When the enemy opened fire, Vanhala, Rahikainen and Sihvonen took cover beside the path. Riitaoja dropped his ammunition box and took off, running like a madman through the forest. Rahikainen had left the gun-stand by the path, but Vanhala still had the gun.
‘Let’s go, guys,’ Sihvonen said. ‘The attack’s gonna start soon.’
‘What happened to Lehto?’ Vanhala’s voice was serious this time.
‘What happened? Did you hear that scream? We’re not sticking around to get ourselves killed. I told you guys… but that loony had to go get himself killed.’ Rahikainen started crawling back through the forest.
The enemy had stopped firing, but now the silence unnerved the men even more. The darkness seemed saturated with danger. The others were already making their retreat, but Vanhala whispered, ‘What if he’s just wounded? We should try to find out…’
‘How you gonna find out? Look, even if he is alive, there’s no way you’d be able to get him out that way… not from right under their noses… Nothing comes of that except the guys who go to fetch him end up stayin’ out there too. And he himself ordered us to go back for help.’
‘One man – but the others were supposed to remain in position… Where’s the gun-stand?’
‘I left it over there by the path… Goddamn dead-weight can stay there. Anyway, if we start dragging it off now they’ll hear it and come and finish us off.’
‘The officers might ask for it,’ Vanhala said. He was in two minds. He could certainly keep his own fear under control, but he had a tougher time standing up to somebody else. Vanhala was not a leader, not by a long shot, but even so, leaving things as they were struck him as a little too inadequate. ‘Here, you take the gun, I’ll go get it.’
‘OK, OK, knock yourself out,’ Rahikainen said. ‘I’m done tryin’ to hold back the crazies tonight.’
Rahikainen and Sihvonen retreated further back, but Vanhala started crawling slowly alongside the path toward the gun-stand. He reached it without incident and began pulling it cautiously to the side. Naturally, it scraped against the only rock on the entire path, prompting some light machine guns to pepper the ground all around Vanhala. He heaved the gun-stand over his shoulder and clambered to cover with the others, abandoning any attempt at silence. And he was laughing as soon as he’d caught his breath. His success gave him the confidence to decide that he wouldn’t just abandon Lehto, but would do something to set matters straight. There wasn’t really much option besides yelling, however, so Vanhala just belted out, ‘Lehtoo… oo!!!’
Light machine guns fired back angrily, but no other sound came.
‘Jesus, pal, would you cool it? Maybe you better start believing he’s done for. Why else would he be silent?’
‘What was that rustling over there?’ Sihvonen asked.
They listened, but nothing more remarkable came. The noise was enough to get them moving, however, and they made a hasty exit. There was something in Lehto’s death that made them feel even more helpless than usual. They certainly weren’t overly attached to their squad leader, but his bravery and ruthless, brute strength had given them a certain confidence in him. He had seemed sort of invincible, even to the enemy, making it seem to them as if even the Russians were powerless against him. And now a light machine gun aiming at nothing but a sound had taken him down. They had seen plenty of guys die by now, but the fact of Lehto’s solitude made his death even more horrific. To be left back there, alone, in the darkness, before the enemy. They could still hear his quiet cry. It had struck them as a warning call, a shout of surprise and a whimper all at once.
They hadn’t given Riitaoja a second thought this whole time, assuming he was lying in terror somewhere back behind them, by the side of the path. They called his name quietly as they headed back, but no response came. They scoured the edge of the meadow as well, and called out for some time.
‘Where can that little fool have gone to?’ Sihvonen wondered.
‘He must have run back to the others,’ Rahikainen figured. ‘Anyway there’s no point in trying to find one man in these swamps.’
Guided by the sounds of the firing, they made their way toward the road, taking a wide curve out to the right so they would be sure to hit it behind their front line.
When Lehto first regained consciousness, all he knew was that he was in severe pain. Then darkness took mercy on him again. But the force of life within him was fierce and stubborn and, unwilling to surrender so easily, it woke him again. At first he couldn’t remember anything; he had no idea where he was, nor what had happened to him. He felt a raging, burning pain somewhere around his chest and his stomach. Then he remembered walking along a path, which led him to the realization of where he was. Same path.
At the cost of severe pain, he ran his hands over his body. The area just below his chest was bloody, and his back felt similarly warm and wet. When he moved, it felt as if somebody were twisting a knife through his mid-section. He could feel nothing in his legs, and his whole lower body refused to move. Little by little he began to realize that his spine had been damaged and his legs were paralysed.
And then he also realized that this was the end.
He gave a quiet moan and lay for a moment in hopeless apathy.
For the first time in his life, for one brief moment, he gave in – but then, a fierce shooting pain wrenched him awake again. Even now, he didn’t harbor any of that irrational hope of rescue people often cling to. Lehto looked upon his own situation with the same brutal clarity with which he looked upon everything else. He remembered his squad, but he didn’t call for help straight away, as anybody else would have. He knew it would just drag out death’s arrival, as he was sure that, in any case, he had no more than a few hours to live. On their way out across the swamp, they had talked about the injured, and what their fate would be on a campaign like this: to be doped up with morphine and left to the mercy of their own luck and the feeble prayers of that impoverished soul, the battalion chaplain.
When he determined that the upper portion of his stomach had been shot through with more than one bullet, Lehto was certain he was going to die. He was aware of some nearby enemy presence as well, since he could clearly make out some low coughing and whispering just across the main road. There was but one conclusion to be drawn from the situation, and Lehto reached it quickly: Where is my gun?
He groped around with his hands, but to no avail. The machine-gunners hadn’t taken along any hand grenades on account of the extra ammunition, and he had already considered his hand-knife, but that seemed too difficult, especially when he considered what kind of botched job was likely to result from his present lack of strength. He kept groping. Even the smallest movement added to the already unbearable pain, and he lost consciousness again.
Upon waking, he found his strength had diminished further still, though the pain had not lessened. A plaintive moan tinged with some kind of sob tightened in his throat, and although he was sure that the others were no longer nearby, he spat the blood from his mouth and called out in a strangled voice, ‘Vanhala…’
Pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa, pa… pa, pa, pa, pa… pa, papa.