Вяйнё Линна - Unknown Soldiers

Then the Captain took a deep breath. He stepped forward, straight as a ramrod. Only a slight shudder flickered across his cheekbones as he stepped forward, turned slightly to the side, like a man facing into a blizzard. His voice cracked as he bellowed, ‘ Cut them down, Kaleva! ’

A blast went off. The men realized Kaarna and Mielonen had collapsed to the ground. Mielonen rose immediately, however, and bounded over to the Captain, who was lying motionless, his body strangely contorted. Mielonen knelt beside him and yelled, his voice trembling, ‘First aid, first aid… hurry… he’s losing blood… Captain, tell me if I hurt you… Here, it’ll be better if I turn you this way.’

Carefully he rolled the Captain onto his back, and the men saw that one of his legs was twisting unnaturally to the side. The direct-fire gun had struck him squarely in the hip. His ripped trouser-leg held the limb in a little, but aside from that it was completely torn off. Mielonen was beside himself, repeating, ‘They got my arm, too… I’m hurt… medics… where are those bastards hiding?’

A couple of medics arrived and tried with trembling hands to help Mielonen bind the Captain’s wounds. It was hopeless, however.

‘Let’s get him to the aid station… his hand’s still moving… he’s alive.’

Kaarna looked at Mielonen. His eyes were cloudy, but there was no lack of consciousness in his gaze. Mielonen couldn’t understand what the Captain meant, as he whispered, stammering, ‘O-oul-ld. An… old… man… already…’ Then, with an unexpected sharpness, he said, ‘Say what you will… it’s a tank all right… motherfucker… sure is.’

His hand twitched for a moment, then his mouth hung open and his eyes rolled upwards. Mielonen understood that the end had come. They lifted the body onto the stretcher and Mielonen covered it with his overcoat. The arduous journey to the rear began.

The realization that the Captain had collapsed stunned Kariluoto. A lump formed in his throat and tears welled up in his eyes. He felt strangled by a sense of irrevocable defeat. ‘Advance, advance,’ he commanded himself, but his body refused to obey. The school refrain pounded through his panicked consciousness, ‘ Black and defamed be for ever the name… of the troops who in battle enraged… watch their elders fall before them… ’

His hands mangled the stems of the wild hemlock. He heard the medics’ yelling and tried to get up. Images rose up from somewhere in the dark recesses of his soul. His mother and father, bragging about him to their friends. Buddies he’d celebrated with when the war broke out. Finland would have her due… And then he remembered Sirkka. The thought nearly broke him.

Not ten seconds had passed since Kaarna’s death. Now Kariluoto got up and heard his own unbridled scream, ‘ Cut them down, Kaleva! Advance! Shoot for their nuts. Charge!’

He saw Koskela running beside him, yelling, ‘C’mon guys, keep in contact!’

Private Ukkola was running on the other side, screaming like a madman with his gun tucked under his arm and his mouth foaming. ‘Ahhh-ahh! Baaa-staaards!’

A wild rage for victory flooded through Kariluoto. He emptied his pistol into the edge of the swamp, wishing in his fury that he could get into hand-to-hand combat. He hadn’t even noticed that the fire coming from the opposite edge of the forest had stopped. Nor did he look back when one of the guys with the light machine guns wobbled to his knees, hands grasping his stomach, screaming, ‘Help! Help me!’

The cry was drowned out by the men’s shouts and the clanging of the submachine guns. Hietanen followed close on Koskela’s heels, yelling, ‘Let the bastards have it, boys!’

The machine-gunners were panting heavily, staggering under the weight of their heavy equipment. Vanhala kept repeating, breathlessly, ‘Let ’em have it! Let ’em have it!’ as he struggled forward with the gun stand on his shoulder. Riitaoja, however, just cowered in his hollow, gaping at everything and grasping nothing.

They found the enemy positions deserted. Kariluoto spotted just one brown uniform darting behind the bushes. Lahtinen caught up with the firing line in time to take a shot at him, but missed. The men were panting. Several of them threw themselves to the ground, and somebody called out frantically, ‘Ensign, sir, Jaakko was hit… Ensign, sir, Jaakko Vuorela’s still back there.’

‘Two men from the group go back and help,’ Kariluoto called out. ‘All the others, keep on advancing. Don’t stop. The road’s straight ahead. We press on until we reach it.’

His wild rage had subsided and exhilaration now surged up in its place. He strode forward briskly, upright, urging his men onward. Before them lay the road – the same one they had turned off into the forest that morning. Everything was quiet to their left, but to the right they still heard intense firing in the First Company’s sector. An engine rumbled above the din. A tank tread lay imprinted on the road, and in the forest they could see sheets of moss that had been uprooted by a turning vehicle.

They paused on the road. The clamor on the right died down as the enemy turned into the forest to circumvent the First Company’s roadblock. Only now did they have time to think about what had happened.

‘We lost the Captain and Mielonen.’

‘Not Mielonen. I saw him run to help the Captain.’

‘Whew, that was something! Machine gun’s still red hot. Feel!’

‘Not a single Russki down,’ Hietanen said. ‘Not one. I watched while we were shooting.’

Koskela used his shirtsleeve to wipe off the sweaty leather band inside his cap, then said, staring at the ground, ‘They got Kaarna with a tank… The man just went and got himself killed.’

At the time, the men weren’t able to understand Koskela’s reckoning, and his face quickly resumed its usual reserve, but he remained silent all evening, staring vaguely at nothing in particular.

‘They didn’t say the Captain wouldn’t make it,’ one guy whispered, his voice low, but somebody else dismissed the idea as impossible. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Looked pretty clear from the way his leg was hanging off.’

Ensign Kariluoto was pacing back and forth along the road. He couldn’t keep still. His blond hair was blowing about wildly above his beaming face, as he’d taken off his cap and tucked it under his belt. It was as if this surge of self-confidence within him demanded that he be bareheaded. A cap would have interfered, somehow, with the roaring winds of victory ringing in his ears, unheard by the others. Lieutenant Autio came up on his left, and Kariluoto rushed over to meet him.

‘Good job, boys. That was a solid start,’ Autio said, though it sounded more like an obligatory greeting than actual praise, as Autio was not one to get overly emotional. ‘So, how’d it feel?’

‘Quite all right, once we got going. I didn’t think there was any way I’d get them moving at first… But Kaarna…’

‘I heard.’

Autio’s expression remained unchanged. He had already been through the Winter War, and so had quite a bit of experience.

‘I wasn’t aware that the tank was there, or I would have given you the anti-tank rifle. But in any case, many thanks. You’re off to a good start. Any casualties?

‘Vuorela. Light machine-gunner. I sent two men back to help, when the medics took Kaarna.’

It was not until he was talking with Autio that Kariluoto remembered the first part of the attack. His face flushed, and he diverted his gaze. But as soon as Autio started talking about the tank, Kariluoto seized on the notion. It was that damn tank! Hell… what was a man supposed to do with his bare hands up against that? Then Kariluoto’s spirits began to rise, and his shame lifted. He was so happy to be liberated of its weight that he started singing Kaarna’s praises to Autio.