The winter warriors, p.16
The Winter Warriors, page 16
“Are all the bottles sealed with this same metal cap?” he said.
“All of them, sir.”
“And what does it say on them?”
He handed the manager the glass bottle. On its top was written “Alko”, the name of the factory, and “Rajamäki”, the town where it was situated.
“So that ends the mystery and explains why you are constantly being bombarded. I was looking for a spy; I’ve found a numbskull. I’d throw you in jail if the nation didn’t need you so much.”
The Ministry of Defence official left the factory with his minions following in his wake, leaving a contrite silence behind them.
42
Kollaa front
Winter had December in its grip.
If in its early days it had been content to sprinkle the trees with snow, now their branches drooped down almost to the ground under heavy drifts, like weary soldiers lowering their arms. Winter had frozen the heart of the forest, turned tree trunks to stone, pine needles to shards of glass.
For the first time in his life, Simo was walking on a pure white sheet, with no animal tracks to read on the ground. But the Russians were also animals, and Simo had learned to hunt them. He studied their habits and the speed at which they moved, in order to anticipate their every move, as he would have done for any quarry.
Every kill cost him more than it would have a simple infantryman or gunner, because in order to be sure of a perfect shot, Simo had to observe his adversary for many minutes, until he understood him, until he had penetrated his skin and his brain, until he became him, and then killed him. A gunner fires into the distance. An infantryman often fires at random, or with a machine gun when the enemy is charging towards him. For a sniper, it is almost personal.
With every mission, Simo had improved his technique. He had learned that if a marksman does not hit his target with the first shot, he himself becomes a target. He had also acquired the habit of piling snow up in front of him under his rifle so that none flew up with the rush of air from the gun barrel, creating a treacherous little cloud that hung above it for far too long.
And again, even though his white snowsuit gave him perfect camouflage, it stood out perilously when he was in front of a tree trunk, whether it was striped like a silver birch, the beige-grey of spruce, or the red of pine bark when it catches the rays of the setting sun. So, as soon as he found a good shooting position, Simo created a little mound of snow behind him so that he could blend in with his surroundings.
At almost 150 metres from a makeshift Russian camp, Toivo had made sure the sun was behind him before taking out his field glasses. Fifteen Red Army soldiers round a fire looked as if they were right in front of him. Stretched out alongside him, Simo laid ten rounds on the ground. He already had five loaded in his rifle. Fifteen rounds, fifteen enemy soldiers.
“That’s taking a big risk, don’t you think?”
Simo’s only response was to pile snow under his weapon and put a handful in his mouth.
“Alright then,” Toivo conceded. “So the officer is on the right. The others have sub-machine guns. There’s a bigger machine gun, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone manning it. I can’t see a marksman.”
The spotter’s role is to accompany the sniper and among other things to estimate the wind speed and the distance to the target. Simo had no real need for any of that as he was better than anyone at this kind of calculation. Toivo was useful for a very different reason: while Simo was completely focused on his target, on his own in a tunnel of concentration, his friend was keeping an eye on everything around them, because it takes a sniper to kill a sniper, and the Russians had excellent ones.
Timo swept the area in front of them with his field glasses, then studied the enemy unit once more.
“They’re trying to start a fire,” he whispered. “They look frozen stiff. The officer has moved away from the group. To the left. He’s leaning against a pine. Fire whenever you are ready.”
Simo closed one eye and slowed down his breathing. Then he hesitated, intrigued by the officer’s attitude and gestures. He held out his hand to Toivo, who passed him the field glasses.
In the two magnifying circles he saw the abhorred Ivan, the unjust invader, the bloodthirsty, monstrous aggressor sit on a rock and open a small notebook. In it was a sheet of paper he was now unfolding. A letter, perhaps … As if it had been made from the skin of its writer or still bore that person’s smell, the officer kissed it twice before putting it away. Then he lowered his head and buried his face in his hands.
Simo handed back the field glasses. Toivo looked through them again at the group.
“It’s almost night,” Toivo said. “And we’ve already killed eleven of them today. What do you say we go back to camp?”
There is a difference between being able to kill and having to kill. And for every believer, accounts to be rendered some day or other. Simo turned away from his lines of sight. Day after day, with his humaneness and rectitude, Toivo justified the unshakeable friendship Simo had for him.
43
The previous night Colonel Talvela’s troops had left by the light of the stars. On their cross-country skis, they hoped to travel more quickly than the Russians and arrive in time at Lake Tolvajärvi to await them there and, as far as they were able, block their passage.
With Talvela’s men heading north, the front at Kollaa had lost a sizeable proportion of its forces. They could no longer wait to be attacked, but they had, if possible, to anticipate them. So every day, ten or so scouts were chosen and sent into the forest to watch the enemy. And every day, Simo stepped forward to be one of them. This became such a routine that, with Juutilainen’s approval, he would leave before dawn with his tarkkailija,20 some sugar cubes and biscuits in his pockets, and disappear before even the first soldiers were awake. He chose his spotter at random from among his brothers-in-arms – Toivo, Onni and Pietari – and at random the choice almost always fell on Toivo.
Their mission was to observe and report back, but whenever Simo had the opportunity he decapitated enemy officers, making orphans of the troops he saw in the distance. With nobody to force them on, it was rare for them not to turn tail.
Stalin had promised them an easy, short war against an adversary they would crush within a fortnight. This was a monumental strategic blunder, because the soldiers were being promised certain victory, and in the very first letters from the Red Army, they vowed to return home.
“We will swallow Finland whole, and if I’m not among the first on the frontline, I’m not even sure I’ll get the opportunity to fire a single shot.”
“It won’t be long before I hold you in my arms again.”
“I’ll return with our victory.”
“Two weeks, no longer. That’s what they’ve promised us.”
But a month later, as Christmas approached, the first doubts began to appear in the enemy lines. And it was because of these letters, these simple pieces of paper that weighed as heavy as lead in their hearts, that the Soviet soldiers found themselves paralysed at the moment of attack when they had to leave their trenches under deadly fire. How could they run towards death when they had sworn to return?
Whether they were convinced or forced to fight, aggressors or aggressed, the Soviet soldiers always fell into two groups. Those who embraced death in the same way as the Finnish soldiers who could be seen during the lengthy artillery bombardments waiting for the storm to pass by playing cards or writing their letters. And those who feared death, like the soldiers who shot themselves in the hand or the flesh of their thigh, hoping to be demobilised.
Simo found it easy to recognise the lost ones, the terrorised ones, the ones forced to fight, and sometimes he spared them. Did he really spare them, or was he simply trying not to burden his soul with more senseless deaths?
“So, how many?”
This inevitable question awaited him each time he returned to camp. No-one would have detected the slightest sense of pride in his reply.
“Eleven,” Toivo said in his stead.
The others whistled. They applauded. But Simo remained stony-faced.
When he was on his mission as marksman, Simo slipped right up close to the enemy units. He came to know their camps better than his own. He spent more time close to his targets than to the companions he was protecting. And above all, he fired from a distance. In short, he was every day saved from any hand-to-hand fighting, from pure violence. At least he was spared that. But every time he came back, the number of deaths he had caused wounded him like a reproach.
“We lost about thirty men, but I’m sure we took down twice that many,” boasted someone Simo had never seen before.
New men were arriving all the time. New career soldiers, new conscripts, reservists or Civic Guardsmen. A fresh batch each week to replace those stacked up in the black tent behind the first-aid station. They never altogether made up for the losses: Finland was already running short of soldiers, and the recruits were called up even before they finished school or the ink had dried on their enlistment forms. A rifle was thrust at them, a rifle someone else had already held.
“My name is …” the newcomer said, holding his hand out to Simo.
Simo refused to listen. There was no guarantee the lad would be alive the next day.
Onni arrived, out of breath. He had run through the whole camp, and was smiling as if the armistice had been declared.
“You’re never going to believe me, Simo! Lapatossu is here!”
44
Every so often, a Russian plane flew over the Finnish lines on the Isthmus of Karelia, Lapland or the Kollaa front. It would drop a load that did not explode but burst open in the sky, releasing a sheaf of propaganda leaflets, printed on red, yellow or green paper so that they stood out in the snow. On them were slogans designed to undermine the morale of the Finnish troops.
“You will lose this war. Surrender if you want to survive.”
“Rise up against your officers. You will be heroes in our land.”
“If you are here, that means we’re taking care of your wives at home.”
The Finnish soldiers had read the first of them out of curiosity. When they saw just how many leaflets there were, they collected the paper for other less political but more hygienic purposes.
Occasionally as they patrolled or were on scouting missions, the units came across cloth banners slung between two trees. On them were scrawled in their own language:
“Lay down your arms here, put your hands up, and come and join us.”
“Is it worth dying to defend a government subservient to the imperialist West?”
“Helsinki has already fallen. Mannerheim is dead. Why go on?”
So within the Winter War another battle was being fought, one of fake information and manipulation. To fight it, Finland had created a new unit: the Anti-Depression Brigade, also called the “Anti-Homesickness Brigade”. It was headed by the Truth Officer. This officer travelled from frontline to frontline all over Finland, supplying the soldiers with the latest news from towns and cities, demystifying the rumours, chopping the head off the “It’s said that …” and adding a few amusing anecdotes. No-one was astonished at this, because many of them knew this Truth Officer by another name: “Lapatossu”, the clown star of cinema comedy who had won Finnish hearts for almost a decade.
No red nose or funny outsize shoes, but a lopsided, oblong face like a smiling potato, thick eyebrows that lent themselves well to grimaces, sparse hair scraped on the top of his skull, a kindly, open smile. A buffoon without any military training who no-one had forced to go to the front, but who was now making his three hundredth appearance.
Onni more or less dragged Toivo and Simo to the truck where, loudspeaker in hand, Lapatossu was haranguing a uniformed crowd of thousands.
“The Russians are promising to treat you well if you desert,” he cried, “when they don’t even look after their own wounded. Don’t believe them! The Russians claim you can’t win this war, when they start to tremble at the idea of leaving their trenches. Don’t believe them! The Russians say that Helsinki has fallen, when it is still being defended. Don’t believe them! They tell you Mannerheim is dead, but I promise you that from the headquarters in Mikkeli, our field marshal is directing this war day and night. He’ll use his baton to crush every last Russian skull!”
“But they say there are ten times more of them than us!” Pietari shouted, anonymous in the crowd.
Without attempting to identify the heckler, Lapatossu burst out laughing. He dropped his hands to his round belly before responding:
“Oh yes, there are lots of them, I can guarantee that. And there’d have to be a lot more for them to … But wait … would you like some good stories about that?”
As delighted as kids at the fair, the earth- and bloodstained soldiers roared their approval.
“Rumour has it …” Lapatossu always began with this catchphrase. “Rumour has it that Stalin has gone as far as Crimea for conscripts. Do you know that in summer the temperature in Crimea is close to 30°C, and that in the harshest winters it rarely falls below zero? And do you know what remained of them when the train doors were opened in Lapland? Ice cubes! They were all dead, frozen in their summer kit! Whole carriages filled with Russian ice! Who would like one?”
Ever since death had become so familiar to them, the soldiers laughed at horror stories like this. They begged the clown to tell them another story, so he embarked on one more joke.
“Rumour has it … Rumour has it that the Soviet high command only has incomplete maps of Finland. Do you know they fired 7,000 shells at the same spot? They thought they were flattening a town, but in fact were aiming at a hamlet that had only one house, and a farmhouse with a red roof. And after 7,000 shells, do you know what is left of the hamlet? A house and a farm with a red roof! Are they shooting with their eyes closed?”
It was true that, however wounding his jokes were, Lapatossu never killed any Russians, but for a while he brought a pause in the war. He gave the men courage and hope, and the Anti-Depression Brigade bandaged souls as effectively as the Lotta nurses treated wounds.
They were all waiting for more stories, when Simo felt Juutilainen’s hand on his shoulder.
“Follow me. The 4th and 5th need you.”
*
The legionnaire poured two mugs of viina, drank the first and then the second, before filling it again and offering it to his soldier.
No long speech. Simply the facts. There were Russian snipers a few hundred metres from the frontline. They were good and accurate. Accurate enough to have killed three patrol commanders from the 4th Company, one of their N.C.O.s, and half a platoon from the 5th Company who had come to their aid, but had been forced to withdraw. Adding up to 20 men in total. Or rather subtracting. There were good, accurate Russian snipers, and the companies had no-one who could deal with them.
The Terror slipped the map of the Kollaa frontline and the forest concealing it into a transparent plastic folder. On it were red crosses where the surviving observers had marked the positions of the Red marksmen.
All Simo asked was when he should leave. Night had fallen on the camp, and Juutilainen told him that daybreak would be a good time.
*
At first light Simo left his tent. Toivo was already outside, rucksack on his back, biscuits and sugar cubes in a cloth bundle, an eager smile on his face. The first rays of the sun struck his hair, which shimmered in blond waves.
“Where are we going?”
Simo hugged his friend and told him that this time he would go alone.
45
A temperature of –30°C was already exceptional, but that day it had dropped to –40°. To locate the sniper more precisely than from the crosses drawn on the map, it was enough to find his victims.
Simo kneeled next to the N.C.O. the Russians had hit in this spot. His face frozen stiff as a statue, his skin chalky-white, only the black of his eyebrows and the yellow of his teeth in his open, twisted mouth stood out against the snow. This was where the Russian had shot him. Simo could do as much.
He crawled forward 20 metres, looking for the best firing position. Shielded by a rock, a clear view so that he could see everything, and flat ground behind him if he was forced to withdraw. The place found, he lay flat and waited.
He stared straight ahead at the top of a young spruce in the distance, at the same time taking everything in out of the corner of his eye. An hour went by. His heart slowed to the rhythm of his breathing. Until now the morning had been dark, with snowflakes stinging like iron filings, but finally the sun reappeared. Another hour went by, and Simo was dangerously close to the limits of his resistance. He felt his body loosen and a gentle warmth enfold him. As with the disturbing call of the sirens that led sailors onto the rocks, or the pleasant smell of bitter almonds that comes from cyanide, this feeling of well-being and warmth was deadly. The hand of Death had touched him on the shoulder, promising that all was well, that it would be even better as the hours went by, if he did not move. Behind him, the dead N.C.O.’s milky eyes stared at him, waiting for him.
Simo crawled backwards until he was hidden behind the rock and rubbed his body briskly until it responded. A little sugar, a little frozen bread that he had to soak in saliva to be able to chew, and Death sloped off. Taking up his position again, another hour went by.
The top of the spruce. The silence. The cold.
Then in the distance, a flash. The enemy sniper’s gunsight had caught the sun just before the sky became overcast again. That did not matter: Simo had discovered where his target was. Two hundred and twenty-three metres. Because freezing cartridges are heavier, affecting the arc of their trajectory, Simo kept his ammunition in his trouser pocket under the snowsuit. He took the rounds out and loaded them into the magazine.
Several minutes went by.
“All of them, sir.”
“And what does it say on them?”
He handed the manager the glass bottle. On its top was written “Alko”, the name of the factory, and “Rajamäki”, the town where it was situated.
“So that ends the mystery and explains why you are constantly being bombarded. I was looking for a spy; I’ve found a numbskull. I’d throw you in jail if the nation didn’t need you so much.”
The Ministry of Defence official left the factory with his minions following in his wake, leaving a contrite silence behind them.
42
Kollaa front
Winter had December in its grip.
If in its early days it had been content to sprinkle the trees with snow, now their branches drooped down almost to the ground under heavy drifts, like weary soldiers lowering their arms. Winter had frozen the heart of the forest, turned tree trunks to stone, pine needles to shards of glass.
For the first time in his life, Simo was walking on a pure white sheet, with no animal tracks to read on the ground. But the Russians were also animals, and Simo had learned to hunt them. He studied their habits and the speed at which they moved, in order to anticipate their every move, as he would have done for any quarry.
Every kill cost him more than it would have a simple infantryman or gunner, because in order to be sure of a perfect shot, Simo had to observe his adversary for many minutes, until he understood him, until he had penetrated his skin and his brain, until he became him, and then killed him. A gunner fires into the distance. An infantryman often fires at random, or with a machine gun when the enemy is charging towards him. For a sniper, it is almost personal.
With every mission, Simo had improved his technique. He had learned that if a marksman does not hit his target with the first shot, he himself becomes a target. He had also acquired the habit of piling snow up in front of him under his rifle so that none flew up with the rush of air from the gun barrel, creating a treacherous little cloud that hung above it for far too long.
And again, even though his white snowsuit gave him perfect camouflage, it stood out perilously when he was in front of a tree trunk, whether it was striped like a silver birch, the beige-grey of spruce, or the red of pine bark when it catches the rays of the setting sun. So, as soon as he found a good shooting position, Simo created a little mound of snow behind him so that he could blend in with his surroundings.
At almost 150 metres from a makeshift Russian camp, Toivo had made sure the sun was behind him before taking out his field glasses. Fifteen Red Army soldiers round a fire looked as if they were right in front of him. Stretched out alongside him, Simo laid ten rounds on the ground. He already had five loaded in his rifle. Fifteen rounds, fifteen enemy soldiers.
“That’s taking a big risk, don’t you think?”
Simo’s only response was to pile snow under his weapon and put a handful in his mouth.
“Alright then,” Toivo conceded. “So the officer is on the right. The others have sub-machine guns. There’s a bigger machine gun, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone manning it. I can’t see a marksman.”
The spotter’s role is to accompany the sniper and among other things to estimate the wind speed and the distance to the target. Simo had no real need for any of that as he was better than anyone at this kind of calculation. Toivo was useful for a very different reason: while Simo was completely focused on his target, on his own in a tunnel of concentration, his friend was keeping an eye on everything around them, because it takes a sniper to kill a sniper, and the Russians had excellent ones.
Timo swept the area in front of them with his field glasses, then studied the enemy unit once more.
“They’re trying to start a fire,” he whispered. “They look frozen stiff. The officer has moved away from the group. To the left. He’s leaning against a pine. Fire whenever you are ready.”
Simo closed one eye and slowed down his breathing. Then he hesitated, intrigued by the officer’s attitude and gestures. He held out his hand to Toivo, who passed him the field glasses.
In the two magnifying circles he saw the abhorred Ivan, the unjust invader, the bloodthirsty, monstrous aggressor sit on a rock and open a small notebook. In it was a sheet of paper he was now unfolding. A letter, perhaps … As if it had been made from the skin of its writer or still bore that person’s smell, the officer kissed it twice before putting it away. Then he lowered his head and buried his face in his hands.
Simo handed back the field glasses. Toivo looked through them again at the group.
“It’s almost night,” Toivo said. “And we’ve already killed eleven of them today. What do you say we go back to camp?”
There is a difference between being able to kill and having to kill. And for every believer, accounts to be rendered some day or other. Simo turned away from his lines of sight. Day after day, with his humaneness and rectitude, Toivo justified the unshakeable friendship Simo had for him.
43
The previous night Colonel Talvela’s troops had left by the light of the stars. On their cross-country skis, they hoped to travel more quickly than the Russians and arrive in time at Lake Tolvajärvi to await them there and, as far as they were able, block their passage.
With Talvela’s men heading north, the front at Kollaa had lost a sizeable proportion of its forces. They could no longer wait to be attacked, but they had, if possible, to anticipate them. So every day, ten or so scouts were chosen and sent into the forest to watch the enemy. And every day, Simo stepped forward to be one of them. This became such a routine that, with Juutilainen’s approval, he would leave before dawn with his tarkkailija,20 some sugar cubes and biscuits in his pockets, and disappear before even the first soldiers were awake. He chose his spotter at random from among his brothers-in-arms – Toivo, Onni and Pietari – and at random the choice almost always fell on Toivo.
Their mission was to observe and report back, but whenever Simo had the opportunity he decapitated enemy officers, making orphans of the troops he saw in the distance. With nobody to force them on, it was rare for them not to turn tail.
Stalin had promised them an easy, short war against an adversary they would crush within a fortnight. This was a monumental strategic blunder, because the soldiers were being promised certain victory, and in the very first letters from the Red Army, they vowed to return home.
“We will swallow Finland whole, and if I’m not among the first on the frontline, I’m not even sure I’ll get the opportunity to fire a single shot.”
“It won’t be long before I hold you in my arms again.”
“I’ll return with our victory.”
“Two weeks, no longer. That’s what they’ve promised us.”
But a month later, as Christmas approached, the first doubts began to appear in the enemy lines. And it was because of these letters, these simple pieces of paper that weighed as heavy as lead in their hearts, that the Soviet soldiers found themselves paralysed at the moment of attack when they had to leave their trenches under deadly fire. How could they run towards death when they had sworn to return?
Whether they were convinced or forced to fight, aggressors or aggressed, the Soviet soldiers always fell into two groups. Those who embraced death in the same way as the Finnish soldiers who could be seen during the lengthy artillery bombardments waiting for the storm to pass by playing cards or writing their letters. And those who feared death, like the soldiers who shot themselves in the hand or the flesh of their thigh, hoping to be demobilised.
Simo found it easy to recognise the lost ones, the terrorised ones, the ones forced to fight, and sometimes he spared them. Did he really spare them, or was he simply trying not to burden his soul with more senseless deaths?
“So, how many?”
This inevitable question awaited him each time he returned to camp. No-one would have detected the slightest sense of pride in his reply.
“Eleven,” Toivo said in his stead.
The others whistled. They applauded. But Simo remained stony-faced.
When he was on his mission as marksman, Simo slipped right up close to the enemy units. He came to know their camps better than his own. He spent more time close to his targets than to the companions he was protecting. And above all, he fired from a distance. In short, he was every day saved from any hand-to-hand fighting, from pure violence. At least he was spared that. But every time he came back, the number of deaths he had caused wounded him like a reproach.
“We lost about thirty men, but I’m sure we took down twice that many,” boasted someone Simo had never seen before.
New men were arriving all the time. New career soldiers, new conscripts, reservists or Civic Guardsmen. A fresh batch each week to replace those stacked up in the black tent behind the first-aid station. They never altogether made up for the losses: Finland was already running short of soldiers, and the recruits were called up even before they finished school or the ink had dried on their enlistment forms. A rifle was thrust at them, a rifle someone else had already held.
“My name is …” the newcomer said, holding his hand out to Simo.
Simo refused to listen. There was no guarantee the lad would be alive the next day.
Onni arrived, out of breath. He had run through the whole camp, and was smiling as if the armistice had been declared.
“You’re never going to believe me, Simo! Lapatossu is here!”
44
Every so often, a Russian plane flew over the Finnish lines on the Isthmus of Karelia, Lapland or the Kollaa front. It would drop a load that did not explode but burst open in the sky, releasing a sheaf of propaganda leaflets, printed on red, yellow or green paper so that they stood out in the snow. On them were slogans designed to undermine the morale of the Finnish troops.
“You will lose this war. Surrender if you want to survive.”
“Rise up against your officers. You will be heroes in our land.”
“If you are here, that means we’re taking care of your wives at home.”
The Finnish soldiers had read the first of them out of curiosity. When they saw just how many leaflets there were, they collected the paper for other less political but more hygienic purposes.
Occasionally as they patrolled or were on scouting missions, the units came across cloth banners slung between two trees. On them were scrawled in their own language:
“Lay down your arms here, put your hands up, and come and join us.”
“Is it worth dying to defend a government subservient to the imperialist West?”
“Helsinki has already fallen. Mannerheim is dead. Why go on?”
So within the Winter War another battle was being fought, one of fake information and manipulation. To fight it, Finland had created a new unit: the Anti-Depression Brigade, also called the “Anti-Homesickness Brigade”. It was headed by the Truth Officer. This officer travelled from frontline to frontline all over Finland, supplying the soldiers with the latest news from towns and cities, demystifying the rumours, chopping the head off the “It’s said that …” and adding a few amusing anecdotes. No-one was astonished at this, because many of them knew this Truth Officer by another name: “Lapatossu”, the clown star of cinema comedy who had won Finnish hearts for almost a decade.
No red nose or funny outsize shoes, but a lopsided, oblong face like a smiling potato, thick eyebrows that lent themselves well to grimaces, sparse hair scraped on the top of his skull, a kindly, open smile. A buffoon without any military training who no-one had forced to go to the front, but who was now making his three hundredth appearance.
Onni more or less dragged Toivo and Simo to the truck where, loudspeaker in hand, Lapatossu was haranguing a uniformed crowd of thousands.
“The Russians are promising to treat you well if you desert,” he cried, “when they don’t even look after their own wounded. Don’t believe them! The Russians claim you can’t win this war, when they start to tremble at the idea of leaving their trenches. Don’t believe them! The Russians say that Helsinki has fallen, when it is still being defended. Don’t believe them! They tell you Mannerheim is dead, but I promise you that from the headquarters in Mikkeli, our field marshal is directing this war day and night. He’ll use his baton to crush every last Russian skull!”
“But they say there are ten times more of them than us!” Pietari shouted, anonymous in the crowd.
Without attempting to identify the heckler, Lapatossu burst out laughing. He dropped his hands to his round belly before responding:
“Oh yes, there are lots of them, I can guarantee that. And there’d have to be a lot more for them to … But wait … would you like some good stories about that?”
As delighted as kids at the fair, the earth- and bloodstained soldiers roared their approval.
“Rumour has it …” Lapatossu always began with this catchphrase. “Rumour has it that Stalin has gone as far as Crimea for conscripts. Do you know that in summer the temperature in Crimea is close to 30°C, and that in the harshest winters it rarely falls below zero? And do you know what remained of them when the train doors were opened in Lapland? Ice cubes! They were all dead, frozen in their summer kit! Whole carriages filled with Russian ice! Who would like one?”
Ever since death had become so familiar to them, the soldiers laughed at horror stories like this. They begged the clown to tell them another story, so he embarked on one more joke.
“Rumour has it … Rumour has it that the Soviet high command only has incomplete maps of Finland. Do you know they fired 7,000 shells at the same spot? They thought they were flattening a town, but in fact were aiming at a hamlet that had only one house, and a farmhouse with a red roof. And after 7,000 shells, do you know what is left of the hamlet? A house and a farm with a red roof! Are they shooting with their eyes closed?”
It was true that, however wounding his jokes were, Lapatossu never killed any Russians, but for a while he brought a pause in the war. He gave the men courage and hope, and the Anti-Depression Brigade bandaged souls as effectively as the Lotta nurses treated wounds.
They were all waiting for more stories, when Simo felt Juutilainen’s hand on his shoulder.
“Follow me. The 4th and 5th need you.”
*
The legionnaire poured two mugs of viina, drank the first and then the second, before filling it again and offering it to his soldier.
No long speech. Simply the facts. There were Russian snipers a few hundred metres from the frontline. They were good and accurate. Accurate enough to have killed three patrol commanders from the 4th Company, one of their N.C.O.s, and half a platoon from the 5th Company who had come to their aid, but had been forced to withdraw. Adding up to 20 men in total. Or rather subtracting. There were good, accurate Russian snipers, and the companies had no-one who could deal with them.
The Terror slipped the map of the Kollaa frontline and the forest concealing it into a transparent plastic folder. On it were red crosses where the surviving observers had marked the positions of the Red marksmen.
All Simo asked was when he should leave. Night had fallen on the camp, and Juutilainen told him that daybreak would be a good time.
*
At first light Simo left his tent. Toivo was already outside, rucksack on his back, biscuits and sugar cubes in a cloth bundle, an eager smile on his face. The first rays of the sun struck his hair, which shimmered in blond waves.
“Where are we going?”
Simo hugged his friend and told him that this time he would go alone.
45
A temperature of –30°C was already exceptional, but that day it had dropped to –40°. To locate the sniper more precisely than from the crosses drawn on the map, it was enough to find his victims.
Simo kneeled next to the N.C.O. the Russians had hit in this spot. His face frozen stiff as a statue, his skin chalky-white, only the black of his eyebrows and the yellow of his teeth in his open, twisted mouth stood out against the snow. This was where the Russian had shot him. Simo could do as much.
He crawled forward 20 metres, looking for the best firing position. Shielded by a rock, a clear view so that he could see everything, and flat ground behind him if he was forced to withdraw. The place found, he lay flat and waited.
He stared straight ahead at the top of a young spruce in the distance, at the same time taking everything in out of the corner of his eye. An hour went by. His heart slowed to the rhythm of his breathing. Until now the morning had been dark, with snowflakes stinging like iron filings, but finally the sun reappeared. Another hour went by, and Simo was dangerously close to the limits of his resistance. He felt his body loosen and a gentle warmth enfold him. As with the disturbing call of the sirens that led sailors onto the rocks, or the pleasant smell of bitter almonds that comes from cyanide, this feeling of well-being and warmth was deadly. The hand of Death had touched him on the shoulder, promising that all was well, that it would be even better as the hours went by, if he did not move. Behind him, the dead N.C.O.’s milky eyes stared at him, waiting for him.
Simo crawled backwards until he was hidden behind the rock and rubbed his body briskly until it responded. A little sugar, a little frozen bread that he had to soak in saliva to be able to chew, and Death sloped off. Taking up his position again, another hour went by.
The top of the spruce. The silence. The cold.
Then in the distance, a flash. The enemy sniper’s gunsight had caught the sun just before the sky became overcast again. That did not matter: Simo had discovered where his target was. Two hundred and twenty-three metres. Because freezing cartridges are heavier, affecting the arc of their trajectory, Simo kept his ammunition in his trouser pocket under the snowsuit. He took the rounds out and loaded them into the magazine.
Several minutes went by.
