The Winter Warriors, page 22
Every day in the field hospital, surgeons amputated fingers, toes, ears and noses. These were regarded as only minor wounds; the soldiers were sent back to the front to risk the rest of their skin.
With this cold, even sleeping was dangerous – if sleep had been possible, that is, because the enemy was bent on exhausting them. Across forests and blizzards Russian military songs poured from loudspeakers aimed towards Kollaa, their volume at maximum so that the drums and choirs of the Red Army drilled right into the Finnish soldiers’ skulls. At night, like beguiling nursery rhymes, the same loudspeakers endlessly poured out propaganda messages in Finnish, to eat away at the troops’ morale:
“Your families have been forcibly evacuated from their homes. They are wandering the country without refuge. Your children are starving, and you will die in your turn just to protect capitalists. Enough blood has been spilled that only benefits the imperialists. The Finnish people do not want war. Rise up against your officers. Kill them and come to join us: you will be treated as heroes. Your families have been forcibly evacuated from their homes. They are wandering the country …”
On top of that came the noise from the engines of thousands of Russian vehicles – lorries, tanks and cars, that had to be kept running day and night to avoid freezing. A monotonous, droning noise. Along with it came thick waves of petrol fumes, so dense they seemed to settle on the tongue and the back of the throat, making the soldiers gag and vomit.
At the end of their tether, the Finnish soldiers clamped their hands over their ears as if a deafening swarm of hornets had nested there. They shouted as loudly as they could to drown out the noise, preferring to hear their own voices rather than anything else, cursing the Ivans without realising they were thereby inflicting the same torture on themselves.
Accompanying the songs, the propaganda and the engines, this unbearable orchestra was completed by a third instrument that was the loudest and most deadly of all. The sound of artillery fire, its thousands of shells on even the calmest days.
No respite, no rest. Not a single minute. After nightfall, flares warded off the darkness. Reflected on the snow, their bright red glow covered the landscape with a fresh layer of blood. Together with the maddening racket, it offered glimpses of Hell such as those in ancient icons.
This was how January and February went by.
Of the 300 men in the 6th Company at the start of the conflict, only 91 were left. The numbers were made up with soldiers from other equally depleted companies. In the rear, the Lottas patched up uniforms in the same way as the generals patched up their units.
The Russians were trying to wear them down rather than win ground. However, when all they had to do was wait and pray, Juutilainen – in whose blood the percentage of alcohol was inversely proportional to that of the thermometer – could not bear to do nothing. His relations with Karlsson, who was more measured and more concerned about the fate of his men, were frequently strained, and the two officers often almost came to blows. Juutilainen sent out his patrols, whatever the cost, and even though he lost many men, every day he sent out more. It was only one morning in mid-January when he had really overstepped the mark that Teittinen, commander of the 34th Regiment, began seriously to doubt his sanity.
*
On Juutilainen’s orders, Karlsson had led a small group on an observation mission to the edge of the endless Russian tents. Pietari and Onni crawled to the top of a low rise beyond which they could hear Russian officers barking commands. When they took a cautious look at the other side, they were stupefied to see a huge lesson in the basics of skiing taking place. Like awkward children, the Russian soldiers were trying to keep their balance on the long ski tips, backsides sticking out, sticks flying everywhere, holding on to each other as they slid for a few metres before invariably falling over. Karlsson’s men were thankful for the continual din from the engines and the songs booming from the loudspeakers that covered their hoots of merriment. Pietari was only sorry that Simo was not there to witness the scene. To Finns who could ski from earliest childhood there was nothing more ridiculous than these clumsy, flailing adults, constantly reprimanded by their officers as surrogate parents, unhappy with their offspring’s lack of progress.
Karlsson motioned to assemble his group and return to their camp. They could have thrown Molotov cocktails, a dozen or so grenades or fired their machine guns indiscriminately into the Russians, but oddly, the absurd, grotesque spectacle they had seen had robbed them of any great desire for killing. The three heavy machine guns and two howitzers firmly installed around the skiers had probably also played their part, but there was no knowing exactly why Karlsson had taken the decision to withdraw.
At first, they made the journey back to Kollaa in silence, but when on his skis Onni imitated a Russian as wobbly as a fawn rising to its feet for the first time, they laughed all the way to camp.
*
Halfway between the soldiers’ tents and those of the officers, Pietari caught up with Simo, rucksack at his feet as if he had just moved out. Standing there with his rifle reaching to his armpit, he looked the opposite of redoubtable. His vision obscured by the whirling snow, it took some time for Pietari to see what his friend and the others around him were staring at.
Juutilainen and his men had returned safely from a reconnaissance patrol. Although they had met a Russian unit, they had not brought back any booty: no weapons or munitions. Instead, the Terror had preferred to bring trophies, with which he had mounted a macabre display. He had impaled the bodies of three frozen Red soldiers on wooden stakes planted round his tent. Two of them were hanging from their pierced chins, their eyes still open. The third had a label round his neck, dangling above his rib cage, with the word welcome written on it in capital letters.
“Perkele!” Pietari gasped. “What is this nonsense?”
An incensed Teittinen gave the order and, as Juutilainen, who still could not comprehend what he had done wrong, scowled at them, some soldiers began trying to lever the bodies off the poles. They soon gave up and instead pulled the stakes out of the ground. No doubt the Russians would be buried like that.
“Lieutenant Juutilainen,” the commander of the 34th Regiment lamented, “you do this just when I was about to promote you to captain? You do not make life easy for me.”
“Whether they’re left abandoned in the forest or guard my tent, they’re still dead Ryssät, are they not?”
Teittinen gave up on the idea of educating his officer, of trying to discover what morals he still had. Instead he drew a veil over this unsavoury incident.
Simo, meanwhile, had not budged. He had witnessed all this with a different kind of emotion. Not disgust or horror. Simply a profound, invisible fear. Ten days earlier, when he had shot Toivo’s killer, he had been almost disappointed not to be able to lay his hands on the Russian’s body. The Devil only knows what he would have done to him. After that, Simo had toppled into the abyss, feeding off violence and hatred to lend him inexhaustible energy. Now he had to climb out, before he encountered Juutilainen there.
“You’re coming back with us, aren’t you?” Pietari begged him.
Simo nodded gratefully, his rucksack still at his feet.
“Don’t worry, I’ll carry it,” Onni said.
As he settled back in the soldiers’ tent, Simo discovered some new recruits. He did not know them, but they knew who he was. So did everybody on both sides of the front: here at Kollaa or as far away as the Isthmus of Karelia protected by the Mannerheim Line. Simo: Belaya Smert to the Russians, and Taika-ampuja to the Finns.23
He asked each of them for news, as if making up for lost time. The time spent at the foot of the abyss that someone else’s sinister delirium had delivered him from before it was too late.
Onni and Pietari rejoiced to see in their friend’s face something other than the murderous fever that had poisoned his soul. Now it had been replaced by a kind of calm that had been absent for more than ten days.
57
Four hundred and forty kills led to Simo being offered an unprecedented reward.
A rider on a phantom horse covered completely in a white sheet pierced only around the eyes and nostrils had appeared at the entrance to his tent.
“Leave your weapon here, soldier,” the emissary told him.
He had waited for the 6th Company sniper to get ready, then led him to the rear base on the way to Lake Loimola, where he had been summoned by the divisional commander. In front of a small committee under a magnificent blue sky and a dazzling sun that set the snow aflame, Simo was congratulated for all he had done.
“This rifle of honour made in Sweden is awarded to Simo Häyhä in recognition of his achievements as a marksman and combatant,” the colonel read. Dressed in a snowsuit and wearing a fur cap, he was surrounded by his officers, a pastor and the official photographer, all lined up to face the recipient.
“His actions, with 219 of the enemy killed with a precision rifle and an equal number with a sub-machine gun, demonstrate what a single Finn with a keen eye and steady hands can do when he is determined and fearless. This rifle of honour should be seen as being as valuable as a medal, and should be passed down from father to son as a reminder, for generations to come, of Simo Häyhä’s courageous acts in this war, in which the soldiers of Finland have bravely and successfully fought for the liberty of their country, the future of their nation, and humanity’s most precious ideals.”
The photographer positioned his tripod in the snow and prepared to keep alive the memory of the ceremony. He was waiting for a smile from his subject, but when this did not appear naturally, the pastor gestured for him to be patient and went up to Simo.
“What do you see, soldier, when you take aim?”
The answer was so simple that Simo hesitated.
“A Russian!” the pastor chuckled. “Obviously, that’s what you’re going to tell me. But you don’t see the whole picture. There is you, at one with your rifle. Right behind you there is your company, then your battalion, your regiment, your division. Then there’s your family, your village, the whole country, and an entire people holding their breath with you. You are not alone; you never have been. You are three and a half million hearts swelling with pride. This photograph is more important than you think. This photograph is Finland resisting. So please smile.”
And since everyone else was smiling, Simo imitated them, the rifle of honour clasped tightly in his mittens.
After that there was a good lunch. Then the phantom horse reappeared, with the same rider.
*
The rifle of honour was passed from hand to hand around the fire. Its shiny steel and unblemished wood proved it had not yet been used, but when it was returned to Simo he slipped it under the bunk bed and recovered the one that until now had never failed him.
He knew the weaknesses of his old M28/30, and because he did, they became its strengths. Using a new weapon would have obliged him to readapt, to get to know it, and in the midst of the constant combat this did not seem the right moment. And besides, who would abandon his friend just because he’s growing old? He had too much affection for it. Just as he was about to check the loading mechanism and clean it from top to bottom, loud noises outside the tent attracted his attention. Before he could even step outside, he heard a panicked voice:
“It’s Juutilainen!”
“It’s the Terror! He’s been wounded!” another shouted.
*
Stretched out on a medical sled surrounded by soldiers, with Karlsson carrying his weapon, Juutilainen was struggling like a nag resisting being harnessed. He held up his hand, wrapped in a white bandage that had turned a sticky red, grimacing with pain and cursing both the Russian who had shot him and the Finns who had prevented him from taking his revenge even though he was wounded.
Kicking aside the Lotta who had come up to him, he unwound the bandage himself.
“Look, little one, it’s nothing! Nothing a good bottle of alcohol can’t cure.”
With that he peered straight through the round hole the bullet had drilled in his hand. Through it he could see his unit staring at him, wide-eyed.
Simo and his two friends approached Karlsson. They had a hundred questions: the legionnaire had been wounded, which they all thought was impossible. Obviously Death herself would not know what to do with such a burden.
“Was it a sniper?” Onni said.
“Yes, yes,” Karlsson eventually responded.
“But it was a Russian, right?” Pietari said, to make sure.
“Yes, yes,” Karlsson repeated. “Who else?”
“So who is going to command us now?”
“First things first. Start by warning the first-aid post. Get them to radio for an ambulance from the base hospital. Our lieutenant needs to be operated on as rapidly as possible.”
No-one needed to express out loud the relief the whole company felt at the idea of getting the Terror off their backs for a few days. They watched their tyrannical officer being taken away to the first-aid post. Wounded by a Russian. No doubt about it.
Informed of Juutilainen’s injury, Teittinen came at once to their camp to announce the appointment of his temporary replacement.
“Karlsson!” he roared. “Come here!”
58
Main headquarters, Mikkeli, Finland
Aksel Airo found Mannerheim in the church next to the hotel where their headquarters was based. It was here they had lunches and dinners; to make room for their long tables, the pews had been stacked in front of the stained-glass windows in the nave.
Lost in thought beneath the impassive gaze of Christ on the cross, the army commander was letting a mug of tea grow cold.
“The Soviet Union is inviting us to sit down at the negotiating table again,” Airo told him. “I have the terms of the new proposed treaty with me.”
Stalin had lost some of his arrogant attitude. Having been convinced he could bring Finland to its knees in a fortnight from the month of December, it was now February and he was facing the bitter reality of a much less triumphant outcome. His troops had still not advanced more than ten kilometres into the territory he had set his sights on, and the weather was against him.
In a few weeks, the climate would change. One after the other the Finnish lakes were going to thaw. In a country with almost 180,000 of them, the Russians would no longer be able to cross the water, but would have to fight their way round every one. At the same time, the snow would be melting, turning the earth into mud.
But what the Soviet dictator feared above all was not what would happen in Finland.
Stalin was beginning to look ridiculous in the eyes of the person he was afraid might want to invade Russia. Every additional day presented Hitler with the image of a country less powerful than it claimed to be, stoking his own ambition like a fire. And if Stalin added to his fears by reading the latest telegrams from his spies in Paris and London, informing him that France and Great Britain were considering intervening militarily in Finland, what he had at first thought would be a lightning conflict could turn into a quagmire.
Seeking to play the ogre and devour his tiny neighbour, he had only succeeded in drawing attention to himself. This war had been going on too long, and it had to be concluded, but without losing face.
And so Mannerheim and Stalin were talking to one another without speaking. From a distance, so as not to get their hands dirty. To communicate, Russia contacted a Swedish diplomat, who in turn got in touch with the Finnish ambassador in France, who passed the message on to his foreign minister in Finland, who relayed the information to Aksel Airo.
“New terms for a peace treaty, you say?” the field marshal repeated. “Are they really new?”
“Absolutely not. They’re identical to the ones they proposed before the war, and identical to what they proposed in January. Stalin is demanding use of the port of Hanko for 30 years …”
“Obviously. The port that controls the entrance to the Gulf of Finland, and the opening to the West. That is unacceptable.”
“He also wants Petsamo and the port of Liinakhamari …”
“To gain access to the Arctic Ocean and the nickel mines. That is not acceptable either.”
“Then he wants to establish military bases in—”
“I’m well aware of what he wants,” Mannerheim interrupted angrily, knocking over his mug of cold tea. “I haven’t sent all the able-bodied men of Finland to the front, and I haven’t lost more than 15,000 soldiers already, just to accept today what I rejected yesterday.”
The negotiations to find a diplomatic way to end the Winter War were like having two mules confronting each other: neither would back down.
“President Kallio agrees with you,” Airo said. “But he’s not living under the Russian bombardment. Their army has launched 250,000 shells on our frontlines in a single day. That’s more than we have had for the entire war. As for Kollaa, that’s a real mystery. I cannot understand how so few soldiers are managing to hold off six complete divisions. And you know very well that if your line or Kollaa falls, then all of Finland opens up to Stalin. So I simply wonder how much longer we can resist?”
A good part of Europe was asking itself the same question, each one of them putting their own self-interest first.
“Stockholm and Berlin are calling on us to accept Stalin’s terms. Paris and London are asking us to wait, and promising to send soldiers.”
“I know that, Aksel. Daladier is talking of 40,000. Chamberlain almost 100,000. But when will those troops arrive? For now, all they’re doing in France is splashing me on the front pages of their newspapers. Promises, promises! I cannot load my guns with promises! The minutes that tick by while I wait for their soldiers are not made up of seconds, but of our dead.”
