Karl swung a pick to test the dirt, and it bounced off the frozen ground with a clink. “It's like cement.”
“We'll have to use a few muscles, then,” Kekko said. But his pick barely dented the ground.
Through the morning the men tried picks, iron bars, and bayonets to chop through the frost.
During lunch, Marko looked at the blisters on his hands and said, “I can't decide which hurts worse, my hands or my leg.”
Karl slipped off his mitts. “I've got blisters on my blisters.”
When the lieutenant walked by, Kekko said, “We been thinking that this hard ground could do with a little extra persuading. If I was to take a small charge of dynamite and—”
“What good would it do to blast out a trench if we let the Russians know exactly where to aim their shells?”
“But we—”Kekko said.
“Think less and dig more,” the lieutenant said.
“I have an idea,” Marko said.
“What is it, Koski?”
“Since the Russians can't see smoke at night, why don't we build a fire to thaw the ground, like they do in the cemetery?” Marko recalled the frozen dirt piled beside Johan's grave.
“Good idea. After dark you and your partners get to work.”
One night of hot coals thawed the ground enough to allow the men to break through the frost by the middle of the next morning. When they finished the trench, Joki said, “I gotta hand it to you, messenger boy, using them coals was good thinking.”
“Marko's a good partner,” Karl said.
CHAPTER 26
RED SHOES, OR SHEEP TO THE SLAUGHTER
At dawn Marko looked down on the valley from the new command trench. The Russians had stopped their artillery barrage, and the largest force of soldiers that Marko had ever seen was lining up behind the Red Army tanks. The regiment now wore whiteovers like the Finns.
Marko didn't need field glasses to know that the three Finnish companies dug into the hillside were in for the fight of their lives.
Hoot Hauta studied the battlefield, too. Instead of going to the hospital he'd stayed on to help plan their defense.”They got two regiments after us now.”
“More like a regiment and a half,”the lieutenant said, “if you figure their losses before reinforcements arrived.”
Marko did the math. We'll be facing four thousand Red Army soldiers! The odds will be ten to one against us!
Everyone was silent.
Then Kekko spoke up. “We got us a big problem.”
The men turned. If Kekko was worried, they were in trouble.
“I can't see any way around this one.” Kekko shook his head. “I don't know where we're gonna find room to bury all those Russkies.”
Everyone burst out laughing.
“Take your positions, boys,” the lieutenant said.
Joki was grim.”Now we toast Comrade Molotov.”
The Russian tanks began grinding forward as the first pink light filtered through the pine tops. Their infantry marched close behind. The huffing of the engines lifted a blue cloud of smoke, while the vibration of the gear cases shook the ground.
But as loud as the tanks were, Marko's blood ran cold when the Russians' shout, “Urra! Urra!”, drowned out the clattering engines. The branches of the pines trembled as if a great wind was blowing out of the east.
Hoot raised his arm. “Go get 'em, boys.”
Marko watched the lead tank power forward. Despite the stream of Finnish machine-gun fire, the tank kept coming. His ears rang as red tracer bullets ricocheted off the armor and arced into the sky. The tank rammed a thick birch tree and brought it crashing down over a trench. But when the tank tried to cross the trench, it slipped a track and got hung up. The tank gunner fired bursts as his two crewmen jumped out with a jack and a crowbar. But Finnish machine guns cut them down.
One wave of Russians after another charged the Finnish trenches. The machine gunners mowed them down, but more men kept coming, hurdling the bodies of their fallen comrades.
“How can they keep rushing?” Karl said. “It's suicide.” Unlike the first morning on the trail, when Karl had looked on the dead enemy soldiers with glee, his eyes looked sick today.
“Russians fight with courage but without imagination,” the lieutenant said. “They're taught to charge straight forward.” Marko could barely hear him over the cannon fire.”Stalin kills off any general who has a mind of his own, leaving him with nothing but sheep to send to slaughter.”
Just then a man ducked into the end of their trench. A Russian! Marko leapt up.
No. An ammunition bearer for a machine gunner.
“We're running low on ammo,” the man reported to Juhola.”Two men are down. And we've melted one barrel.” His face was flecked with dirt and sweat.
“Messengers,”Juhola said, “help him lug some fresh ammo belts.”
The next thing Marko knew, he and Karl were standing beside the ammunition supply wagon with a metal box of machine-gun belts in each hand.
“This way.” The ammunition bearer ran into the woods. He was carrying a box of his own along with a replacement barrel and a can of coolant. Marko and Karl hustled as the man scampered down the hill.
The machine-gun emplacement was tucked between two spruce trees overlooking the battlefield, but the smoke made it hard to see. Two tanks burned below. Instead of short pops and bursts as in the other battles, the gunfire was a constant roar.
“Coolant! Good,” the gunner's assistant shouted. “That steam was drawing cannon fire.” Thousands of empty brass cartridges lay at his feet.
“Thanks, boys,” the squad leader said to Marko and Karl. “Hand me a belt.”The gunner's assistant pushed it into the gun from the right side, while the gunner pulled the leading edge through and levered the first shell into the chamber.
As Marko and Karl ran back up the hill, the Maxim machine gun added its rounds to the already deafening noise.
When the Russian attackers fell back late in the afternoon, the lieutenant said, “That's round one.”
In the momentary quiet Marko heard something strange. “Is someone singing?”
“Your ears are ringing,” Kerola said.
“That is a song,”Niilo said.
The men in the command trench watched as a Finnish soldier shuffled up the hill toward them. He was singing softly and clutching something in his hands.
Then Hoot, who was closest to the man, said, “His guts, poor fellow.”The soldier's stomach had been torn open, and he was cradling his intestines in his hands.
As a medic ran to tend to the man, Marko knelt at the end of the trench and threw up.
Marko heard the man shout, “No. Leave me alone. I promised her I'd be home before dark.”
Then he pitched forward into the snow.
An hour later, Kekko and Joki led five Russian prisoners up the hill. The Russians were quiet except for a short man who babbled and waved his arms. As he passed the command trench, Karl said, “I don't think that little guy is a soldier.”
“You can't believe those Russkies,” Kerola said.
“Karl—you know Russian?”the lieutenant asked.
“A few words. He says he's a fisherman from Kemi. He was shopping for his wife last week. He bought her red shoes. On the way home soldiers grabbed him and made him enlist.”
Juhola chuckled. “That's a great story.”
“He says he still has the shoes in his pack,” Karl said.
“Don't believe him,” Kerola warned.
The lieutenant waved to Kekko. “Bring that fellow over here. Let's see what he's carrying.”
When Kekko pulled a pair of red ladies' shoes out of the man's pack, the men all laughed. And Marko laughed the loudest of all, as the relief at surviving the battle washed over him.
“He must like high heels,”Joki said.
“Not quite his size,” the lieutenant said.
Kekko held one shoe next to the Russian's boot. It was ridiculously small.”He may
be telling the truth,”the lieutenant said. Then he turned to Kerola. “Ask him his name.”
The moment the man heard Russian, he beamed. “Petya.”He pointed to himself. “Petya Filipovii.”
“Let's call him Poppi,” Hoot Hauta said.
Juhola nodded. “Show Poppi to our soup cannon.”
“No cannon!” Poppi spoke with a heavy accent.
The men laughed again.
“We're going to feed you, not shoot you,” the lieutenant said.
CHAPTER 27
THE LINE WILL HOLD
“War is a messy business,” Juhola said as he glassed the enemy formations from the command trench.”I hate how every answer is the wrong one. Kill, kill, kill. If the mothers and fathers could see what happens to their boys out here, there would never be another war.”
It was the third morning of the Russian offensive, and he was talking to no one in particular. He set down his field glasses but kept staring toward the east. “They line them up. We mow them down. To want this butchery— Stalin has no soul! Aurelius said the best way to seek revenge is to not become like the wrongdoer, but Stalin will be taking a good number of us to the devil with him before this is done.”
For the next two weeks, despite a cold wave that swept down from the arctic and the snowstorms that followed, the Russians attacked again and again. They isolated one company with a full assault. Then they stormed all three at once.
“Our line must hold!”the lieutenant said.
Marko knew that if one Russian unit broke through, they would be helpless to defend the rear, and Virtalinna would fall. The Finnish machine gunners and the antitank squads kept the Russians at bay, but the one thing they couldn't stop was the artillery.
Marko had a constant headache from the guns pounding them day after day. Some of the older fellows gave up on sleep altogether and stayed up playing cards or whittling. Marko always fell asleep, but he woke whenever the guns stopped.
One night when Marko and Karl lay down for their sleep shift, Karl said, “I can't believe they haven't run out of shells. I'm going to be deaf by the time this war is over.”
“They say the men defending at Kollaa have taken a month of shelling. They're still holding on.”
“I'd go crazy,” Karl said.
“Would you squirrels shut your yaps so a man can sleep?”Juho hollered.
The artillery didn't injure many men, because the Finnish positions were so well camouflaged. But the explosions caved in part of the trenches every day. When Marko and Karl weren't shoveling snow or running messages or helping the medics, they spent their nights helping the infantrymen dig.
The toughest thing to handle, other than a man being wounded, was a horse getting shot. Late one afternoon a horse bolted into no-man's-land and went down in the cross fire.
Marko thought the horse was dead. But as soon as the Russians fell back, it started bawling. Every few minutes it lifted its head and gave out a strangled cry.
No one in the command trench spoke, but Marko could see the tension in the men's faces every time the horse bawled. Karl looked ready to cry.
Finally, Niilo said, “I'll go,” and he grabbed a pistol.
But before he reached the exit trench, the lieutenant said, “Someone's already taking care of it.”
A Finnish soldier had climbed out of a forward trench and was walking toward the wounded horse. Instead of ducking down, as Marko expected, the man kept his head high.
When no one fired from the Russian side, Niilo said, “I'll be switched. Them Russkies have hearts after all.”
The battlefield was quiet when the soldier stopped over the horse. The last time the animal lifted his head he didn't bawl.
The pistol fired once, and an awful silence descended.
The soldier walked back toward the Finnish trenches with his eyes cast down. He was only a few paces from his trench when a machine gun barked from the Russian side. The bullets tore into his back and spun him around.
Karl gasped as though someone had punched him.
“Those damned pigs,”Juho said between clenched teeth.
The man fell to his knees, and a second burst chopped him down.
When the temperature dropped to forty-three below zero the next day, the lieutenant said, “Our old friend Winter is back.”
The dry, bitter cold of January had been hard on Marko's leg, but the damp cold of February made it hurt even more. When Marko and Karl put on their skis to make a run to HQ, Marko couldn't stop shivering. “This weather might be a friend to the lieutenant,”Marko said as he fumbled with his binding strap, “but I wish they could reschedule this war for summer.”
Karl laughed.
Despite the cold and the constant bombardments, Marko was amazed at the high morale of the Finnish army.
“We're teaching those Russkies it ain't so easy to move a Finn once he gets his feet planted,” Kekko said.
“Maybe if they upped the odds to twenty to one against us, they'd stand a chance,” Niilo said.
One of the main reasons for the men's good humor was the new sauna. Though Hoot wasn't strong enough to chop logs, he'd supervised the construction. And he made sure that it was fired up every third day.
Hoot was fond of saying, “Sauna cures all ills.”
The Russian captive, Poppi, also helped keep spirits high. He turned out to be a friendly mascot to their company. Over the protests of Kerola, the lieutenant let Poppi help Marko and Karl chop firewood and shovel snow. In the evening he sang and danced for the men. And everyone laughed at his Finnish. All he could say was “yes,”“no,”“big cannon,”“capitalist dog,” and “put up your arms and surrender.”
Karl and Marko took Poppi to the stable to show him the two Russian horses. On the way up the hill Poppi said something to Karl, and the two of them laughed.
“What's so funny?” Marko asked.
“I only understood part of what he said, but as close as I can figure, his commander told him that we Finns tortured our prisoners, and he's happy that we are nice boys.”
“Tell him he's nice, too,”Marko laughed.”It's hard to think of a man as your enemy when you can look into his eyes.”
When they reached the stable, Marko expected Joseph to nicker for Poppi and perk up his ears the way he did for Karl, but the horse barely noticed his new visitor, even when Poppi chattered in Russian.
“It's not just the Russian talk,”Marko said to Karl as they walked back to the tent.”That horse really does like you.”
The men were also cheered by the news that the famous Finnish runners Paavo Nurmi and Taisto Mäki were visiting America to promote the Finnish war effort. They'd even been invited to the White House.
But the Finns had a big problem: lack of ammunition. Supplies of every caliber were getting dangerously low.
“Pretty soon we'll be left fighting with bayonets and vodka bottles,” Kekko said.
February passed without news of American aid, but the men still didn't give up hope. One night in the sauna, Hoot said, “I figure the longer we hold out, the greater the chance the Brits or Americans will join up with us.”
“Or the Frenchies,” Kekko said. “If they're smart, they'll want to be on the winning side.”
Kerola wasn't so positive.”According to the papers,” he said, “the U.S. Congress keeps debating whether they should send aid, but they've allowed U.S. companies to sell millions of dollars' worth of munitions to Russia.”
“I've got a cousin in Duluth who's trying to enlist in the Finnish army,” Hoot said. “If it was up to him, America would send soldiers tomorrow.”
“Too bad your cousin isn't named Roosevelt,” Marko said.
CHAPTER 28
A WATERY GRAVE
“Wake up! Everyone up!”the lieutenant said.
Marko rolled over and rubbed his eyes.
“Just got a call. The Russian infantry is set for a big push at Company One. The major needs our support so that the Russians can't outflank him to the nor
th.”
Just then Juho and Seppo returned from their patrol. “The Russkies are up to mischief again,” Juho said, breathing hard.
“We heard,” the lieutenant said. “Lining up to hit Company One.”
Seppo shook his head. “That's a decoy. Since dark they've been moving equipment through the woods toward the lake.”
“The land north of Company One is all swamp,” Marko said.
Juhola turned to him. “Are you sure?”
“An army could never march through there. My friend and I bog-walked it last summer.” Marko stopped. Had he spoken too quickly? But the lieutenant's mind was made up.
“Very well. I wonder why it's taken the Russians this long to think of trying the lake. You and Karl scoot down and tell Kerola that we'll be putting our Keskijarvi defense plan into place. I want a meeting of my platoon leaders in five minutes.”
When Marko and Karl delivered the message, Kerola said,”HQ's not going to like this.”
By the time Marko and Karl got back to the tent, Juhola was showing Hoot a hand-drawn map of the lake. “There's only one shore low enough for the Russians to land their equipment. That means they'll have to cross this bay.” He made an X. “If we set the charges along here”—he drew an arc—”we should be able to block any advance.”
He turned to Marko and Karl. “How are your chopping muscles?”
“Firewood tonight?” Karl asked.
“Your ice-chopping muscles.”
“We're going to mine the lake!” Marko said.
For the rest of the night every soldier in the company who wasn't in the trenches helped the demo team plant explosives under the ice. “This is my kind of ice fishing!” Kekko exclaimed, grinning as he lowered a charge into a hole.
To mask the sound of the chopping, Joki knocked the muffler off a Russian tractor that had been captured by the Finnish infantry, and he set the engine at a fast idle beside the lake.
While the demo men placed the charges, the lieutenant ordered the artillery battery to wheel two cannons into position above the lake and camouflage them with spruce boughs. The cannons, recently donated by France, had the year 1877 stamped on their barrels and looked so old that Marko wondered if they could fire.
The Winter War Page 12