Вяйнё Линна - Unknown Soldiers

The worst part was that, when you were bogged down with those contraptions, it was hard to stop anywhere you wouldn’t be seen. But, finally, the sweaty ordeal was over, and they were just behind the infantry.

‘Get into position!’

Panting, cursing and urging one another on, they lugged the gun to a small depression shielded by a fallen birch. Vanhala pulled the heavy gun-stand into the ditch. Kaukonen fixed the gun to it. Koskela and Kariluoto agreed that the machine gun would fire at the openings in the bunker, providing some cover for Kariluoto and his men to try to get into the trench.

‘Shoot for the mouths of the bunker!’ Koskela commanded, and Kaukonen started shooting.

Kariluoto rose to a crouch: ‘My platoon: advance!’ The side of the fallen birch crackled beside him, obliging him to press low to the ground again.

Vanhala smiled, in the middle of everything, and said, ‘Those fellows are out to kill us over there. Guys can’t take a joke.’

‘Feed the belts!’ Lehto called curtly, sending Vanhala cowering into silence.

‘You got it, Kaukonen. Aim’s good.’

Kaukonen glowed at these words of praise and lifted his head to see better, but quickly ducked back down again. Kariluoto crawled off.

Several of the men tried to follow, but their venture was cut short when one of the light machine-gunners fell and the guy helping him was wounded in the same burst. A bullet had gone through his throat, which now wheezed grotesquely, its broken whine draining the men of their last shreds of willpower. The gruesome sights were starting to overwhelm them. It was too much to take all at once.

‘They’re sending us out to be killed for nothing,’ a voice came from somewhere. ‘Where are those fucking fancy-pants hiding?’

‘Shut up and adva-h-ance!’ Kariluoto’s angry voice wavered on the brink of sobs as he screamed. He knew ‘fancy-pants’ couldn’t be referring to him, since he had been out in front of his men the whole time, but he still felt as if he had been insulted. Koskela crawled beside him and said, ‘Let it go. You’ll get yourself killed for nothing… you won’t get ’em to move that way… you’ll just get yourself killed, and for nothing.’

‘What am I supposed to do? What else is there to be done? We have to try to advance somehow. Either they come or they don’t… but I for one am not stopping.’

‘I know a trick. We could try to get one guy up close with a satchel charge. It’d work better if some of the others could help him out with some fire. Tiny little movement like that might go unnoticed. If you get the whole platoon to charge, it will cost us several men no matter what.’

‘I’ll try it myself.’

‘Won’t work. I’m going.’

‘But I should be the one… This is my mission, not yours. In any case, a machine-gunner’s not supposed to take the lead.’ Kariluoto was dismayed. Koskela’s suggestion struck him as insulting, and in the same blow it seemed to confirm that he had failed.

Koskela could feel himself getting irritated at this excessive touchiness and egotism, as he himself had never set much store by such things. Nonetheless he replied calmly, ‘It won’t work that way. Somebody’s got to get the men to advance and that’s your job. Otherwise there’s no point.’

Kariluoto realized Koskela was right and ordered his men to bring over the satchel charges. The men had been lugging them along to the right of the formation, and Koskela started binding two of the nine-pound charges together with some wire.

‘Eighteen pounds. You think you can make it with all that?’

No answer. Koskela was running his mouth down the twisted wire to clamp it tight. Finally the satchel charge was ready.

‘Lehto. You keep that rooster crowing non-stop soon as I head out. And the same goes for Kariluoto’s guys. Just don’t shoot me.’

Koskela examined the terrain closely. The men, for their part, just watched him. Quiet Koski’s heading in.

Kariluoto was beginning to have doubts. His mind was suddenly overcome with fear that Koskela would be shot down in his mission, or that the satchel charge would have no effect, in which case Koskela would also be shot. That would make two men lost on his account. Kaarna’s death returned to him now as something that had been his fault.

‘What if the charge doesn’t have any effect?’ he asked, hesitating. ‘Maybe I should just try again without…’

Koskela was no longer looking at Kariluoto. His eyes were fixed on the terrain and his mind was focused on the task before him, as he said, almost in passing, ‘There’s nothing over there but a layer of logs and mud. Eighteen pounds oughtta do something to it. Anyway, it buys you the time you need.’ He set out, dragging the satchel charges at his side.

‘Watch out for Koskela and fire!’ Kariluoto ordered. He had definitely decided to attack immediately – alone if need be – if Koskela was killed, just as he would in the event that he was able to throw the satchel charges. The men accelerated their fire until they were shooting at maximum capacity. The machine gun chattered and rattled.

The water boiled trying to cool the gun, and Kaukonen lifted his head to try to better direct the stream of fire. At just that moment a heavy sigh burst from his mouth – ‘Aa–aah!’ and his head hit the handle as it slumped over the machine gun.

‘Kaukonen!’ Vanhala yelled, half asking, half trying to attract the others’ attention.

Lehto went pale, but resolutely took hold of Kaukonen’s body, lifted it to the side, took hold of the handle, and started shooting. He spotted a man’s upper body swing into view from the enemy trench and throw a hand grenade in Koskela’s direction. He turned the machine gun in the same blink of an eye and watched his fire strike its target. ‘Koskela… watch out,’ he hollered, and then with cruel glee he muttered, ‘Got him.’

The hand grenade went off several yards from Koskela. He lost his cap and hair was flying wildly above his face. He yelled backwards, ‘Just keep shooting like hell, I’m gonna try to get closer.’

He inched his way forward, darting from one bit of cover to the next. The tall grass helped, as did the fact that the barricade had been set too close to the enemy positions. There was a boulder he could crouch behind about a dozen yards from the bunker. Holding their breath, the men firing realized that if he managed to make it behind that boulder, victory was theirs. And when Koskela made it, they watched how he calmly settled his body into position. Then he pulled the fuse and, like a flash of lightning, shot up and swung round, and the charge was flying. It happened so quickly that the men hardly knew how Koskela had thrown it. The moment he rose, the satchel charge was already airborne, and scarcely had it left his hands than he was lying behind the boulder again, hands over his ears.

A few dozen nearby voices screamed at the top of their lungs as the charge exploded directly on the roof of the bunker. The end of a log stuck out of the smoke.

‘Charge!’ Kariluoto dashed forward and his men immediately followed.

‘The Russkis are running… take ’em down, men!’

‘Over there… shoot! They’re pulling out. Don’t let them get away.’

Kariluoto was already in the trench, launching a stream of hand grenades into the mouth of the bunker. Ukkola’s submachine gun purred through cartridges, following them up. The platoon was already in the trench, and the men, drunk with excitement, had begun to overrun it, which was not difficult, seeing as the stunned enemy soldiers had already started to abandon it.

Kariluoto sent a message to Autio requesting a reserve platoon be dispatched on the double to help sweep the positions in front of the Second Company. He sent his platoon out in front of their own company, while one machine gun and one infantry squad went to secure the opposite direction. The defense disintegrated quickly. The neighboring platoon was already in the trench and the fleeing enemy troops were falling along the edge of the forest as they ran for cover.