‘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. Then came a desperate, wrenching death cry, followed by another shot. 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.
III
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 re
ally 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 big enough to be of any use? 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.