared and the metal beast began to move toward the barricade. “Lig
The two privates dutifully obeyed. Using matches, they lit the fabric wicks of both bottles. The tank continued to accelerate toward the barricade and the meters that separated it from the Finns rapidly diminished. “Make ready,” Sergeant Mäkinen ordered.
The two privates picked up the flaming bottles. Both men’s eyes turned to Mäkinen who peered over the barricade. Suddenly, he shouted, “Loose!”
The two privates stood, spotted the T-26 tank bearing down on them, and hurled their bottles at the metal beast. The first bottle tumbled end over end and missed the tank by a hair’s breadth. It shattered on the ground half a dozen meters behind the tank and created a fiery burst of flames on the ground. The second bottle, well-thrown, smashed into the front armor of the tank.
Suddenly, the flammable liquid within the bottle spread over the front of the tank and ignited as the fluid came into contact with the flaming wick. The liquid fire quickly wormed its way inside the vehicle through every nook and cranny. Moments later the screams of the crew could be heard followed by the smell of cooking meat.
The tank’s commander shrieked as he pushed himself up out of the turret. Elo’s eyes widened as he saw that the man’s legs were on fire. Another man, the gunner, completely engulfed in flames, emerged from the turret hatch right behind him. The man, screaming in agony, stumbled about until he fell off the top of the turret into the snow on the side of the road.
“My God!” Elo gasped.
“God had nothing to do with this,” Mäkinen snarled as he raised his rifle and shot the flaming tanker. He turned to the two privates, Antti Järvinen and Mikko Lahtinen, who had thrown the cocktails and calmly said, “Make ready.”
The vehicle immediately behind the T-26, a BA-10 armored car, tried to maneuver around the burning tank. The front wheels of the armored car became mired in the deep snow along the side of the road. The armored car’s turret began to traverse toward the barricade. “Your target is the armored car immediately behind and to the right of the burning tank. Loose!”
The two privates came to their feet and hurled the flaming cocktails at the armored car. This time both bottles hit the vehicle’s starboard side, which was the side facing the Finns, and exploded. Again, the flaming wicks ignited the contents of the bottles which quickly spread over the side of the vehicle.
The men within the armored car screamed as the flames found their way inside. The crew, on fire, attempted to bail out of the dying vehicle. This time, the Finns shot them dead before they could hurl themselves into the snow to put the flames out.
With a fierce war scream, a Soviet squad came into view, rifles at the ready. Seeing the Finns standing behind the barricade, they stopped their charge and raised their rifles to fire. The Finns ducked down into cover a moment before the enemy bullets peppered the barricade. As the Finns disappeared from sight, the Red Army soldiers fired their first shot in anger. Mäkinen screamed, “On your feet!”
The men of Er.P 15 came to their feet and quickly took aim at the enemy squad who was working the action on their rifles and fired. Targeted by fifty Finns, all eight of the Soviets went down screaming with multiple bullet wounds. “Down!” Mäkinen yelled.
The vehicles behind the two flaming wrecks ground to a halt. Nearly ten minutes later a full platoon of Soviet soldiers came into view. “There is a platoon approaching; I count twenty-five men. Range forty meters. When I give the order, you will stand, find a target, and fire as quickly as you can,” Mäkinen ordered.
Mäkinen peered over the top of the barricade, keeping as much of himself under cover as possible. When the enemy soldiers reached the marker on the side of the road that indicated they were thirty meters out, he twisted the metal cap open on the grenade he held in his left hand. Once open, he pulled the string on the grenade to arm it. As he hurled the potato masher style grenade at the enemy he screamed, “Fire!”
The men of Er.P 15 came to their feet and fired at the Soviets. The Russian soldiers, expecting this, fired nearly simultaneously at the Finns. Without the benefit of cover nineteen of the twenty-five Soviets went down, clutching wounds. In contrast, only three Finns were hit by Soviet fire. The Finns, their bodies mostly obscured by the barricade, were hit in the head by the enemy fire and died instantly.
Without any orders, the Finns operated the action on their rifles as the stunned Soviets looked around at their fallen comrades. “Fire at will!” Mäkinen shouted.
Thirty seconds later, the remaining Soviets had joined their wounded and dead comrades on the ground in front of the Finnish barricade. “Reload your rifles while you have the chance.” Mäkinen ordered in a deep commanding voice, a voice that calmed the nervous soldiers as the tone said that this was just another day, and everything was under control.
He turned to Elo and asked, “Orders, sir?”
“Continue to hold this position sergeant,” Elo ordered.
Mäkinen grinned. “Very good, sir.”
The roar of engines, signaling the approach of the Soviet column had become a dull rumble as hundreds of vehicles from the halted column began to idle. The Finns waited nervously as they heard orders shouted in Russian just out of their sight. Nearly half an hour later, a blood-curdling scream startled them as seventy-five men charged around the bend right at them.
“Looks like they are trying a company this time,” Mäkinen observed.
Repeating Mäkinen’s previous order, Elo shouted, “Fire at will!”
Mäkinen turned to the two Molotov Cocktail wielding privates and yelled, “Light up and throw them at the approaching enemy soldiers as quickly as you can!”
The Soviet attackers began to fall in ones and twos as the Finns poured fire into them with their rifles. Antti Järvinen and Mikko Lahtinen, the wicks on their cocktails aflame, stood and hurled them at the charging horde. The bottles struck two of the soldiers and shattered when they hit the frozen, concrete-like surface of the road.
The center of the Soviet infantry company was engulfed in flames as the lead men reached the barricade. The Finnish defenders received the enemy charge by thrusting their bayonets into the faces of their opponents. Lieutenant Elo swallowed his anxiety, drew his pistol, and shot several of the attackers.
The two cocktail wielding privates, fearful that they would set the barricade on fire if they used them on the men in front of the barricade, crawled into the woods. Each man brought with him a bag holding several Molotov Cocktails. From their new vantage point Järvinen and Lahtinen hurled their flaming bottles into the left flank of the Soviet attackers.
The first two bottles hurled into the crowd struck the concrete like frozen surface of the road and shattered. With a whoosh, the flames ignited the alcohol at the feet of the Russians. Men immediately screamed in agony as the fire rushed up their legs. Within moments several of them had become human torches.
One of the enemy soldiers, pressed up against the barricade, noticed the two Finns in the nearby woods. He turned toward them and raised his rifle to fire. The man’s life was abruptly ended when Sergeant Mäkinen thrust his bayonet into the side of the Soviet’s head. Mäkinen ripped his bayonet free and shot the man immediately behind him in the face.
The tide of the battle began to turn as one of the enemy soldiers panicked and started to backpedal. Soon several of his comrades joined him in flight. These were quickly followed by a dozen more, causing morale to completely collapse. Soon, the surviving Russians fled down the road. They left behind two dozen dead or injured comrades.
Scattered in front of the barricade lay the bodies of nearly three dozen Red Army soldiers. On the Finnish side of the barricade eight precious, irreplaceable soldiers lay dead. “Everyone reload your rifles!” Mäkinen shouted, he turned to Järvinen and Mikko Lahtinen who still stood in the woods to the south of the barricade and shouted, “Grab a couple bottles each and position yourselves on the north side of the road.”
“How far down do you want us?” Private Järvinen asked nervously.
“Just this side of the bend. Roughly forty meters up the road from the barricade,” Mäkinen replied.
Järvinen and Lahtinen took two bottles each with them, one in each hand. In addition to the cocktails, each man had a satchel charge strapped across their back. The two Finns moved silently through the woods until they were positioned in the spot Mäkinen had ordered them to occupy. While the two Molotov Cocktail wielders shifted position, the rest of the platoon worked to reload their rifles.
