The winter warriors, p.29
The Winter Warriors, page 29
Finally on March 12, 1940, facing Molotov and Stalin himself, the Finnish prime minister Risto Ryti signed the Moscow peace treaty on more punishing terms than ever. This time it was impossible to reject them.
Ten per cent. of territory was amputated from Finland, as well as 20 per cent. of its industries, four islands and the military base at Hanko. Viipuri, so dearly defended during the Gulf of Finland war, was annexed and given the Russian name of Vyborg. When the borders were redrawn, close to half a million Finns had to go into exile, abandoning their houses and farms to the Soviets.
And yet, although it seemed that Russia had won the war and Finland had surrendered, the reality was the very opposite. An ogre nation with 171 million inhabitants had failed to overpower a peaceful country of only 3.5 million, or to advance any further than fifteen kilometres into the coveted territories. A defeat that was not one became a shameful victory for Stalin. A bad winner, he sent that same day an official order and a secret one. The Finnish prime minister was aware only of the official order. As agreed in the treaty, it instructed the Red Army to cease hostilities on March 13, and called for the restoration of friendly relations between the two countries.
At the same time, the secret order was sent to every frontline commander. An order steeped in rancour and malice, one clearly reflecting all the inhumanity and cruelty of the person who had devised it.
On paper, the Winter War was over. But the blood had not ceased to flow.
70
March 12, 1940, last day of the war
The sealed instructions left the Kremlin, one for each of the fronts. The adjutants tore them open for their generals and colonels and read the contents. Often those same perplexed generals and colonels asked them to repeat the secret order they contained.
“Peace has been signed with Finland,” the young soldier read out a second time to Grigory Shtern. “It will come into force tomorrow, March 13, at 11.00 hours. There is one more day of war left, and our divisions are ordered to return with no unused munitions.”
This meant they should kill as many Finns as possible, as quickly as possible, before they became good neighbours once more. Shtern, the commander of the 8th Army, was unfortunate enough to disapprove out loud of Stalin’s secret order. Komarov, his political commissar, did not forget to mention this in his report.
However critical he might be, Shtern had no choice but to obey. An hour later a cohort of Russian officers, crammed shoulder to shoulder in his tent, listened to him with astonishment.
“Our logistic supplies are ceasing from today,” he announced. “We still have more than a week’s worth of munitions, but we will not be returning to Russia with any of them. In a final salvo, we are going to use what we would normally use in seven days.”
Some of the career officers looked at one with embarrassment. They were not at all proud of the way this war was ending, shamefully and with the opposite of any military glory. They had fought poorly from the first day, and swore quickly to forget this last one.
Yet again, this widespread reluctance did not escape the notice of the politruk, who dutifully retained the names of the objectors in his mind. He was so irritated that he interrupted and translated the order into precise instructions.
“Not a single round! Not a single shell! Prepare all the cannon, all the mortars, all the rifles, all the machine guns. Before peace is declared, fire constantly, without pausing, without resting.”
*
Mannerheim Line, March 12, 1940, last day of the war
All the munitions the Finns had left could fit into their pockets. Viktor Koskinen counted his rounds, and they did not amount to 50. His companions in the trench were no better equipped. But news of an armistice had arrived, and with it the promise of the end of this hell.
The war would end the next day at precisely 11.00, and what Russian would be mad enough to die today?
Viktor thought of his brother and how impatient he was to see him and his family again. Of his father’s pride, a pride he had had to win at the risk of his life. Of the stories he would tell them, and the ones he would keep to himself that would haunt his nights. Of the sweetness of a Finnish summer, the lilacs on the edge of the lake just by his farm that seemed to be adorning it with a sapphire necklace. He could have spent the day strolling among them, but a shout from his officer tore him out of his reverie. Before the man could dive into the trench for protection, the blast from an explosion sent his torn-off limbs a hundred metres away.
At the same moment the sky darkened with a storm of shells like a murmuration of starlings, rising high in the air before plunging onto the Mannerheim Line. The ground disintegrated as everything was thrown into the air. In broad daylight, a night made up of burning debris enveloped the 132 kilometres of the Mannerheim Line. Above the soldiers all was darkness; in front of them, waves of fire and an extraordinary hurricane of molten metal.
The S.B.2 Russian bombers dropped all their bombs. Inadequately armed, the few Finnish fighters pursued them through the sky, the wings with the Soviet red star almost brushing against the ones with blue swastikas.
The soldiers on the Mannerheim Line had run out of ammunition. Viktor and the others spent the night praying in the trenches, visited by the military chaplains, all of them terrified they would be the last to die. They stuck closely to the youngster, jostling to get near him, Viktor Koskinen, nicknamed the Lucky One, hoping he still had some of it to share.
One last shell. One last burst from a machine gun. The night was over. So was most of the morning.
At 11.00, silence returned. Absolute silence, something none of them had heard for exactly 105 days. And yet for hours now and years afterwards, the tumult and fury of the Winter War would continue to reverberate inside them.
The veil of dust fell from the sky like a heavy blanket. As the sky cleared, it revealed a desolate battlefield carpeted with shredded uniforms.
It is said that some of the Russian soldiers who were closest to the frontline exchanged cigarettes with the Finns. Some even shook hands – but Viktor did not witness this.
Covered in earth and blood, freezing from the snow, he clambered out of the trench, dropped his rifle at his feet, and swore he would never pick it up again. Neither that one, nor any other. His father would understand, or not; either way he would not care less.
*
Kollaa front, last hour of the Winter War
There has to be a first death; you have to see it with your own eyes to truly believe in war. And there has to be a final death to bring the war to an end.
At Kollaa, Yrjö was the one.
A few minutes before eleven, he had come face to face with a Russian infantryman. Both of them had fired and both were mortally wounded.
Soon afterwards came shouts of joy at the return of silence. From both sides of the frontline. Light streamed over Yrjö’s closed eyes, over his prostrate body and its stilled heart. All around him, the last day of war had littered the ground with bodies in their thousands, staining the snow red. Amongst the other corpses, he was no-one. No more precious, no more important. In death, only their uniforms set them apart. They were enemies, now they lay side by side. Here, hands touched; elsewhere, lifeless faces confronted each other. They had spent the whole winter killing one another.
The dead from previous weeks were half-hidden in the earth. Only vestiges remained: their still visible helmets, occasionally parts of their backs. Their arms were like aerial roots, as if growing out of the ground itself, ready to rise, get to their feet and haunt all those who had decided on this war, entirely forgotten by the world almost a century later.
Their blood would saturate the ground, their flesh would nourish the trees, mingle with the sap. They would be in every new leaf, every new bud.
There were more than a million of them, and when, tomorrow and beyond tomorrow, the wind blew through the branches of the forests of Finland, it would also carry their voices.
*
As Stalin had dictated, the Red 8th Army had killed as many as possible, dishonourably and crudely, until at 11.00 precisely here and throughout Finland the Winter War came to an end.
Komarov smiled at finally being victorious, already imagining his triumphant return to the Motherland. With the spring thaw, the stench of carcasses and putrefaction would rise from the forests and he could leave all that behind him as a souvenir for the Finnish people.
“Of course,” he admitted to Shtern, “the story will have to be rewritten, to lend it a heroic tone. But first give it time to be forgotten, then, one day, you’ll see, it will be celebrated at its true worth.”
For his part, Shtern did not see that as any consolation.
“All we’ve done is take enough territory from them to bury our dead in,” he said sadly.
71
Kinkoma Hospital, Jyväskylä, central Finland
In the staff room where doctors and nurses bumped into one another the smell of coffee mingled with that of alcohol and ether. The radio quietly transmitted Mannerheim’s clear voice. It drifted along the corridors and even into the hospital rooms, as if the field marshal was visiting each of them in turn, even though he was speaking one last time to his soldiers:
“You did not hate them, you wished them no harm. We waited for help that never came …”
Simo’s hand twitched; his fingers grasping part of the white sheet. It might be supposed that he was brought round by the squeak of pens signing the iniquitous peace treaty or by the din from the last abject, wretched bombardment Stalin had ordered, because after eight days in a coma, he woke up on exactly March 13, 1940, the very last day of the Winter War. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was Onni, asleep on a chair at his bedside.
“He’s been watching over you ever since your transfer,” a low voice said next to him.
The last time he had seen Leena, he had thought it was in a dream. She was walking in front of him, straining all her muscles to pull a stretcher sled through a snowstorm, turning round regularly to keep an eye on him, her Lotta’s uniform smeared with earth and the blood of his brothers-in-arms.
Now she was wearing a long, clean dress that reached down to big fur-lined shoes. Her hair was tidy, and she smelled good.
“Don’t try to speak, you won’t be able to,” she told him. “You have to be patient.”
She stretched out a hand to the bedside table on which lay a notebook with clipped sheets of paper and a pencil. She picked these up and laid them on the bed for him. Simo scrawled a few words on the paper and passed it to her.
“No, we haven’t returned home. The situation is still complicated. The borders have been redrawn and lots of us have lost our farms and houses.”
Simo picked up the pencil again.
“Rautjärvi?” she read. “I’m so sorry, but our village was cut in two, and your farm at Kiiskinen is on the Russian side now.”
A grimace of pain spread slowly over Simo’s face, and Leena realised more morphine would soon be needed. As she was getting up to look for a doctor, Onni woke up.
“Simo! My friend!” he stammered, still bleary-eyed. He flung himself willy-nilly into his arms, lying almost horizontally on the hospital bed. He wept warm tears from joy that they were both alive in spite of everything.
Simo picked up the pencil again.
“Juutilainen?” Onni read. “He survived, of course, that’s what he does best.”
Could it be that one is inoculated against love and death from wanting them too much? The legionnaire had fought right up to the last moment and his last bullets. Now he was looking for a new job, provided it allowed him to wear a uniform and shout at soldiers.
Simo picked up the pencil again.
“No, I’m sorry, your rifle stayed down there. Maybe one day when we’re old we’ll go back. To remember, if we ever forget. But an officer came yesterday to return your rifle of honour. I know you don’t think much of it, but one day it will be in a museum, I promise you.”
Simo picked up the pencil again.
“Yes, Kollaa held out. Right to the end, even though we lost half our men. The Mannerheim Line as well. I’ve no idea how we did it.”
More questions tumbled through Simo’s still hazy mind: now the image of a young soldier flashed in front of his eyes. Through the bandages covering his head, only Simo’s eyes were visible, and now they appeared concerned. He wrote hastily.
“Yrjö?” Onni read. “Don’t think about that any more, you need to rest. And above all stay discreet. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for the Ryssät to learn you are the White Death and have survived. Their spies are everywhere again.”
Their hands still covered in the warm blood of Finland, the Russians had once more become their neighbours and allies. When he woke up on March 13, 1940, Simo found he had lost his entire life.
His face. His farm and his hamlet, now Russian.
Toivo, his dearest friend. The Winter War …
And he had even lost the right to speak about any of it.
First Epilogue
There was no celebration of the Winter War when Komarov got back to Russia. All the military archives were transferred to the Kremlin and kept under lock and key so that they would be forgotten by Russian history. Komarov with them.
In Soviet school textbooks, nothing in particular happened between November 30, 1939 and March 13, 1940.
However, close to 400,000 men in the Red Army were wounded, or killed, or went missing, although the official figure was 350. The rest were to be forgotten. The rest brought shame. The Finnish Army lamented the loss of almost 70,000 men. It also took 6,000 Russian prisoners, who were repatriated the day after the armistice. But they could not tell their Winter War either. Four hundred were executed as soon as they returned, and 4,000 were sent to the gulag, their memories gagged in the depths of cells.
Grigory Mikhailovich Shtern became the object of rumours accusing him of being a German spy. Imprisoned and tortured, at first he defended himself, but after one eye was gouged out, he confessed to what they wanted to hear. Shot by firing squad on the orders of Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the N.K.V.D. (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs) and therefore Komarov’s boss, his name was only re-established fourteen years later on the grounds of what the chief prosecutor termed “a lack of proof”.
*
Finland was badly wounded, both victim and victor. But this war, seen as a necessary common sacrifice, helped to create an unshakeable national identity.
Later on, Carl Gustaf Mannerheim became President of the Republic of Finland. He remained haunted all his days by the number of soldiers he could have saved if he had accepted the Russian terms at the outset of negotiations.
Aarne Juutilainen signed up for war after war, but was unable to be killed in any of them despite his best efforts. He ended up alone and alcoholic, and for the first time in his life retreated: to a care home.
In 1946, when France was rebuilding after the Second World War, it had no scruples about asking Finland for the reimbursement of 400 million francs for the rifles, cannon and heavy machine guns it had sent, most of which had not arrived until long after the end of the Winter War.
*
Russia’s hard-won victory attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler, in the same way that a wounded animal entices a predator. The German Army’s original plan was to stabilise the western front and only then attack Russia. But, seeing the Soviet Army’s dire performance against Finland, the plans were changed and almost four million troops were hurled against the weakened Soviet Union in the largest invasion in military history, in what was called Operation Barbarossa …
Without Simo’s courage, without the sisu, that soul of ice and fire, nobody can imagine what Europe or the world would be like today, nor what forces would hold power. Nobody in our day really knows how much we owe to the Finnish soldiers of the Winter War.
Second Epilogue
Finland, 1976, Valkjärvi farm
Time had gone by, and for years now Simo no longer had to conceal his identity as Belaya Smert. He was a legend in his country, invited to commemorations and inaugurations in military academies and Civic Guard garrisons as the hero he had been and the myth he had become.
He attended these events politely and unpretentiously, often surprised at all the attention, considering himself no braver than the soldiers he fought alongside.
After he was wounded, he was operated on another 26 times in fourteen months: an operation every fortnight for more than a year. If for Simo the Winter War had lasted 98 days, it took him four times as long to recover from it, physically at least.
To compensate for the lands he had lost to Russia, the Finnish government offered him a farm and a portion of forest. This morning, thick snowflakes were falling on them, softly blanketing the yellow VW Beetle parked outside his door.
Simo had never married or had children. The company of his horse and his dog Kille seemed all he needed. He did, however, know how to receive visitors when necessary. He had made black tea and been to the bakery, because although he preferred to talk about the war only with his brothers-in-arms he had ended up giving in to the persistence of a young woman journalist who was already knocking on his door …
She took off her coat, unwound her scarf, and put her big hold-all on the floor. Then she sat in the comfortable armchair he was offering and switched on the Dictaphone on the low table between them. Simo drank some of his tea and tried to warn his guest in his wounded voice that his shattered jaws sometimes made it hard to understand what he was saying. She reassured him, then sank her teeth into one of the joulutorttu,29 covering her upper lip in white icing sugar.
She had insisted on meeting him; he had admired her spirit, and as he watched her wiping her mouth on her pullover sleeve, he was briefly reminded of Leena.
