‘Yes sir, Captain.’ Sinkkonen turned to the older men. ‘We’re going to pull the younger men from the supply vehicles and assign them to the infantry platoons, then put you fellows in as drivers. Do you know how to drive a horse? What was your name again?’
Sinkkonen gestured toward the large man with a dark complexion who was sitting beside his foxhole looking glum and chewing nervously on a blade of grass. The man flinched angrily, diverted his gaze from the Master Sergeant and grunted, ‘Hname… hmph… my name… Fuck you!’
Lammio stepped closer to the man. ‘I do hope you know your own name.’
The straw wriggled its way from one corner of the man’s mouth to the other. ‘Papers’s over there… hmph.’
‘Answer me properly. How is the secretary supposed to know which file is yours?’
‘It’s the last one, of course. That one that’s left.’
‘State your name. What kind of game is this?’
‘You oughtta know. Knew it well enough to come drag me outta my home. Hmph… that’s right. So fuck off!’
Lammio was about to raise his voice when he remembered the stern warning he had received about not provoking the men any more than necessary, and so restrained himself. But Lammio didn’t know how to behave except with the overbearing arrogance now deemed inappropriate to the situation – so his voice was helpless and uncertain as he said, ‘Well, you must have a name at least.’
‘Fine, it’s Korpela,’ the man growled, as if angrily throwing his name in Lammio’s face, but only in passing. ‘Private. Hmph.’
Korpela chewed nervously on his straw, then snatched it from his mouth and viciously tossed it aside. He didn’t say anything to anyone, he just stared off into his own world, and when the Master Sergeant took the men to the field kitchen to eat, he threw his pack angrily over his shoulder and followed after the others, muttering something to himself that none of them could make head nor tail of.
After he and Mäkilä had selected which of the drivers would be reassigned to the infantry platoons, the Master Sergeant left Mäkilä to take things from there. Mäkilä was facing tough times. Any attempt at systematic organization was doomed. The book-keeping was a shambles. There was almost never any information about the strength of the food supply, as they frequently ended up having to feed divisions that had become lost or separated. Equipment vanished, as the drivers would quietly take it upon themselves to lighten their loads, and even the horses were dropping like flies under the strain of the incessant air raids on the supply vehicles. All of this only made Mäkilä more tight-fisted, however. The more equipment he saw destroyed, the more jealously he guarded what remained – as opposed to the rest of the men, in whom the situation had inspired something of an ‘easy-come-easy-go’ mentality.
Mäkilä distributed the men’s food and was just assigning them horses when Korpela burst out angrily, ‘Where are the fuckin’ nags, anyway? Ones we’re supposed to drive, I mean. So the fat cats of Finland can make their money in peace.’
Mäkilä wasn’t about to get into something as pointless as fat cats’ finances, so he just showed Korpela to his horse and said with a cough, ‘Well, you take good care of this horse, then. Try to feed him whenever you can.’
Korpela just about exploded. ‘Fuck you! I don’t need you tellin’ me what to do. I been drivin’ horses my whole fuckin’ life! Stop givin’ me your goddamn instructions! You just look after yourself! Yeah, you heard me.’
Mäkilä had flushed red and started coughing. He didn’t say anything more to Korpela, but his speech was more tense than usual as he addressed the others. Korpela looked at the harness, tossing and slapping the reins about angrily as he resumed his incomprehensible muttering. Mäkilä watched his shenanigans sharply out of the corner of his eye, but said nothing. Only when Korpela walked away from the carts did Mäkilä go set the harness in order. Then he asked the drivers, ‘Whose turn for the soup run?’
Shells came crashing down all along the edge of the road, so it was no one’s turn.
‘Uusitalo! Your turn!’
The man in question swirled around angrily and started cursing. ‘Course it is. Maybe you should try it yourself once so you see what it’s like. Anybody can give other people orders.’
Without a word, Mäkilä fetched a horse from beneath a nearby spruce, harnessed it, and lifted the soup vat into the cart. He was just leaving when Uusitalo came over and said, ‘Get the hell away from there and gimme the reins!’
Mäkilä blinked his eyes and looked past Uusitalo, giving the reins a tug as he said, ‘Chuh… so… I’m going. This time.’
Uusitalo could see that there was no point in continuing the discussion, and Mäkilä set off. He walked beside the cart, figuring the horse had enough to carry with just the vat. They had to go over a mile, because the air raids obliged them to keep the supplies further back, as far from the front line as possible. After they’d gone a little way, a messenger cycling toward them got off his bike to warn Mäkilä. ‘Be careful. They’ve bracketed the main road down there. Bad news comin’ down on both sides, little way past the mortar positions.’
Mäkilä didn’t reply, but plodded calmly on, staring directly ahead. He passed the mortar positions and neared the point in the road where the shelling was concentrated, which was in a low, muddy spot at the bottom of a sloping hill. Once he made it over the hill, he paused to wait for a break in the firing. The shells came at short intervals, always in pairs. The boom from the launch was followed by a crackling whistle, which always paused just a second before the explosion. The horse snorted and quivered and Mäkilä held it from the bit. When a pause between launch booms stretched out longer than usual, Mäkilä figured that the artillery had quieted down and climbed into the cart. But just as he passed the halfway point, the booms on the hill started up again. For the first time in his life, Mäkilä struck the horse, who had started galloping frantically down the hill. The shells splashed mud up into the air a few dozen yards off, but the softness of the earth cut down on the schrapnel considerably. The horse reared up on its hind legs, snorted and started pushing the cart backwards. Mäkilä climbed down and began leading the horse on foot.
The next pair of shells exploded a bit further off. The horse flared its nostrils and took a few stiff steps before rearing up onto its hind legs again. Mäkilä patted the horse and tried to calm him, saying, ‘Don’t be scared! Here we go, nice and easy. This isn’t up to people. It’s all in greater hands.’
Mäkilä was speaking to the horse, though the words were actually intended for his own soul. Otherwise he was perfectly calm. His eyes gazed straight ahead, bulging only when the shells exploded, and he gave a throat-clearing cough now and again. The launch booms sounded once more, but this time the whistle was ominously short and quiet. Mäkilä saw the splash of grass-stained water strike his hand, and grasped the quiet whoosh and thump he heard before a red flame billowed up before him from a crater that had appeared in the road. He was blasted in two.
The horse fell sideways onto the pole of the cart hitch. There was a hole in the side of the soup vat, so when the weight of the horse and the downhill slope turned the cart onto its side, soup streamed onto the ground, as the hole in the vat was on the downward-facing side.
The horse managed to raise its head, struggled to get up onto its front legs, and let out a wild, agonized whinny. Then it sank back to the ground, tossing its head weakly a couple of times.
The next set of shells sent mud splashing over both of the deceased.
The machine-gunners were sitting beside their foxholes, awaiting their food. They were all silent and irritable. A few days earlier they had taken up positions along this brook, holding a bit of line connected to Lord knows how many others. The enemy had gone a long time without testing the line’s endurance, so in that sense this situation was exceptional. Normally, their opponents shut down their attempted barricades immediately, forcing them to resume their retreat. They stared at the ground, their unshaven faces filthy, exhausted and creased with lines of bitterness. Sometimes a bullet would nick a tree and they would hear the rumble of a combat vehicle behind the stream. Further off they could hear the booming of an air raid, a sound that was rarely absent.