Вяйнё Линна - Unknown Soldiers

Vanhala had sunk down to the ground rather languidly, following the others’ lead. And now, the corners of his eyes crinkling with his smile all the while, he was the last to rise. ‘The booming voice of authority! Heehee,’ he whispered to his neighbor. He didn’t even blush this time, though it certainly took some daring to start cracking jokes when the others were taking the incident so seriously.

Riitaoja, on the other hand, was slow to recover, and Sihvonen blustered, ‘Of course. It’s our own guns. Getting all jumpy over that! Clear as day that that was our guns. Stupid to get all worked up.’ He himself was the one who had plunged to the ground with the most terrific clatter, however.

The battery fell silent, but the men’s uneasiness was slow to recede. The leader of the rifle platoon in front of them was pacing back and forth restlessly in front of his men. He was speaking to them in an offhand sort of way, but you could tell from the stiffness in his voice and the unevenness of his breath that his heart was racing. He strode over to Koskela and said, with a contrived gruffness, ‘Well, Koski, let’s pull out all the stops! Autio promised me two of your guns.’

‘We’ll see when we get there,’ Koskela replied briefly, and the Ensign returned to his men, making a personal note that Koskela was not the man to turn to when you wanted someone to chat with. The machine-gunners were somewhat acquainted with this blond-haired, slightly precocious ensign as well. Kariluoto, they’d heard his name was. Back in the burnt clearing he’d comported himself with a bit too much machismo, and the men’s sharp instincts made it impossible for them to take him seriously. The Ensign was happy to curse like a sailor, but it was painfully obvious that it was all just some sort of misguided idea of manliness. Coarseness didn’t suit the well-spoken, high-born fellow in the least. No wonder the other men grunted rather contemptuously, ‘Talks about the goods almost as if he’d had a feel himself.’

They waited quietly for half an hour, until, finally, rippling down the line from the right, the command came: ‘Move out!’

Their gray shadows moved silently through the dusky forest toward the border. The submachine-gunners stole out in front. They stared unblinking through the trees, hearts racing and hands gripping their weapons so tightly their knuckles went white. Before them lay the border: an open stretch hacked out of the forest with a double barbed-wire fence running down the length of it. They kicked down the fence amidst an ear-splitting screech of metal. Then they slipped through the gaps, save for Hietanen, who got carried away and started kicking at one of the fence posts, snarling, ‘Oh for Chrissakes! Open the roads, open the goddamn roads all the way to the skies!’

‘For God’s sake, keep it down,’ Koskela warned, and Hietanen abandoned his effort, but not without muttering, ‘All these goddamn posts here, in the middle of the woods! I wouldn’t stand for it.’

They proceeded cautiously. They expected gunfire from behind every tree, every shrub. But nothing came. Not even when they crossed a small, open meadow, which they assumed the enemy must be waiting behind. The meadow widened on the left, where it met up with a small, open field that had a gray house sitting near its edge. The border ran right beside the house, which was on the Finnish side, and several men appeared to be standing around it. They recognized them as guys from the Second Battalion, the one that was supposed to advance toward the road.

Then they saw a skittish horse start jumping about, and several men began chasing after it, trying to get it under control. One company from the Second Battalion, it seems, had decided to take tea before the departure, but because they were running late, the driver had driven the field kitchen all the way up to the border to save time. The Battalion Commander, his nervousness further exacerbated by the delay their gathering had caused, arrived on the scene, bellowing, ‘Good Lord, man! Get that kitchen the hell out of here! What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?’

The man panicked and started tugging at his horse, which promptly bolted off completely. With the men’s help, he finally captured the horse and led it away. The men from the First Battalion, who watched from behind the clearing, would never have thought to connect the scene they’d witnessed with the rumor that circulated later, according to which the Second Battalion had sent their field kitchen to spearhead their advance across the border, just for the hell of it. The rumor snowballed and spread widely. The Battalion Commander came to be known as ‘Madcap Karl’ and the story stuck to him. Young officers who had been sufficiently far off from the scene of the event said, ‘That’s just Karl’s way. That’s him through and through.’ Many of them had never seen Karl himself, but they spoke of him as if they were close personal acquaintances. Before long, one of these officers’ mothers was telling her friends how her son and some Madcap Karl, along with several officers, had been the first to drive across the border with a field kitchen. The enemy had mistaken the contraption for a tank and hightailed it out of there without firing a shot.

In reality, Karl was angry as a bear with a bullet in his back as he ordered the kitchen to be driven back from the front lines. The men couldn’t seem to get themselves properly organized into squads. The companies blundered about in utter chaos and, in his disgruntled exasperation, Karl mixed up the chain of command and started issuing orders directly to the platoons instead of to the company commanders.

The First Battalion was waiting with bated breath. The sun had risen and the men were sprawled out on the damp grass, warming themselves in its rays. The mosquitoes buzzed and an airplane drone came from somewhere further off, but besides that it was perfectly silent.

Finally, the men saw the others moving away from the little house. They prepared to set out themselves, but no orders came. Then, suddenly, they went stiff, listening and looking at one another. A string of submachine-gun shots rang out on their left. The sudden staccato was quickly followed by the clatter of more weapons. The rattle of light machine guns echoed through the forest, and then a machine gun hammered out a long string of shots. The men listened, silent.

‘The whole belt in one go,’ somebody observed.

‘Whole belt.’

‘Some guy’s already going cold over there.’

For the first time they heard the ricochet of a stray bullet: Voo… phiew .

‘Somebody over there’s taking a beating.’

‘Why are we staying here?’ Sihvonen exclaimed. ‘They might still turn this way.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Koskela replied calmly, brushing the mosquitoes from his face with an alder branch. ‘There’s nothing over there but some outpost – at most. You’ll get your chance to smell burnt gunpowder, don’t worry.’

The firing died down, and they waited. Then they started off, but the shooting started up again on the left, and they stopped again.

‘This is pointless,’ somebody said. ‘Something’s wrong.’

‘Nothing’s wrong. This is war. In a few days you’ll understand,’ Koskela said.

By five o’clock in the afternoon they had advanced a mile or so. The firing on their left was continuous now. The Second Battalion, they realized, must have reached the enemy positions.

The swamp lay in front of them. Behind it rose a wooded ridge. A few dwarf pines trees grew in the swamp, and the men tried to peek between them to the edge of the forest opposite. They couldn’t make out anything significant, but they knew the enemy was over there, regardless. The term ‘enemy’ is a bit misleading, actually, as none of them bore any particular enmity toward anybody just then. They were too nervous for that.