He knew that he needed to get it there as quickly as possible, but even if it meant facing the court martial, Koskela had decided that they had taken enough reckless gambles for one day. Not even in their famous ‘shitty encirclement’ had they lost as many men as they had in this hopeless effort. The last three hours had been the bloodiest in the battalion’s history. Koskela recalled Hietanen’s charred body. Even the bandage around over his eyes had burned.
Koskela grunted.
Vanhala, Rahikainen, Honkajoki and Sihvonen carried Ukkola.
He was in severe pain. The bullet had gone in through the chest pocket of his shirt. At first it seemed that the wound was not dangerous, but soon after their departure, Ukkola had started coughing, and blood rose to his lips.
‘So it has punctured the lung, damn it. No wonder it feels like there’s a nail in there every time I breathe,’ he gasped.
The others tried to console him, but Ukkola knew the value of such speeches all too well. He had knelt more than once beside some dying guy, telling him over and over again how easy his recovery would be. He hadn’t even feared death all that much, but this incessant pain was hard to take.
In an effort to cheer him up, Honkajoki started talking about his own injury, describing the wonders of the military hospital. Ukkola was heaving and writhing on his stretcher, but Honkajoki carried on with all his former aplomb. ‘All the most smashing girls are nurses’ aides. They are indeed heroic, as you will see. They do not even consider it below themselves to wash the leathery ass of a private. Why, those boys have risked their lives over there! With that curly, blond hair and strapping, athletic physique, you’ll be a sensation. Don’t you worry. Try to hang on just a little longer. I know how it feels. They carried me in a sled during the thaw. Careful, gentlemen. Careful you don’t jar him.’
‘Break!’
Vanhala sat down on a mound of grass and wiped his cap across his brow. Low moans sounded out in front of them. The infantry guys covering their passage stood off to the side. The dusk of the summer evening was just descending into darkness. A fine mist hovered in the damp air. And Vanhala was smiling. Not with glee, nor with bitterness, but as if he were weighing the whole evening in his mind and smiling nonetheless. ‘They’ve suffered some losses, but our army is as unbeatable as ever as it retreats behind a new line of defense.’
Ukkola’s face twisted into a smile. He’d spent hundreds of hours on guard with Vanhala.
‘Ohhhh… as… chuh… chuh… as long… chm… ohhhhh. As long as… chm… we’re still breathing… they’ll be saying… chm… we’re un… unbeatable… chm…’
‘Here, let me straighten you out…’
‘It’s no use… chm… so long as there’s still one… chm… left to slaughter… chm… we’re not beat… chm… ohhh ohhh… What’s it gonna take… chm… for us to be beat?’
‘Does anyone have a handkerchief? Or actually, hand me a bandage.’ Honkajoki wiped the blood from Ukkola’s lips.
Vanhala put his cap back on his head. He knew that Ukkola in severe pain still couldn’t be anyone but the old Ukkola, so he said, giggling softly, ‘Undaunted even in his defeat, laughing proudly in the face of death, he looks beyond the avalanche that has buried the hopes of his homeland. Heehee… You heard it. We can’t lose.’
The words Vanhala had just uttered were ones the men had recently heard on the radio, and Ukkola was amused just by the fact that Vanhala remembered such things so precisely. When they got moving again, he said, huffing, ‘Hold on tight, Priha… chm… chm. If these lungs hold out… chm… out… then… sometime… chm… we’ll go Priha… Ohhhh… huh… huh… get drunk…’
After they started off, the wounded man three stretchers ahead of them died.
The body was left at the base of a tree and the guys who’d been carrying the man started alternating shifts with the others. The dead man had been wounded by a shell out on the brook line and was already on his last legs when they’d set out. The men carrying Ukkola tried to pass by the spot in such a way that their friend wouldn’t see that the body had been left – but failed.
‘If… I don’t… chm… make it… then you’d cover me… with something… chm… or what’s that…’
One of the wounded men had lost it. ‘Just don’t leave me! If they attack… You promise? Come on, speed up! Hurry up… If we run into them, don’t leave me behind…’
The men carrying offered no promises. They lumbered on silently, grunting and panting, and whenever the wounded man rose in a panic, they pressed him back down on the stretcher.
Ukkola’s pain was increasing. He was running a fever and Vanhala wrapped his coat around him like a blanket. Ukkola put his arm over his eyes, giving a moan now and again, frequently accompanied by a litany of curses. Once when the stretcher gave a violent lurch, he seemed jolted out of his pained torpor, and said, ‘Same… steps… Chm… step… together… boys.’
‘I don’t think we can get much of a sense of rhythm. Terrain’s hell.’
Ukkola couldn’t keep up a smile any more. More and more blood rose to his lips and his breath grew weaker and weaker. His coughing fits soon became so agonizing that even the guys carrying him had a hard time watching. He was shivering from the fever, and soon anything they could find was wrapped around him.
Four years of continuous malnourishment had not managed to diminish the life force of the country boy. Ukkola had been one of those athletes who turns up at every summer event, and although his results had remained unremarkable, the training had given him a kind of strength and endurance against which death could make no impression. It hadn’t managed to make him lose consciousness yet, though he himself wished that it would, as did the men carrying him.
They reached their first destination. Koskela got in touch with the Commander. The man was in a rage. Everything had gone just as he feared. As soon as the battalion pulled out from the road, the enemy had brought its tanks up to the barricade and decimated it. They would have to continue pulling out, and now the detour would be longer still, as they needed to reach a destination that was even further off. The Colonel himself designated the point at which Koskela was to meet up with the main road, saying finally, ‘That ith the command. Your berry-picking excurthion endth there. Ith that clear?’
Koskela couldn’t have cared less. He was immune to Karjula’s criticisms – for even if he didn’t ever descend into self-congratulation, he was still aware that not many men would have been able to get the battalion out in as good a shape as he had. Or as quickly.
The journey continued. The men carrying the stretchers were on their last legs, for although the burdens were not so heavy when divided amongst four men, the uneven terrain multiplied the strain many times over. Their progress grew ever more difficult.
One of the men carrying the stretcher in front of Ukkola’s fell, and the wounded man dropped to the ground with a shout of pain. The fellow carrying regained his balance, gasping for breath, spat and screamed in a voice ringing with rage, ‘Finnish president Risto Ryti and the National Orchestra proudly present… a polka: “Up Shit Creek Without a Fucking Paddle”.’
Then he grabbed hold of the handle rods again and the power of his anger spurred him on for a little while.
Even Ukkola’s carriers weren’t talking anymore. They weren’t up to it. Silently, concentrating all of their energy on their task, they toiled onward as Ukkola coughed and gasped on the stretcher in ever-increasing pain.