‘A little. They distributed some dry rations last night.’
Rahikainen reached for his wallet. ‘How much would you give me for one of these badges?’
The Jaeger shoved his hand into his pocket. He pulled out a fistful of red stars, asking, ‘What do you think we are, rookies?’
‘Well, would ya look at that. I didn’t have the time to gather up many of those. I had to do some fightin’ in between. But these here are officers’ badges. What would you give for ’em?’
‘I’ve got some of those, too. Triangular kind.’
‘That’s just a puny NCO badge.’
‘OK, let’s trade. Two triangles for one rectangle.’
‘You crazy? What’s an NCO compared to an officer? But here, you can gimme three crackers to make up the difference.’
‘You can have two.’
‘Show me what kind they are.’
The Jaeger rummaged around in his bread bag for the rye crackers.
‘Those are the thin ones,’ Rahikainen sniffed, with the air of one who has lost interest in the whole deal. ‘Three of those. Nothin’ doing for anythin’ less.’
‘OK, hand it over.’
They wrapped up the deal and Rahikainen looked down at his crackers as if he regretted it. ‘Dandy badge gone awful cheap… But, oh well, let it be. Got these anyway.’
They asked about one another’s experiences fighting, despite their exhaustion.
‘Whereabouts you fellows been?’
‘We’ve been round over there. Broke through the bunker line.’
‘There were bunkers along this road, too.’
‘I bet there were. Russians are pretty handy with their shovels. Ten scoops in the air and another on the spade.’
Lahtinen sat up on the bank of the ditch, watching the Jaegers out of the corner of his eye, as if scanning to see what their response would be as he said, ‘Yeah, there’s been talk about the misery of the Russian people. But just about every Russian we’ve met we’ve had to chase down to his hole to kill. I mean, they’re a tough lot, that’s all I’m sayin’… At least against us they have been,’ he continued, as if to pre-empt any possible objections from the Jaegers before they could even launch them. The Jaegers didn’t take issue with anything he said, though. It was Rahikainen who jumped in, combining his urge to brag in front of the Jaegers with his desire to mock Lahtinen’s over-earnest idealism, saying, ‘Well, it’d be nothin’ if we only had to kill ’em once. But there’s some we’ve had to kill a couple of times! That’s how tough those boys are. A cat’s got nine lives, so they say. Though I wouldn’t guarantee it, mind you.’
The Jaegers joined in the banter as well. They joked and laughed, and even gave the others some of their rye crackers for free. They could spare them, having just received several days’ rations. The sunny morning revived all of their spirits. A handful of days had already taught them to seize the pleasure of a few minutes’ pause on a fresh summer morning. When any hour might be your last, you learned to be grateful for even the minutes.
When the Lieutenant returned and ordered his men back onto their bikes, the Jaegers grew serious again. The joking stopped, and the men, adjusting their gear, awaited the command to set out; though as soon as they received their next break, they would kick back and laugh again, just as they had here.
‘All right. Onward!’
‘Get going, then! And mind we don’t catch up with you just behind the next bend in the road.’
They took off, and more came down the road to follow them. Bicycle units, tanks, motorized artillery.
Kariluoto was mesmerized. Just like German Storm Troops! Why weren’t we assigned helmets too? he wondered. How stern and masculine their faces look in them! Kariluoto did realize, on the other hand, that even if they had been assigned helmets, the men would have cast them off into the forest last night at the latest. Indeed, he was proud to be a Finnish officer, an officer of the greatest army in the world – but it had its downsides too. This army had no military bite. These Jaegers were a slight exception, but even his unit was getting quite a bit sloppier. And the reserve regiments were particularly bad. The beckoning, sunlit road to Eastern Karelia was right there. But where were the rigid ranks of iron-clad Storm Troopers? That was what Kariluoto was yearning for this morning, in his overblown fervor. He would have liked to have seized upon the momentum of their opening success by thrusting forward with bold, thundering troops, who would look as if they were cast out of steel as they drove past, singing ‘The call to arms… has sounded for the final time! And we’re prepared… to head into the fray!’
But no, there were no Storm Troops. There was nothing but a circus of scruffy wisecrackers, scrounging for food like a pack of homeless people. They were cursing and griping and wagging their tongues, desecrating every last sacred thing. They even had the gall to mock the noble and dignified manner in which the Marshal issued his Orders of the Day. They were almost like communists. They downed their emergency rations at the first pangs of hunger, and when they felt like singing, it was not ‘Die Fahne hoch’ but some rowdy rendition of ‘Korhola Girls’ that rang out from the ranks. And less inspiring, if more illustrative, were the names they gave themselves, such as ‘the pack’, ‘the gang’, ‘the herd’, ‘the shit-shebang’, ‘the loony platoon’ and ‘the desperadoes’.
Then infantrymen began trickling down the road. New units kept streaming through the breach in the Russians’ defensive line. You could tell from the look of the reservists marching in their ranks that Finland was really giving this everything she had. There were work-worn, hunchbacked guys with pained expressions on their faces, struggling to keep up. Kariluoto noticed them, but he didn’t find them depressing. On the contrary. ‘Now every man has taken up arms.’ Wasn’t that just how the song went? ‘All who are able are wielding their swords!’
Kariluoto no longer wrote to the families of men who died in his platoon. The combat of the last few days had made him grow up somehow, stripping him of many a superfluous gesture. But this morning he was overcome with his former idealism once more. He straightened up his thin, boyish frame, smoothed his shirt, and strode off toward his platoon. His step was brisk, despite his fatigue.
Jalmari Lahti, a day laborer, was walking down the road, his unshaven face creased with pain and exhaustion. He wasn’t even bitter anymore. He had just settled into a state of hopeless dejection. The ditch job wasn’t finished. Sure, old man Kantala had promised to settle up with the missus, but it’d be nothing short of a miracle if that man forked out the sum he owed for the work that was already done. And how would they get the hay out of the ditch? Who’s going to cut it, he wondered? How will they find a man to do it, assuming there’s a man left to be found? And here I’ve taken eighty marks that I don’t really need. And borrowed a pound of butter from our neighbor for the provisions. Well, that can be paid back when the cow gives birth. The boys’ll be some help, at least – but then, which of the youngsters is actually still around? The eldest was already enlisted. He was a Jaeger, pedaling his bicycle around just these parts, heading toward Lake Ladoga. Or so Papa Jallu thought. Actually, the boy had ceased to be a Jaeger two hours earlier, and his bicycle was a mess of metal coils. A tank had shot him down from behind a bend in the road. But, at the moment, Jallu still imagined that he had this son, his eldest, who was serving in the army’s youngest division, while he, Jallu, was serving in its oldest. He tried to pick up his pace, noticing that all the men around him belonged to the platoon behind his. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the others. Jallu could feel his old back pain starting to set in again.