Unknown Soldiers

by Väinö Linna

  Koskela couldn’t have cared less. He was immune to Karjula’s criticisms – for even if he didn’t ever descend into self-congratulation, he was still aware that not many men would have been able to get the battalion out in as good a shape as he had. Or as quickly.

  The journey continued. The men carrying the stretchers were on their last legs, for although the burdens were not so heavy when divided amongst four men, the uneven terrain multiplied the strain many times over. Their progress grew ever more difficult.

  One of the men carrying the stretcher in front of Ukkola’s fell, and the wounded man dropped to the ground with a shout of pain. The fellow carrying regained his balance, gasping for breath, spat and screamed in a voice ringing with rage, ‘Finnish president Risto Ryti and the National Orchestra proudly present … a polka: “Up Shit Creek Without a Fucking Paddle”.’

  Then he grabbed hold of the handle rods again and the power of his anger spurred him on for a little while.

  Even Ukkola’s carriers weren’t talking anymore. They weren’t up to it. Silently, concentrating all of their energy on their task, they toiled onward as Ukkola coughed and gasped on the stretcher in ever-increasing pain.

  At three o’clock in the morning, as dawn was already beginning to lighten the sky, Ukkola shot himself with Sihvonen’s gun, which had been left leaning against the stretcher during a break.

  His carriers were looking off to the side, watching the infantry guys, and didn’t realize what was happening until the shot went off.

  They would have been happy to bring Ukkola’s body to the road, but they were forced to abandon the idea, as the exhausted carrying teams needed to keep rotating and Koskela was urging them to hurry. But when they remembered Ukkola’s plea to be covered, they hastily dug a shallow bed with their field shovels and set the body in it, wrapped in a tarp. Then they shoveled some moss and dirt on top to cover it up.

  Even Honkajoki was solemn. Maybe it was just exhaustion, but then, death had become a constant companion that night, and it left little room for chatter.

  As they were shoveling, Rahikainen said, ‘Now, that guy would have made it. But everybody rings things up as he sees fit.’

  ‘I guess Ukkola here was the last guy left in the Fourth Platoon who started in the burnt clearing,’ Vanhala said. ‘Man, I still remember that one time when we were new recruits, when the Third Company came back from a march and somebody had stuck this massive rock in Ukkola’s pack. He’d cheated in packing it up. Heehee. Kariluoto was the one who stuck it in.’

  ‘That guy was a real asshole back then – Kariluoto,’ Sihvonen said. ‘Grew up into a man, though. Guess they’ll dump him in that pond too.’

  They left Ukkola’s grave and hurried onwards. There was no benediction. Nothing but Sihvonen’s bitter outburst as he left: ‘So that’s how a Finn bites the dust these days. This country’s done for.’

  III

  The supply train was retreating.

  It was early morning, but bright as day, so the drivers were worried about air raids. The vehicles had been camouflaged with underbrush and the horses’ harnesses were covered in alder branches, and one of the drivers had even stuck a sprig in his cap.

  ‘Keep wider intervals,’ Sinkkonen shouted, riding his bicycle along the side of the road as he tried to pass the vehicles. Lammio was with him as well, since Karjula had allocated him the task of managing the supply train’s retreat.

  The old guy who’d been called out of the reserves, Korpela, was leading his horse alongside the vehicles. He had checked the carts for officers’ bags and their other belongings, but the previous driver had already tossed all that kind of stuff into the forest, so there weren’t any objects left for Korpela to hurl in his fury.

  Sinkkonen was telling him something about aerial observation. Korpela glared daggers at the Master Sergeant and snarled, ‘Yeah, order me to keep an eye on the sky! Why don’t you just get out of the way? Yeah, that’s right, take care of your bicycle so you can ride off on it when the time comes. ’Cause that’s what you’re gonna do all right.’

  The battalion’s Lotta was standing on the roadside. Raili Kotilainen hadn’t snagged herself one particular man over the course of the war, but that was partially made up for by the fact that she had snagged several. The aide who had taken her picture by the captured mortar back at the start of the war had been dead for some time. At that point Raili was still a flower in bloom, but the war had worn her down as it had the rest of them. She had withered and lowered her standards so much that she had even succumbed to some anti-tank guy in infantry. Sic transit gloria mundi, Sarastie had observed.

  The Lotta’s bicycle was broken. She was tired and worn out. The men showed her nothing but their unmasked contempt and hostility. They showered her with obscene, insinuating abuse. Spotting Korpela, she thought she might turn to him for help. An older man, she imagined, would have some kind of fatherly sympathy for her.

  ‘I can’t ride this and I’m just so tired. And the heel of my shoe came off. Do you think you could give me a lift on your cart?’

  Good Lord! The front-line Lotta! The sight of the woman struck Korpela the way a red banner strikes a bull. ‘We don’t haul horse shit on Sundays, bitch. Damn straight that’s how it is.’

  Lammio overheard him. First, he ordered the Lotta into the next vehicle and then he yelled, ‘Private Korpela!’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘I said what I said. Yeah, and I meant that we’ve got enough shit to haul around here without hauling the Finnish officers’ whore too. That’s right.’

  ‘Listen here, Korpela! You’ve gone too far. Now shut your mouth! One more word out of you and you will regret it.’

  ‘Quit mouthing off at me, you, with your goddam fancy pants. Yeah, you heard me.’ Korpela’s fury had flared up full blast. He screamed at the drivers in a voice choked with rage, trying to pack as much biting contempt into his voice as possible, but mostly drowning it out in the overwhelming flood of his anger. ‘Me-en! Hey, driiivers! Who’s that bastard on my ass? Used to be the arse flies only swarmed round horses. They startin’ to swarm round people now too?’

  ‘You’re under arrest. Hey, you, over there. Two men, over here! Confiscate Private Korpela’s belt and rifle.’

  There were no volunteers. Nor were they necessary. Somebody further behind was yelling, ‘Heavy-duty tillers overhead … air raid! Sturmoviks! Get under cover!’

  They turned the horses quickly toward the cover of the forest and everyone disappeared somewhere or other. Only Korpela remained on the road. His cart wheel got stuck in a ditch and the horse wasn’t able to pull it out. The animal strained against its harness, pulling with all of its might, but the wheel just sank deeper into the treacherously soft soil at the bottom of the ditch.

  Small bombs fell from the ground-attack planes and exploded behind them.

  Vo … uuuuuu … trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr … The plane droned over and machine-gun fire raked the road. When it had passed, more followed in its wake.

  ‘Come on, you assholes, come and lift!’ Korpela howled, but there was no help in sight nor did any materialize. Many men abandoned their horses and ran off deeper into the forest.

  ‘Run … run! Just run like hell then! Leave your poor horse here to be killed, oh, that’s fine …’

  The carousel continued. Planes circled round and shells exploded ceaselessly, accompanied by the chattering of machine guns. The angry explosions of quick-load rifles grew nearer, then suddenly the back beams of Korpela’s cart cracked. Korpela ducked f
or cover, but returned to his feet immediately and started yanking again. Having first taken the Lotta to safety, Lammio was now approaching Korpela’s cart. He walked upright, with apparent indifference to the planes, and when Korpela noticed him, he flew into an unbridled rage. That man, flaunting his bravery!

  ‘You stay the fuck away from me! Don’t you dare touch my cart. I don’t need any help from the likes of you. Yeah, you’re damn straight I mean it.’

  Lammio just continued toward him and suddenly Korpela threw the reins to the ground and stepped in front of him, saying, ‘You get me a transfer right now! I’m moving to another unit.’

  ‘What marvelous unit would that be? What is this … where do you think you’re going to go?’

  ‘Fuck you! I’ll go all the way to hell if it means I can get you out of my sight!’

  ‘Korpela, I am warning you for the last time. The defeat has gone to the heads of men like you, but do not make the mistake of thinking that this army is going to let you spit in its face, even in its defeat.’

  ‘Ha ha ha. Who’s spitting in whose face here? You asshole, you’re the one that’s been spitting in other men’s faces for years! Yeah! Damn straight! You let go of that holster of yours or I’ll throw it into the forest and send you right in after …’

  Korpela turned, as another ground-attack plane was nearing them again. Heading toward his cart he hissed, ‘Now … now … only now do I know what the high-born Finn really is. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay. What he’s really made of. I didn’t quite think that. Wouldn’t have believed it. But now I know. Ay-ay-ay-ay-ay.’

  He tore at the harness and screamed in fury, ‘Fuck it! Goddamn cart can stay there. Torturing poor, senseless creatures as if they’d done something wrong. Run away! What are you doing here letting ’em torture you? Come on! Yeah, you heard me!’

  A plane neared them from behind. Flames fluttered down beneath it and the branches rustled. Korpela led the horse into the forest and, shaking his fist up toward the sky, he howled, ‘You shoot, too, asshole! Shoot away! You just shoot like hell, here’s your chance. Get it out of your system! Well, fuck!’

  The plane pulled up and something flashed behind it. The frightened horse bolted off, galloping into the forest. For a while, it dragged Korpela along, as his hand was tangled up in the reins. When it finally slipped out, Korpela lay on his back. Lammio made it to the spot in time to see his eyes move for the last time. A great stream of blood was flowing out from beneath Korpela’s body.

  IV

  The ground-attack planes had flown off by the time the head of the battalion column reached the main road. Koskela radioed in a request for ambulances to evacuate the wounded, which arrived once the planes had disappeared. They began loading the wounded immediately. One of the stretchers held a corpse, as the man had died so near to the road that the men had just kept on carrying him.

  Lieutenant Colonel Uuno Eemeli Karjula arrived. He was a bull-necked man with a stocky build who always spoke at a near scream, pressing his fists against his hips. The inner corners of his eye sockets pulled a bit too close together, which gave his small eyes a piercing aspect. Creases lined his powerful face. One hard, cruel line extended downwards from the corner of his mouth. His hair was always closely cropped, so that the strange, sharp crest along the crown of his head was exposed whenever he removed his cap.

  This man had set out for the Winter War as a captain and had been promoted to lieutenant colonel in recognition of his personal fearlessness and indomitable will. His tactical brilliance might have left something to be desired, but his absolute unwillingness to retreat was generally understood to make up for it. Higher up, Karjula had a reputation for being a strong man – and that he undeniably was – but whosoever should end up near him or subordinated to him would, almost without exception, begin either to fear this man or to hate him. Once, after a quarrel with Karjula, Sarastie had gone so far as to tell his aide, ‘And then there are men who would be criminals if armies and prisons didn’t employ them. It’s just pure chance that determines which side of the bars they’ll turn up on.’

  Karjula was absolutely enraged at the fact of defeat. He knew of no remedy besides ‘iron-fithted operationth’. Leaving aside the retreat generally, he was furious that the battalion’s withdrawal meant that the position of the entire combined combat unit was now in peril. There weren’t many more miles left to cede before they would have to forfeit the whole position. The fallen Sarastie was treated to a real earful – even if, having died, he couldn’t hear any of it. Karjula certainly didn’t share the chaplain’s belief that the Major could still understand him, but that didn’t prevent him from abusing the man.

  ‘Damn it! Why didn’t that man have any retherveth? Thquatting right by the road like that with no cover at all.’

  Karjula chose to ignore the fact that he himself had approved Sarastie’s operations, and also that he had promised to send him a sapper company for reserve before detaining said company laying a road. Just now the company was scraping together all that was left of the other machine-gun squads to form a barricade, but the best they could muster would pose no more than a weak obstacle for the enemy.

  Koskela gave Karjula a brief account of the situation, though the Lieutenant Colonel struggled even to hear him out. Despite the presence of the many men listening, he said, ‘Due to your hathty athethment of the thituation, the enemy ith now dethimating our flank. And on top of that, withdrawing the battalion through the pondth wath entirely unnethethary. A cothtly two hourth. And the loth of our betht pothition.’

  Koskela spoke solely out of a sense of duty. He took no interest in Karjula’s speech, knowing very well that no amount of reasoning was going to assuage this man’s anger, which the calm tone of Koskela’s voice seemed only to exacerbate.

  ‘It has to be taken into consideration that I couldn’t let the battalion’s flank be exposed to the enemy under the circumstances. Dividing into groups was too risky as we had to protect the wounded. And besides, the men were depressed by the casualties.’

  ‘I have taken that into conthideration. I know what the thituation ith and I do not need any explanationth. But you thhould know that the battalion lotht thith fight only when you admitted itth defeat. Now hurry up and get the battalion into formation. Man the edge of that thwampland. Put a thuffithiently thtrong retherve unit on the flankth, and build it out of active troopth. The new anti-tank gunth will be here thhortly. I am trying to get the anti-mithile weaponth in tho far ath I am able. You take care of the battalion until Lammio hath finithhed with the thupply train and can rethume command. After that you will take over ath Third Company commander. The machine gunth go to Lieutenant Ovathka.’

  His voice deadpan, Koskela said, ‘I ordered them to sink the machine guns in the pond so I would have enough men to carry the wounded. I just kept one.’

  Karjula’s jaw dropped and closed repeatedly for a little while. ‘In the pond. Thunk. Ma … chi … ne … gun … th … thunk.’

  Karjula wouldn’t have been so fundamentally enraged, had he not been obliged to recognize that the measures Koskela had taken were indeed correct. But that was precisely what he did not want to do, as it would have meant acknowledging defeat.

  ‘Good God, Lieutenant! Mutiny … Deliberately aiding the enemy. I ordered you to bring the weaponth. Machine-gunnerth are machine-gunnerth, not medicth. And you were the battalion’th commander, not itth nurthe …’

  Karjula at least realized that he was saying things that should not be said. Even the men had risen to their feet. Those who knew Koskela were hoping he would sock him to the ground, but Koskel
a just stood there, looking over the madman, his face motionless.

  Trying to cover up his blunder, Karjula said, ‘You may redeem your reputathion by holding the line. Get thome thteel into your thpine.’

  Karjula had become cognizant of the men’s presence and proceeded to grow furious with them, though he himself was the one who had mouthed off at Koskela in their hearing. Now he raved like a lunatic. ‘And you men! What are you, thheep or tholdierth of Finland? You athume a pothition tho that either you hold it or you go down trying. You are wearing the thame uniformth ath the men who defended Thumma and Taipale, damn it. Thothe men knew how to die. You don’t know how to do anything but flee. Thhame on you, damn it! I wouldn’t dare to call mythelf a Finn if I abandoned the way you did. Whoever thtill dareth to abandon hith potht will find that there ith a thection of the Code of Military Juthtithe devoted to him. The game endth here. There will be no merthy requethted nor granted. Ith that clear? Now, to your pothitionth!’

  Honkajoki went wide-eyed and dropped his jaw in a look of feigned astonishment. Then, in an official, important-sounding voice, he asked Vanhala, ‘Corporal Vanhala. Are you a sheep or a Finnish soldier?’

  ‘I am the World’s Greatest Forest Fighter! Heehee …’

  ‘Indeed, yes, indeed.’ Honkajoki sighed, as if in doleful resignation. ‘One hope I do retain. That the war will end and I will serve as a stud in a great farmhouse.’

  Viirilä was sitting off on his own, munching on the loaf of bread he’d scrounged from the enemy soldier’s pack the previous evening. Seemingly unintentionally, he blurted out, rolling his head, ‘A man came from Arimathea and poured water on his head.’

  The others didn’t understand what Viirilä meant. Probably just blabbering on senselessly again, as he tended to do, not really meaning anything by it.