Unknown Soldiers Page 6

  II

  ‘Wake up, guys! It’s started!’

  A nervous excitement stirred in the tent. The men grabbed whichever belts and caps their hands touched first. Everybody was rushing to get out, and some guys even had their packs on already.

  They heard a few isolated cannon blasts off to the right, where the main road was. A dull thud boomed somewhere behind the border, and a few moments later a shell went off. The men listened in silence. The night forest was quiet, save for the occasional twitter of an early bird high in a spruce tree. The pale, summer night gave the men’s faces a blue-white cast. Even their breathing was quiet and cautious. Finally, somebody broke the silence, whispering, ‘Cannon fire.’

  ‘Cannons.’

  ‘Headed for the road.’

  ‘Aim’s pretty far off still. Can’t even hear the whistle.’

  ‘If it turns just a little, though, it’ll be right here.’

  The last remark was ill-considered. Some of the men stirred restlessly. Several fumbled with their shovels. Ensign Koskela emerged from the command tent. The soldier who carried the first machine gun’s ammunition, Private Riitaoja, approached him anxiously. His eyes darted furtively about as he mumbled quietly to Koskela, ‘Ensign, sir. If they turn, are they gonna strike?’

  Koskela reflected for a moment before responding to the question posed by this boy from central Finland. He didn’t quite grasp what he was getting at, however, as he then asked, ‘Turn what?’

  ‘The c-c-c-cannons. They’re shooting toward the road. But if they turn, will they strike?’

  ‘Oh! No, no. They’re just shooting toward the road to stir things up. They won’t shoot randomly into the forest.’

  Riitaoja broke into a childish smile. The sudden release of tension in his body was so great that his very eyes danced, and he said lightly, ‘Yessir, Ensign, sir! That’s what I was thinking, too. They wouldn’t shoot into the forest. They don’t even know we’re here. They think we’re just rabbits or something.’

  Koskela’s presence dispelled the others’ nervousness too.

  ‘The cannons are already singing out there!’ Hietanen smiled to Koskela, and Vanhala sniggered to himself, ‘Singing … heehee! Cannons sing. But bullets just ring. Heehee!’

  ‘Of course they’re making a racket over there,’ Koskela said. ‘The guys drove the trucks up too close. Just asking for a nosebleed for no reason. OK, departure’s in half an hour. We go with the Third Company. And one more thing. Strap two ammo boxes together with a belt. That way you can wear them around your neck. So your hands don’t go numb holding ’em, I mean.’

  Koskela fell silent, but the men sensed, correctly, that he hadn’t quite finished. He cleared his throat for a moment, then swallowed before beginning again. ‘So. I, uh, guess I should explain a few things. I mean, since I’ve been out there before. There’s not really much to it, but you want to stay calm. Hurry when the moment comes, but otherwise rushing around just makes for a lot of dumb dickheads, like they say. Getting yourself all worked up won’t help, but that doesn’t mean you should rush in and hand ’em everything you’ve got, either. They’ll be happy to take it the moment you let ’em. Aim for the belt buckles, that’s the best way to settle things. Just remember, they’re no different from other people. They bow to bullets, just like everybody else.’

  Private Sihvonen, who hailed from the same part of North Karelia as Rahikainen – but managed to be his living antithesis – said, gesticulating nervously, ‘Stay calm, stay calm. Rushing around makes for dumb dickheads. That’s for sure. Best to stay calm.’

  ‘OK. Tents down and into the vehicles.’

  They collapsed the tents, rolled them up and carried them off to the carts. The supply train was sitting a little way off, and Mäkilä was roaming about in the dim light, taking one last inventory before departure. The men bringing the tents asked him when the next mealtime would be, to which Mäkilä responded, ‘All in good time. We’re just on the normal schedule, there are no extra portions.’

  Master Sergeant Korsumäki was also up and, to the men’s bewildered surprise, the old man, who’d always been so withdrawn before, now chimed in kindly, ‘Maybe we could spare a little bread for these boys to stick in their pockets.’

  Mäkilä gave one rye cracker to each of the men who’d carried the tents, advising them the whole time not to tell the others. ‘Right, sure, why not? Because I can’t make bread out of pine cones, that’s why not!’

  The men concealed their booty in their pockets: one half of a dried-out rye roll the size of your palm. They were hungry, but they had the future to consider too.

  In unusually short order, everybody was ready for departure. The machine-gun teams kept hoisting the guns and gun mounts up on their shoulders, as if they needed to get used to their weight, having the first shift. The scouts and ammunition carriers belted up the cartridge boxes according to Koskela’s instructions. Each of the machine-gun leaders carried a back-up gun barrel, a box of ammunition and a water container. And so the pack animals were ready to set out on their journey across hundreds of miles. The journey would be shorter for some, of course, but nobody wasted a moment’s thought on that.

  The infantry companies set off, each one followed by a platoon of machine-gunners. The First and Second Platoons vanished into the dark spruce grove as commands sounded low beneath the clatter of their gear.

  Koskela’s whisper cut through the rustling march of the Third Platoon. ‘Double file. To the road.’

  Once the group had settled into formation, a message rippled down the line from one man to the next: ‘Head out.’

  The infantry company they were trailing hollered furtive greetings in their direction, hissing at half-volume, ‘Welcome to Camp Finland! We’re a little low on wheat, but chaff we have in spades.’

  They passed the artillery battery they’d seen on its way out earlier that evening and saw that the cannons were now fully manned. The men kept their voices low, shielding their cigarettes with their hands. A bit further down the road, they turned off into a dark spruce forest. The cannon fire they’d heard to the south had already died down, but somehow silence felt even more oppressive.

  They advanced slowly. They made several stops along the way, and the men breathed heavily, listening anxiously to the silence of the night and the pounding of their own hearts.

  ‘Ha … alt.’

  The company got itself into formation. The submachine-gunners situated themselves as scouts twenty paces or so out in front, and the machine-gunners split up into squads, holding further back at about the same distance. Then the Company Commander’s battle-runner arrived with an announcement. ‘Border directly ahead. Silence imperative. First Platoon’s got a patrol out on the border. Don’t shoot without asking the password.’

  ‘What was it again?’

  ‘Striker. Lightning.’

  ‘Quiet! You don’t want those assholes to hear you!’

  The murmurs fell silent. A few of the men started smoking – the ones who still had cigarettes, that is. For several days now they’d been suffering from a serious tobacco shortage, as the cigarette rations hadn’t been distributed, so you couldn’t get cigarettes anywhere.

  Rahikainen had some, thanks to his swaggering escapades back at the canteen. He’d already made a pretty penny out of his bread rolls, and now he was vending cigarettes by the piece at outrageous prices. Many of the men were living on their meager army wages, so the luxury of buying was restricted to the wealthy. When one of these lucky souls tossed away a tiny cigarette butt, others would pounce on it immediately
and stuff it into a cigarette-holder, blowing on their singed fingers. You could still get something out of it, if you smoked it in the grubby holder.

  One guy tried to buy on credit, promising to settle up on the next payday, but Rahikainen wasn’t interested. ‘Who knows who’ll still be here by the time the next payday rolls around? Who’s gonna be responsible for settlin’ up then?’

  ‘Me.’ Koskela cleared his throat and said rather hurriedly, ‘I haven’t got any money either, but if something happens, you can take my binoculars. They belong to me, not the army, and you could easily sell them to make up the difference. You won’t have any trouble finding a buyer around here, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Well, I believe that … yeah, sure … I didn’t mean … I mean, it’s not about the money.’ Rahikainen sounded half-ashamed, half-hurt, but in any case he shared the cigarettes.

  Every one of them had taken note of the fact that Koskela had broken rank in his exchange with Rahikainen, getting involved as if the two men were equals, rather than private and officer. And from then on, Koskela interacted with all of them that way. At first the men found it strange, and many of them struggled to treat him the same way in return. None of them ever really managed to pull it off convincingly. It was a rare phenomenon in this regiment of conscripts, in which the officers were constantly trying to maintain their so-called status, even in wartime. Of course, many officers did maintain their superior status across all units, though it was hardly by means of pretentious standoffishness that they commanded the men’s respect. The marked gesture on Koskela’s part was not without effect, however. Just his presence was enough to calm his men’s nerves, as he seemed somehow closer to them. He was the one they trusted to resolve all the questions the future promised to pose.

  They heard low voices and the dry sputtering of engines coming from somewhere behind them. It was Kaarna, shadowed by Mielonen, close on his heels.

  ‘All right, all right. Quiet down, boys. We’re going to get the rabbit. We’ve already got him surrounded. Where’s Autio?’

  ‘Over by the Second Platoon.’

  ‘Right, right, sure, sure. Hietanen, what kind of troops do we have here?

  ‘The finest machine-gunners in the nation, Captain, sir.’

  ‘Right, right, that’s the way, that’s the way.’

  It was an old question, to which there was only one answer. Kaarna habitually held his own company to be just a cut above the rest. He didn’t really care whether this belief corresponded to reality or not – he was just aware of what healthy self-confidence can do. He knew, of course, that machine guns were dwindling in significance, at least in offensive combat operations, but he encouraged his men to take pride in their weapons anyway. Also, the man was like a rock when it came to defending his company. Officers from other companies had best refrain from coming to him with any complaints about his men. Some cadet had tried it once, when somebody or other failed to salute. Kaarna replied coldly that his men certainly never failed to salute, therefore the cadet must be mistaken. ‘On top of which, it seems that the cadet’s own stance demonstrates rather poor form. Why don’t you go practice it a couple more times?’

  The man in question was duly punished, but the cadet made sure to give Kaarna a wide berth after that.

  All these kinds of things that Kaarna did stuck in the minds of his men, so even now his words brought smiles to their all-too-grim faces. ‘A man who bears the unbounded admiration of his men’ is the phrase often applied to some officer or other. It has a slightly nauseating ring, besides which it’s false, since no cradle yet has rocked such an officer as could inspire the unbounded admiration of a Finnish private. But Kaarna’s relationship to his men was exceptional. ‘Won’t find another one quite like that son of a bitch. Real bird of prey,’ the men would say. The relationship was anything but equal, however. There was no question who was calling the shots. It was just Kaarna’s direct, fair and absolutely straightforward manner that made an impression on the men.

  There were smiles on their faces as they watched him leave, heading off in search of the Third Company commander, Lieutenant Autio.

  ‘You’ll see, boys. Wherever it is that things get cracking, that man’s command post won’t be far off,’ somebody said, and the others murmured in agreement. Kaarna and Mielonen set off, one after the other, with Mielonen issuing instructions regarding their direction, which he presumed to have a better sense of than the Captain. Their conversations generally consisted of a string of little disputes, as Mielonen did not hesitate to issue commands and voice his opinions, even on questions of strategy. The Captain was happy to let the Corporal do this, though he would never have taken it from a major. He squabbled with Mielonen to pass the time and did as he liked, regardless, though he had nothing against Mielonen’s suggestions. The Corporal was a sensible fellow, which was something. The Captain didn’t trust Mielonen’s sense of direction, though, and said, ‘No-o-o, Mielonen. Follow the eye of experience. The Russkis are over there.’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not so far from the front. The command post, I mean.’

  Kaarna and Mielonen’s murmuring faded away and silence reigned, until suddenly it was shattered.

  ‘Holy Christ!’

  ‘Everybody down!’

  The leafy undergrowth rustled and weapons clanged as the men frantically dropped to the ground. Behind them, as if just behind their ears, there came a series of deafening artillery explosions. Ba-boom. Boom. Boom.

  A sharp, piercing whistle soared over the treetops, and the men clung to the ground with their eyes opened wide. Then more explosions came, more randomly now, and again the air was filled with hissing. Somewhere far behind the border they could hear faint thuds.

  Koskela, who was sitting on a mound of grass, called out, ‘Get up, guys! It’s our own guns. And try to keep those boxes from rattling so goddamn much.’

  They clambered to their feet, grateful that the embarrassment was communal. Only Lehto hadn’t moved a muscle. He was just sitting right where he had been, a thin, slightly contemptuous smile on his face. Soon Hietanen pulled himself together as well, as did another machine-gun leader, Private Määttä, a shortish guy from the northern town of Kainuu, not far from the eastern border.

  Vanhala had sunk down to the ground rather languidly, following the others’ lead. And now, the corners of his eyes crinkling with his smile all the while, he was the last to rise. ‘The booming voice of authority! Heehee,’ he whispered to his neighbor. He didn’t even blush this time, though it certainly took some daring to start cracking jokes when the others were taking the incident so seriously.

  Riitaoja, on the other hand, was slow to recover, and Sihvonen blustered, ‘Of course. It’s our own guns. Getting all jumpy over that! Clear as day that that was our guns. Stupid to get all worked up.’ He himself was the one who had plunged to the ground with the most terrific clatter, however.

  The battery fell silent, but the men’s uneasiness was slow to recede. The leader of the rifle platoon in front of them was pacing back and forth restlessly in front of his men. He was speaking to them in an offhand sort of way, but you could tell from the stiffness in his voice and the unevenness of his breath that his heart was racing. He strode over to Koskela and said, with a contrived gruffness, ‘Well, Koski, let’s pull out all the stops! Autio promised me two of your guns.’

  ‘We’ll see when we get there,’ Koskela replied briefly, and the Ensign returned to his men, making a personal note that Koskela was not the man to turn to when you wanted someone to chat with. The machine-gunners were somewhat acquainted with this blo
nd-haired, slightly precocious ensign as well. Kariluoto, they’d heard his name was. Back in the burnt clearing he’d comported himself with a bit too much machismo, and the men’s sharp instincts made it impossible for them to take him seriously. The Ensign was happy to curse like a sailor, but it was painfully obvious that it was all just some sort of misguided idea of manliness. Coarseness didn’t suit the well-spoken, high-born fellow in the least. No wonder the other men grunted rather contemptuously, ‘Talks about the goods almost as if he’d had a feel himself.’

  They waited quietly for half an hour, until, finally, rippling down the line from the right, the command came: ‘Move out!’

  Their gray shadows moved silently through the dusky forest toward the border. The submachine-gunners stole out in front. They stared unblinking through the trees, hearts racing and hands gripping their weapons so tightly their knuckles went white. Before them lay the border: an open stretch hacked out of the forest with a double barbed-wire fence running down the length of it. They kicked down the fence amidst an ear-splitting screech of metal. Then they slipped through the gaps, save for Hietanen, who got carried away and started kicking at one of the fence posts, snarling, ‘Oh for Chrissakes! Open the roads, open the goddamn roads all the way to the skies!’

  ‘For God’s sake, keep it down,’ Koskela warned, and Hietanen abandoned his effort, but not without muttering, ‘All these goddamn posts here, in the middle of the woods! I wouldn’t stand for it.’

  They proceeded cautiously. They expected gunfire from behind every tree, every shrub. But nothing came. Not even when they crossed a small, open meadow, which they assumed the enemy must be waiting behind. The meadow widened on the left, where it met up with a small, open field that had a gray house sitting near its edge. The border ran right beside the house, which was on the Finnish side, and several men appeared to be standing around it. They recognized them as guys from the Second Battalion, the one that was supposed to advance toward the road.