Вяйнё Линна - Unknown Soldiers

‘Hey, hey,’ the nervous medic said. ‘I popped out about twenty years ago and I’m not goin’ back in… Look, bandage it yourself, if you like. It’s not like I want to.’

The man walked off, waving his good arm and calling out, ‘So long, boys! This fellow here is headed home on leave.’ He was happy. Not only because of the leave, but also because he knew that later that night, somebody in a tent would say, ‘Tough son-of-a-bitch, that Rantanen guy. Whew! My God!’

‘Move out!’

They got up. They practically marched on one other’s heels they were so eager to get away. Ylitalo’s head was covered, but some liquid from his canned pork was dripping from his bread sack, as a shard of shrapnel had punctured his emergency rations as well.

‘Enemy directly ahead, behind a barricade about three hundred yards out. Two armed bunkers reported back there, at least. Artillery opens fire for five minutes. Mortars join two minutes after that. H-hour is at 10.48.’ Kariluoto kept his voice low.

The men listened, looking at the barricade visible between the trees. It ran along a rather steep slope and stretched for tens of yards. They couldn’t see any barbed wire, though. Reconnaissance missions carried out earlier had determined that there were several machine-gun nests in dugouts behind the barricade. Two fell in the sector assigned to Kariluoto’s platoon.

A scout about a dozen yards out in front of them whispered hoarsely, ‘Movement behind the barricade. Shall I give it a shot?’

‘Absolutely not. Everyone still.’

Off to the right, the artillery observer was speaking into his radio. ‘Esa speaking. Esa here. Masa, do you read me? Masa, do you read me? Over, over.’

The artillery observer’s low voice sounded as if it were reciting a strange incantation. The men’s anxiety mounted, as his call meant that all hell was about to break loose. The forest was damp with morning dew and humming with the buzzing of mosquitoes. The spiderwebs hanging in the low blueberry bushes clung to their hands unpleasantly as blood pounded through their wrists. Squad leaders whispered final instructions. The men tightened their belts and put their cartridges into their pockets where they’d be easy to reach.

‘Hand grenades at the ready. Who’s got the satchel charges?’

‘Here’s one. Two… Should I launch them?’

‘No, absolutely not.’

The artillery observer was muttering figures into his radio. Nervous explosions went off on their left, here and there, in the Second Company’s sector. The enemy could scent an attack.

It was 10.43. Behind them it seemed like the whole world was being torn to pieces. Shrill cannons, low-booming howitzer fire, and the rolling thunder of the heavy artillery came thumping on one another’s heels as if they were racing. The men clung to the ground as the shower of shells sailed over them, sounding like a clattering train. Their bodies bounced and shook along with the movements of the earth beneath them. Smoke, earth, rocks and wood came pouring down from behind the barricade. Flames flared up in the gray whirl.

‘Jesus! Can a person survive that?’ A pale face rose to watch.

‘And now it’s your turn, buddy,’ another voice murmured low, with vindictive pleasure.

‘They’ve overshot a little,’ Koskela said, kneeling to look up the hill.

Kariluoto’s watch ticked. 10.44… 45… 46… 47… ‘Forty-seven… keep them under fire as you move out… use the barricade to your advantage… if I get scared, just shoot me… we’re going all-out…’

10.47. Kariluoto waited conscientiously until his watch showed 48 minutes exactly, and just at that moment the last shell sailed overhead.

‘Fourth Platoon, advance!’

Kariluoto dashed quickly toward the barricade, keeping low to the ground. The men followed. The scout darted out in front of all of them. Enemy mortars whistled overhead and exploded behind them.

‘Advance! Advance!’ the men urged one another on.

Fighting was already in full swing in the neighboring sector. The scout’s submachine gun rattled away and returning fire hammered straight back. The air whistled and whined, pounded and boomed.

‘All right men, let ’er rip!’ Kariluoto leapt forward. He gritted his teeth and hollered, ‘Move out! Mow them down… the bastards… now we’re going to shove you bastards right back where you came from… Asia for the Asians…’ Kariluoto stoked the flames of his anger to keep his courage up. Maybe it helped him – in any case, he advanced ever further, despite the angry whizzes nearly grazing his eyebrows.

‘Yeeessss, men…’

Because the platoon was still advancing at a crouch, taking cover only now and then, he was hoping to advance directly into a charge, which would settle the whole thing quickly.

Just then, the scout dropped his submachine gun and fell to his knees, pressing his cap to his face. Blood seeped between his fingers. ‘My head… it got me in the head… my eyebrow’s torn up…’

‘Can you manage by yourself?’

‘Yeah, I think so… it’s not fatal… can’t be dangerous… a head wound kills instantly if it’s fatal… but I’m still here… so it’s not an emergency…’ The man was dazed by the blow and kept repeating this thought that had sprung into his mind, which in itself was perfectly correct.

He started to make his way back on all fours as the others continued to advance, though the sight of his injury had prompted several of them to take cover. The barricaded slope lay in front of them. An unbroken stream of infantry fire was coming out from behind it, but the fervor of the fire far exceeded its threat. It basically went straight over them.

About halfway up the slope, however, it began to be more effective. The men pressed themselves low to the ground. Some darted from cover to cover and some crawled, but several were already trapped in the line of fire. Kariluoto was four or five yards out in front of his men. He was crawling on all fours, yelling constantly, ‘Advance, men…! Let ’em have it!’

Then somebody yelled, ‘Watch out for the bars of soap!’

‘Huh?’

‘The soap. Hanging from the logs. It’s TNT.’

‘The barricade’s mined. Watch out for the wires.’

The barricade was hung with little TNT explosives that looked remarkably like bars of soap. They weren’t terribly dangerous, so long as you weren’t right next to them when they went off, since without shells they were basically just pressure explosives.

‘Dismantle them. Be careful!’

They didn’t have any sappers, but somehow or other they had enough training to manage situations like this, which they were supposed to navigate on their own. The sappers were with the neighboring company, as it was the one tasked with spearheading the attack.

The men were wary of touching the wires. The advance came to a halt.

‘We’re stuck.’

‘What kind of sucker’s gonna touch that?’

‘They don’t do anything. They’re harmless.’ Kariluoto detached one of the wires, emboldening the men around him to follow his lead.

Bam!

‘Get anyone?’

‘Nope. Just the world gettin’ a word in.’

Kariluoto rose to a squat. ‘Try to keep clear of the rest. Let’s crawl from here.’

The clamor intensified. It billowed in waves on the right, then on the left. Men screamed out orders and calls to charge. Shells whizzed overhead in both directions as the artilleries battled it out. Bullets whistled, ricochets whined. They began to hear screams of ‘Stre-e-e-tch-ers!’ from the neighboring platoon’s sector.

The barricade provided them with some cover, as did the boulders and hollows in the terrain. The enemy machine guns weren’t just firing off bursts, but whole belts, hammering from one end straight through to the other. The uproar of battle continued as far as the men could make out above the blasts of their own fire. The regiment was attacking the bunker line. And from further off on the right, they could hear the clatter of a neighboring regiment’s attack.