Vanhala increasingly overcame his bashfulness. His comments were already frequently spot-on. Moreover, he proved himself to be a reliable guy, and Lehto took him on as something of a right-hand man, which further solidified his credibility.
Each in his own way, the men were transformed by the response the slaughter drew out of them. The strong grew stronger; the weak faltered further under the strain. Riitaoja began to babble incomprehensibly and Lehto demanded a replacement, but the request was turned down. No man was excused from his butchering duties.
Little by little, Ensign Kariluoto had developed into one of the battalion’s best platoon leaders. Autio gave him all the toughest assignments, and Kariluoto, for his part, tried to take Koskela with him whenever possible. Generally, Koskela did accompany him, or rather, accompanied the machine guns detailed to support his platoon, as he generally took the hardest missions himself. The relationship between the two officers was exceptional in all it comprised. Kariluoto tended to take his cues from Koskela’s moods, and Koskela delicately tried to avoid being forced into any sort of role as psychological leader. He knew that every time Kariluoto boldly threw himself into the line of fire while he was watching, he was doing it to make up for that moment back in the swamp when he had taken cover, unable to lead the advance. It was as if the young man wanted to redeem himself with these courageous acts, to free himself from the shame of the memory and regain his self-respect.
And this is precisely what happened, in reality. With each new obstacle that confronted him, Kariluoto repeated his command over and over to himself: Fourth Platoon, advance! and his voice grew more assured every time. And every time he shoved the feeling of weakness deeper into the recesses of his chest. And so Kariluoto came to be counted beside Koskela, Autio and Lammio as one of the battalion’s bravest officers.
His idealism underwent a change as well. The irrational waves of emotion gave way to a firm sense of duty. He became a favorite within his platoon before long too. The men had never hated him, but they had considered him somewhat immature on account of his over-zealousness. Now the brave among them saw it as their duty to live up to him, and the weaker demonstrated their respect in other ways.
One day he received a profound shock that made a decisive impression on him. He had a volunteer battle-runner, a boy a couple of years younger than the rest of them. The kid was generally quite brave, if only out of childish fearlessness, as he didn’t always understand just how close to death he was – luckily for him.
The enemy was defending some hill more relentlessly than usual. They were cast back from the slope four times, and it was there that the battalion lost the greatest number of men in one operation. Kariluoto’s platoon was reduced to a couple of squads. The third machine-gun team from Koskela’s platoon fell in a heap behind the weapon, one after the other, with the sole exception of the ammunition-bearer. Kariluoto pressed on desperately. The command to cut unnecessary losses had already been issued, but he still thought he might be able to succeed in the charge. Capturing even the smallest bit of the end of the trench would mean victory, and he planned to carry out the mission with just a few of his best men so as to avoid casualties.
He convinced a few guys to go with him, but they didn’t make it to the trench. Instead, the battle-runner took a bullet in the stomach as he was throwing a hand grenade, and the venture stopped short. Kariluoto dragged the wounded boy to cover behind a rock. He was in severe pain, as an exploding bullet had torn his stomach to shreds. Kariluoto himself moaned at the horror of the sight as he tried to bind the boy’s wounds. He just said gently, ‘Don’t move … It’ll hurt more. The stretcher’ll be right here. Hang on. They’ve had a lot to carry today.’
The boy’s mouth foamed with blood. ‘It’s death that’s coming … not a stretcher. I’m going to Father … oh! It hurts … ah … ahhh … It’s burning …’
Kariluoto was crying. ‘You aren’t going to die … Stay calm … The stretchers will be here soon and they’ll operate at the field hospital …’
The boy was overcome with a child’s fear of death. He struggled to move and Kariluoto had to hold him down.
‘Ensign … you pray … I can’t … remember … it’s burning … I’m dying …’
Kariluoto was in such a state of shock he didn’t know what to do. In his panic, he didn’t even register that he was praying, he just tried to appease the boy, murmuring, ‘Our Father … who art in heaven … Hallowed be thy name …’
The boy moved his blood-stained lips, ‘Our … Father … Our Father …’ Then he struggled violently a couple of times trying to raise himself up, lifting his back off the ground. His face went blue and his body stiffened. Kariluoto swept his cap over the boy’s eyes and crawled back to his men.
He wrote another letter. Not since Vuorela’s death had he done such a thing.
… you, that my words are meaningless to you, and can do nothing to relieve you of your grief. In sorrow, each of us is alone, and it is alone that we must redeem each moment from fear and death. We must not sanctify the sadness our losses bring, but rather endure, with all the strength of our will. I am writing to you because I am the one who ordered him to the spot where he fell – I am not at fault, but I am aware of my responsibility. That is why I am writing: because I do not want to shirk this responsibility, but to take it on as my burden to bear, for great as it may be, greater still is the cause for which he, and all the rest of us, have come here …
Kariluoto wasn’t ashamed of his letter this time. Instead, he was sickened by the stupid, naïve, patriotic phrases in the letters he received from home.
Days turned to weeks. Time no longer held any meaning for them. They lost track of the days. Once in a while somebody would say, ‘Isn’t it Sunday today?’ and somebody else would think for a second and say, ‘Shit – yeah, it is.’ Periods of time appeared in their calendars as follows: the time the platoon lost six guys, the shitty encirclement, the alarm at the crack of dawn by the railroad embankment, the annihilation of the vehicle column, the mad dash, the run-in with the assault tanks.
The nights were beginning to get dark now. It rained frequently, and you could feel autumn in the air. They occupied tiny Karelian villages whose residents had been evacuated. Those who had stayed behind looked on them with a submissiveness that seemed somehow suspect. Behind the troops there trailed pastors and cultural counselors dispatched to begin assimilation efforts amongst the Karelians, but the men had nothing to do with any of that.
They just hoped for food and rest, both of which were in short supply. Once they seized a field kitchen full of freshly prepared cabbage soup.
‘Don’t touch it. It could be poisoned.’
Rokka scooped himself a bowl. ‘You all are actin’ like children. Here we got shells an’ bullets whizzin’ non-stop and you fellas are worried ’bout a lil’ poison?’
Rokka ate, and when he showed no signs of poisoning, the others ate too. Lahtinen praised the soup to high heaven, comparing it to the meals from their own field kitchen. ‘These past thirty years now we been hearing about how everybody over here on these communal farms was gonna start dying of starvation, but it looks to me like the kolkhoz boys got something to eat after all. We’ll just see how all this turns out in the end.’
‘Well, who knows?’ Rokka said, licking his spoon and looking sly. ‘Things’s lookin’ pretty bad, it’s true. There is one bright side, though. Those poor devils lost some mighty fine soup. And that there’s a sure victory for us. Lissen, you take another bowl, just to seal things up.’
Even Lahtinen laughed at that – and th
eir spirits were a bit brighter as they set off. But then Hietanen started whistling. Hietanen’s whistling always had the same devastating effect on them, regardless of the situation, as it was truly dreadful, but our boy Urho just carried on whistling away. Once in a while he would issue harsh judgements of communism on the basis of the poorly maintained Eastern Karelian roads. Lahtinen often found himself hard pressed to defend it in light of the half-rotting buildings, the shoddy newsprint, and the inhabitants’ ragged clothing.
On the other hand, they had to admit that its defenders seemed pretty attached to it. They died at their posts, behind great heaps of ammunition cartridges.
Barrages rumbled, automatic weapons rattled. Man after man died, each in his own way. Somewhere a sprint was cut short mid-race. Somewhere else a weapon slipped from arms gone limp and a head lurched down upon it. Some died moaning and begging for mercy, others cursing and gritting their teeth.
Somebody lay behind a rock waiting for death, brave and calm to the end.
Mile after mile was bought on these men’s backs: miles of muddy, Eastern Karelian road, winding toward Petroskoi.
II
Smoke struggled up from the stovepipes into the gray drizzle. Howitzers rumbled by, and an ammunition column clanged noisily down the muddy road. The racket didn’t disturb the men sleeping in the tents, however. They’d been sleeping like the dead for fifteen hours and showed no signs of stirring anytime soon.
Rahikainen was on fire-watch. He passed the time playing poker by himself, pulling two separate hands of cards and murmuring back and forth, ‘What’cha got? Three whores. Well, that ain’t bad at all …’ He tossed one hand angrily back on the deck. He glanced at the time and, seeing that his shift was finally almost up, hurried to wake Hietanen.
‘Hey! Get up and watch the fire.’ He poked and prodded Hietanen for a long time, until at last he got him to sit up. Hietanen groped around, entirely disorientated, pushing his hair out of his eyes.
‘Go stand guard by the fire. It’s your turn.’
‘Yeah,’ Hietanen said compliantly as he sank back into bed, blissfully ignorant of whatever it was he was being asked to do. Rahikainen relaunched his campaign.
‘No, no, no you don’t, you’re gonna go stand watch by the fire.’ Rahikainen was fired up by his own desire to sleep, so Hietanen would have to be roused, come hell or high water.
‘What?’
‘Fire-watch.’
‘Aw, shit. Firewood still holding out?’
‘Well, why wouldn’t it be? And in nice little logs, too. Rahikainen the Patriot here chopped wood. Just like a real war horse.’
‘Well, let’s hope they give you a medal for it. Jesus, it feels good to sleep. How long did we go without rest?’
‘Three days.’
Rahikainen crawled over to his bed and said as he dropped off to sleep, ‘Artillery got hit with some shells minute ago. Probably made a few more heroes. Heard some shoutin’ anyway. I’d be happy to do a round in artillery myself. Word is those guys get bigger rations. Might have been able to get some off of somebody over there, if I’d a had it in me to go that far. But I’m pretty beat.’
Hietanen looked out of the tent. Three wrecked tanks were lying on the main road and a few dead Russians lay by the wayside. That was where yesterday’s counter-attack had ended. Hietanen pulled up his trouser-leg to check on the small wound in his thigh. It already showed promising signs of healing. One of the mangled tanks now out on the road had fired a shell right next to Hietanen, and a shard had lodged itself in his thigh. He had burned a safety pin with a match to kill off the bacteria and used it to carve out the shard, which was now wrapped in paper and tucked in his wallet.
He pulled his trouser-leg back down, dug the shard out of his wallet and considered it thoughtfully. ‘This world’s got everything all right. Put a hell of a lot of work into making that thing, and then they send it shooting along through the woods. And they don’t even know how to shoot it! War’s a pretty crazy business, that’s for sure. All pre-tty strange if you ask me.’
Then he tossed some more wood onto the fire and sat dozing before the stove. The artillery kept rumbling by, and cracks of infantry fire rang out from the front line. Another regiment had been marched out there yesterday, when they had been ordered to stand down. Hietanen listened to the shooting and started dozing off. Machine guns hammered out intermittent bursts: pa, pa, pa, pa, pa. There was a light machine gun firing off solo rounds, and Hietanen figured it was probably Russian, since the sound of the shot had a different quality when you heard it from the front end of the barrel. Pa-koo-pa-koo-pa-koo.
Hietanen’s head jerked up with a start. He was afraid he would fall asleep if he stayed beside the stove, so he threw his coat over his shoulders and crawled out of the tent. He checked on the other squad’s fire and then, bored, started wandering around the encampment. A gray, misty rain drizzled from the low-hanging clouds. It cast a gray gloom over the whole, forested world and the war concealed inside it. Hidden in the trees, tens of thousands of men were fighting one another, and nothing but the clinks of combat revealed the existence of this life, and the death it portended. A horse-cart came down the road carrying a vat of soup – the driver huddled with his reins pulled in beneath his wet coat, which he had pulled up over his head like a hood. The horse’s back and neck streamed with water as the rain pooled and collected into black streaks.
Mielonen approached from the direction of the command tent, prompting a familiar dread to rise up in Hietanen. Was their rest period up? Of course, Mielonen could be coming for some other reason than to order them to head out – so, Hietanen avoided the question, caught between hope and fear. What would he say? Hietanen was practically having heart palpitations he was so anxious. Was that mouth about to declare, ‘Get rrready to head out!’? He calmed down slightly when he heard Mielonen’s voice say, ‘So, what’s the Hietanen boy wandering around for?’
‘Just sittin’ here thinkin’ war’s a right miserable business. Hunger, cold, fear, sleep, and these lice-infested rags just to top it off.’
‘Sounds about right. There’s saunas in these villages, but no, always gotta be pressing onward. I was just asking that ambulance driver over there, and he said that the vehicles can barely keep up. Guys are going down all over the place now. Seems they’re advancing down into the isthmus now, too, into Kannas.’
Whew, it’s nothing, Hietanen thought, relieved at the conversational tone of Mielonen’s banter. He was still afraid to ask straight out about departure, though. He was about to say something in response, but didn’t manage to get it out before Mielonen continued, ‘We’re heading out, too. Go alert the Third Platoon, will you? I haven’t got it in me to crawl in there and wake up Koskela.’
‘You’re joking.’ Hietanen felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach.
‘Nope. Sound the alarm!’
Blood rose to Hietanen’s face. His first wave of anger was so powerful that he was deadly serious when he said, ‘You mother-fucking bastard. I ought to shoot you dead.’
‘Down, boy. Shooting me’s not gonna do anything. Gonna have to knock off some of the big boys for that.’
The angry outbursts that greeted Mielonen’s calls to alert had long since ceased to offend him. He just hollered on as before, ‘Machine-gunners, get rrready to head out!’
No other shout of that strength would have awakened the men just then, but this one did. As Mielonen made his way through the tents, yelling ‘Wake up! Get rrready to head out!’ faces emerged from the tent flaps, spewing curses so vile an onlooker would have thought Mielo
nen’s calm indifference lunatic.
‘Shut the fuck up, Savo!’
It was hardly the fault of his being from Savo that Mielonen had to wake the tired men, but the words ‘Get ready to head out’ were ones the men hated with a vengeance, rolled Rs or not. And, on hearing them, oh, how they hated Savo – apart from those who were themselves from Savo and thus obliged to demonstrate their anger in other ways.
A furious Hietanen stood between the tents, venting his anger by shouting, ‘Third Platoon, wake up! You’ve slept too much already. Get up! Time to get up and show the people of the world what a terrifying creature the deep-forest warrior is. Up, fearsome lions of Finland! The ground is trembling and the cannons have already let fly. Put down your plow and take up your sabre! Time to add new pages to the glorious, the victorious, the downright staggering military history of Finland!’
Sleepy voices emerged from the tents. All the crown jewels in the arsenal of Finnish curses were trotted out in the service of the men’s bitterness. For the ten-thousandth time, their medal-hunting officers had a chance to hear their glories sung.
‘We’re not going anywhere. Let’s tell the bosses we demand at least three days’ rest before we’re going anywhere. That or they can take off by themselves if they want. Nothing to carry and orderlies looking after them. Ha! Assholes ought to try taking a load on their own backs, then they might understand how much a man can take. The strain on them is so much less than on us infantry guys that they think we can just keep going the way they can.’