“Of course.”
“Then have you asked yourself why your buddy got a bullet in his brain while you survived to see another battle? I don’t pretend to understand this stuff. I didn’t pay much attention in my confirmation school. But isn’t some higher power mixed up in all of that somehow?”
During occasional lulls in the fighting, Jiri had, in fact, contemplated that very question more than once. But the memory of his God-fearing, Torah-abiding Bohemian grandfather’s slaughter at the hands of unruly young gentile Czech ultra-nationalists led him to conclude that if some higher power did, in fact, intervene to save some, he, or she, or it, or whatever, was not very consistent since so many are not saved.
“I suppose you could say I chose to freeze my ass in the Karelian forest over rotting in prison,” Niska said. “But I also consider my enlisting as an act of gratitude for all my good fortune in still being alive.”
“I admire that, Algot. But when the Russian shells start coming over the ridge soon, I think I would trade a year in jail for one day here.”
“Jiri, how is it that you’re wearing the white snowsuit of a Finnish private?”
“When the Nazis attacked Czechoslovakia I was ready to volunteer for the defenses. But the Czech army didn’t want me. Remember, I lived in Berlin for many years. The Czechs thought I was spying for Germany. Shit. Can you imagine that? After what the Germans did to me?”
“That’s laughable.” Niska guffawed once again before he took another sip of his coffee.
“But I suspect the real reason they wouldn’t take me is that I am a Jew. When the Nazis stole the Sudetenland, the Czech government tried to appease Hitler and keep him out of the rest of the country. They started to turn the screws on us Jews.”
“That’s better than what the Czech government did after Hitler annexed all of the country.”
“I know. It’s why you came to get me back out, remember?”
“The Finnish army doesn’t care if you’re a Jew?”
“No, they don’t have enough manpower for this fight with the Russians. They don’t care if a volunteer is circumcised or not. I signed up in the foreign volunteer corps. Stalin just looked the other way when Hitler snatched Czechoslovakia. This gives me a chance to help the country that welcomed me as a refugee. I want to get my revenge on Stalin, for the sake of Finland, but also of my home country.”
~~~
The morning of March 10 was one of the coldest in decades. The air was so silent and still that any sound from the tents could carry through the frigid space across the river and over the ridge.
Niska, as usual, was the first man out from his tent. He hummed a folk song out of tune to himself as he stood with his feet apart behind a birch tree some twenty meters from the colony of tents and urinated, wondering if his stream would freeze in motion before it hit the snow.
Suddenly, Niska was startled by a terribly loud crack of a single gunshot that echoed through the frozen air. Niska dropped to his stomach on the snow to be a less vulnerable target to whomever had shot the rifle. His heart was pumping furiously with the rush of adrenaline released into his blood. He remained on his stomach and scanned the horizon. Not hearing a follow-up shot¸ he rose slowly, first to his knees, then to his feet.
Aalto, his platoon commander, hurried out of his tent. “What the fuck was that?”
Before Niska could answer, the two men heard the plaintive groaning of a man trying to shout from the riverbank.
“That must be one of our snipers,” Aalto said. “I sent Haula and Hämäläinen out to keep their eyes open lest the enemy climb over the ridge before the sun came up.”
“Good God, let’s hope it’s not Haula. He’s our ticket out of here,” Niska said.
Aalto closed his eyes, in disbelief and perhaps regret, and shook his head slowly. In any case, this was not good. “He or Hämäläinen must have been hit by an enemy sniper.”
Aalto ran back to the entrance of his tent. He pulled away the threefold flap and poked his head into the tent.
“Salminen: Haula or Hämäläinen has been hit by a sniper by the river. It may be both. But I hear someone’s voice so at least one’s still alive. Make your way over to retrieve them. Take another man with you. Now! On the double.”
Niska wondered at the wisdom of sending anyone to get them and possibly exposing two healthy men to the Russian sniper’s view.
Nonetheless, Niska shouted to Aalto, “I’ll go as the second man.”
He started to run back to his own tent to retrieve his rifle.
“No, private. I need a younger man for this assignment, a faster one. Salminen is one of our most able. You won’t be able to keep up.”
“Damnit, I’m the oldest man in this outfit,” Niska replied defiantly. “I have the least to lose.”
Before he could be refused by Aalto, Niska had crept over beside Salminen, and the two set off on their stomachs toward the river bank.
“I think he was hit over there, near the small birch,” Niska said to Salminen.
They headed in the direction of the birch. The tree stood on top of a small ridge that led down to the river. They could see a trail of blood in the snow, and the marks of someone’s having dragged himself through the snow to take cover underneath another tree on the riverbank. Haula apparently had enough strength to have maneuvered his wounded body from his mound of snow in the unprotected part of the riverbank.
Salminen and Niska followed the trail of blood, still on their stomachs. Salminen was the first to see him. The white-clad sniper was lying with his face down in the snow, no longer moving. Salminen crawled over to the body and started to rise to his knees.
“Stay down!” Niska urged Salminen.
Niska finished crawling to the body. He forced his right arm below the man’s chest and tried to turn him over. The body was too heavy to turn while Niska was prone on his stomach. Contrary to his instruction to Salminen, Niska pushed up to his knees. He managed to pivot enough to turn the body onto its back. It was Haula. Though barely recognizable, Niska knew it was Haula by the thirty-four-year-old’s receding hairline he’d seen in newspaper photos.
Another crack. A figure in white fell from the top of a tree on the near side of the river, breaking several branches as it plummeted and landed with a muffled thud on the snow.
“Must have been Hämäläinen,” Niska whispered.
When Salminen saw Haula’s face, he immediately turned his own face in the opposite direction. Haula was moaning weakly. At least he was still alive. But where Haula’s face would normally be, there was only a grotesque red mess of shredded flesh. The sniper’s bullet had gone into Haula’s left cheek and blown off the left side of his face until it was barely identifiable as human.
Niska averted his eyes for a few seconds, but then sprang into action.
“Come, we have to try to carry him or just drag him to the tents. But for God’s sake, keep your body as low to the ground as you can.”
Together, they took hold of Haula under each armpit and, while still on their knees, began to drag him toward the cluster of tents. Progress was painfully slow through the deep snow. Both men’s strength was flagging the closer they got to their destination. In the frigid air, Niska had trouble getting his breath. They were only a few meters away from one of the tents, so very close. Niska was sure they had succeeded in their arduous task and that they were safe. He rose up from his knees on to his feet to drag Haula the rest of the way.
Crack! The sound of another single shot reverberated across the surface of the frozen river and over the ridge. Niska fell face first into the snow. He raised his head slowly and cautiously and looked back to see if Salminen had been hit.
Salminen, though exhausted, shouted at the top of his lungs, “Medic! We’ve got bad casualties here! Medi-i-i-c!” As though he himself had been shot, Salminen buried his face into the snow and wept aloud like a wearied, whimpering child.
A contingent of the 12th Division had crept from the tents
in the direction from which they had heard the cry for a medic. Platoon commander Aalto ordered the men to remain behind a snow embankment. “Keep your eyes peeled toward the trees on the opposite side of the river. If you spy a sniper, take aim at the son of a bitch. But make sure you don’t miss and give away our position.”
Crack! A second bullet from across the river ricocheted off a tree trunk just a meter from where Niska was prone on the ground. He knew he was still an exposed target. Lest he invite another shot, he remained absolutely still, face-down in the snow like a dead man.
The men of the 12th launched a blistering volley of shots toward the tops of the trees. Niska wondered if anyone of them had actually spotted the sniper, or if they were merely shooting blindly in the hope that at least one bullet would find its way to the hidden target.
Aalto ordered the men to cease fire. There followed a long pregnant silence. Niska dared to raise his head slightly. He was still less than a few meters from the entrance to one of the tents. This pause in the shooting was Niska’s opportunity to make his way on his stomach to the tent.
“Salminen, you’ve still got Haula? Need my help dragging him to the tent?”
“No, I think I can do it alone.”
Salminen’s voice sounded exhausted and anemic. Niska turned and began crawling in the snow in Salminen’s direction. Crack! The silence was shattered. Niska stopped in mid-crawl. “Damn! I’m hit.”
A cannonade of gunfire erupted from behind the snow embankment to Niska’s left. Niska’s head was back down in the snow. Salminen continued to drag the limp body of Haula with much breathless effort. He paused where Niska lay to check on his condition. The white snow beneath Niska’s left side was turning a brilliant red.
~~~
Two days later, on March 12, Finnish President Ryti spoke to the nation on the radio and announced that hostilities between Finland and the Soviet Union were over. The two nations were preparing to sign the Treaty of Moscow. The terms of the Finnish surrender were still being negotiated, but they would be severe. The depleted surviving troops had broken down and packed up the encampment of tents and began the long walk on the snow-covered floor of the pine and birch forest back to Finland, depleted and defeated.
Jiri Hudak and Eemil Salminen were among them. Hämäläinen’s corpse was placed in a sledge. Niska and Haula, however, both still clinging to life, were being prepared by intrepid medics to be borne by the same sledge to a field hospital.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Berlin: March 12, 1940
Kersten was livid over the surprise early-morning visit by Leutnant Rohrbach and the two other SS personnel at his flat. He needed to vent to Himmler. That could backfire, of course, but he felt strongly enough about having been scrutinized and his privacy invaded that he would take his chances.
At noon the same day, Kersten walked into Himmler’s office at the time Himmler was expecting him for a treatment. Even before taking off his overcoat and hanging up his hat, Kersten said to Himmler, only half-jokingly, “When you want to find out something about me, you don’t have to bother sending the SS. You have only to ask me directly yourself.”
Himmler had been approaching Kersten with a hand outstretched to shake his, stopped cold, as if he had been hit in the solar plexus.
“What did you say? You had a call from someone in the SS? Without my knowing about it? That is impossible.”
“A Leutnant Rohrbach and two subordinates went through my flat. They were courteous enough, but I was annoyed, to say the least.” Kersten spoke unusually rapidly as he related the whole incident. He hadn’t finished before Himmler angrily picked up his telephone receiver. Not trying in the least to control the vexation in his voice, he grilled the recipient of his call about the confrontation. Once he stopped to listen, Himmler’s face turned the color of laundered linens. He put his left hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver and spoke to Kersten, “It seems they were going to arrest you for treating Jews.”
Abruptly, Himmler took his hand from over the mouthpiece and, his face now the color of scarlet, shouted, “I forbid anyone to interfere with Dr. Kersten. I don’t care about the reason. This is an order. The doctor is answerable to me directly, and only to me. Is that understood?”
He waited for the affirmative response of the person on the other end of the line.
“Now, please make sure that this order is communicated to General Heydrich and Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner. Remind them, in case they have forgotten, that they are subordinate to me. Neither is to send officers of the SS or Gestapo to Dr. Kersten’s address, in Berlin or at his country estate, on any pretext whatsoever, without my express knowledge and permission. Understood?”
Himmler slammed down the receiver on its cradle. He struggled to catch his breath. His glasses slipped down the length of his nose. He began pushing his spectacles up to their proper position without being aware of it, but they just continued to slide down the sweaty surface. Kersten could tell that Himmler had not exhausted his anger. Himmler raised his head to look into Kersten’s face.
“You cannot be my doctor and still treat Jews,” he said flatly.
“How the hell am I supposed to know my patients’ religion?” Kersten asked. “You know I never ask them that. Jews or non-Jews, they are all my patients.”
“Jewishness is not just a religion, Kersten. Don’t you understand? They’re a filthy race, different from all the rest. Jews are the enemy. You can no longer be treating Jews! The German people are engaged in a war to death against the Jew-infested democracies.”
Kersten said quietly, “But you forget, Herr Reichsführer, as apparently Leutnant Rohrbach and whoever sent him to my flat did as well, that I am not one of the German people. I am a Finn. My country is not at war against the Jewish people.”
“As someone in the employ of the head of the SS, you are not permitted to treat Jews.”
“Then perhaps I will have to resign my post in the employ of the head of the SS. I will have to wait for my government to prescribe the next line of conduct for me.”
Himmler seemed to be flummoxed by Kersten’s resistance. He did not want to lose his healer. He paused to choose his words carefully.
“This is a silly way to argue,” Himmler said in calmer voice. “You know very well what I mean. I have been given the assignment of tracking down, punishing, and weeding out the Jews. So do me a personal favor, Doctor, and leave the Jews to their ailments and pains.”
If Kersten yielded now, if only outwardly, he would be denying everything he had come to stand for.
In a half voice, he said, “I cannot do so, Herr Reichsführer. The Jews are humans subject to illness and pains like everyone else. If one needs my help, I cannot refuse. They don’t have their own doctors any longer. You may, in fact, have had something to do with that.”
“I must insist, no!” Himmler shouted. “The Führer has said no. He says there are three categories of creatures: men, animals, and Jews. And the last will have to be exterminated so that the other two can continue to exist.”
“I must ask, is that your Führer’s absurd anthropology alone or is it yours, too?”
Before he could shout an answer to Kersten’s provocation, Himmler’s wan face suddenly took on a greenish tinge as though he were about to vomit. His brow broke out in beads of perspiration. His hands clutched his stomach.
“Here it comes again,” he groaned.
“The cramps have returned?”
“No, the stabbing of the knife.”
“I have warned you many times not to let yourself get worked up this way,” Kersten chided as if he were talking to a naughty child. “It is very bad for your cramps.” Rolling up his shirtsleeves, pointing at the divan, he commanded, “Come now, you know the routine. Take off your shirt.”
Obviously in acute pain, Himmler obeyed and made himself prone on the divan. Kersten launched immediately into the massage therapy. Himmler would be impossible to bear until his pain was alleviated.
> When the therapy session was nearing its conclusion, but while still massaging Himmler lightly, Kersten thanked him for convincing Hitler to postpone indefinitely the hair-brained scheme to force Dutch “irreconcilables” to march to Poland.
“I think I caught the Führer on a good day. He had just come in from the courtyard and playing with his precious Blondi.”
“Who is Blondi?” Kersten asked, assuming that she was a mistress, even though Hitler was notoriously austere and traditional about matters of personal morality, especially sex. Besides, Hitler already had his mistress, Eva.
“Oh, yes. Silly of me. How can I expect you to know about Blondi? I apologize for the assumption. Blondi is the German shepherd puppy that Bormann gave the Führer as a gift on his birthday last year. The Führer is totally charmed by the animal. That’s why I say I caught him on a good day. Anytime the Führer spends time the Blondi, he is totally relaxed. He was remarkably amenable to the suggestion that we wait until a more propitious time to punish the Dutch.”
“I don’t imagine that Göbbels or Göring were too pleased, however.”
“No, that’s putting it mildly. They were beyond irritated that the Führer heeded my counsel instead of theirs. Still, you need to remember, Doctor, the Dutch Jews will still be deported from Holland eventually.”
“Allow me to say, Herr Reichsführer, that I do not understand this, shall I say, inhumane campaign against the Jews.”
Himmler was annoyed by Kersten’s comment.
“Come, my dear Kersten. You said you’re an Evangelisch, did you not?”
“Where I was confirmed, we were known as Lutherans.”
“Then I am sure you are familiar with the views on the Jews by the man whose surname gave the name to your denomination?”
“I haven’t had much time to read theology, Herr Reichsführer.”
“I suggest you go to the library and read Luther’s treatise, On the Jews, and Their Lies. Göbbels directed every library in the Reich to order ample copies. I think every Evangelisch should be required to read it. Every German, for that matter.”
Accidental Saviors Page 17