‘Indeed I did. Thanks very much. Here’s a couple of rye crackers. I haven’t got much left since I already shared some with the guys in the First Platoon.’
‘Thanks. There’s more coffee over there – if you’re interested, I mean. Couple of guys from the unit decided to make themselves scarce back at Pyhäjärvi.’
‘Thanks, I don’t have time right now. Yeah, Rajamäki doesn’t surprise me, but Kuusisto and above all Rauhala was something of a shock.’
‘Kuusisto lost it completely, and Rauhala, well, he was always a little braver than the rest of us, so I guess that’s why he dared run off a little further.’
‘At least there aren’t any more deserters, though, right?’
‘No, no more deserters. But as soon as those fellows ’cross the way start at it again, there’ll be another round.’
Kariluoto continued on his way. It went from bad to worse. His feeling of depression only deepened with each encounter. Ukkola had more of a will to fight than most of them, and he had given up hope entirely. Kariluoto got the same reception from his entire company. The men answered his greetings with whines and whimpers. His former platoon mates congratulated him at least, and showed some kind of happiness at his return, but all in all, the feeble line that he inspected was dismal indeed.
Chapter Fourteen
Vo… ooo… oooooo…
Ground-attack planes were flying over the front line toward the command posts and artillery positions. The sudden roar overhead rent the atmosphere of normality and sent the men scurrying instinctively to the shelter of their foxholes. The unusual moment of calm had lulled them into that self-deception hope can induce, in which a man can imagine that, for some unknown and mysterious reason, the fighting might cease for a while. A couple of days of the quiet life had soothed their minds, but their tension was still so close to the surface that they quickly descended into the panicky anxiety that had become characteristic of the retreating troops. When the planes had passed over, they began to rise up in their holes, but quickly ducked back down again when an unbroken stream of low booms started sounding from the enemy side.
They had a few seconds to hope the barrage might miss before the first explosions exposed the vanity of such hopes. The ground lurched and shook. Screeches and moans filled the air and the miserable men’s hearts pounded nearly to pieces in the midst of the grinding upheaval. They tried to hold themselves against the earth as tightly as they could. They dug their nails into the sand at the bottom of their pits, and somebody was even digging himself deeper into the ground with his shovel, like a child, one scoop at a time.
‘Stay down!’ a choked voice screamed somewhere, before being drowned out by the crashing explosions. Trees snapped like twigs as fire and columns of smoke rose up to the height of the treetops. Shrapnel, tree branches and clods of earth rained down in one flash flood, and somewhere a hot, whizzing shard struck a panicked man, who began screaming between cries of pain, ‘Medics! Medics! I’m hit!’
Hietanen was lying face-down in his pit. He clenched his eyes shut, his strained consciousness registering each nearby explosion as it landed: ‘And again… and again… and again… and again.’ It was some kind of method of protecting himself, a way of banishing all the horror that this crashing and trembling awakened in his mind. He began to make out a pitiful wail and cry for help a few yards from his hole, and after wrangling with his fear for a few moments, he lifted his head to look. A few yards away, one of the recruits who had just arrived was struggling to crawl forward, dragging himself and screaming for help with a crazed, desperate look of horror on his face.
Hietanen leapt up. He grabbed the man and started pulling him into his hole, his face blue with anger as he yelled, ‘I told you to stay in your fucking hole! And you got up!’
He had just given the boy a stern warning about not leaving his hole, because he knew from his own experience how hard it was to stay down in a barrage. As soon as terror got the upper hand on self-control, it brought about exactly this kind of stupid mishap in the middle of a onslaught. The heavy-handedness of Hietanen’s warning might even have been partially responsible for provoking the man’s action.
Hietanen pulled him along almost brutally, the fear in his mind having transformed itself into a blind rage directed at the boy. The whirr of shrapnel filled his ears, dirt rained down on them, and waves of pressure kept whooshing their clothes right up against their skin. Hietanen was on his knees, pulling the man by his hand and his belt. The man screamed ceaselessly, though more from the shock than from the pain, as his wound was not dangerous.
A hot wave of air struck Hietanen in the face at the same moment as a shard snapped the cartilage of his nose and tore open both of his eyes. He slumped over the recruit, who froze into a petrified silence as he saw these sliced, bloody eyes bulging out of their sockets.
The man tried to roll Hietanen off him, but he was so paralyzed with fear that he couldn’t muster up enough strength. He turned his head away so he wouldn’t have to look at the terrible, bloody face, and when he was finally able to get his vocal cords to function, he let out a long, horrible cry.
It startled the others. Koskela and Vanhala were closest and crawled over to help. They lifted Hietanen off the man and dragged them both into the nearest foxhole. Just then the barrage started moving further back. Koskela yelled to the recruits, ‘New guys! Bandage the wounded, and if an order comes to retreat, then carry them with you.’
The others hurried to their positions, as they could already hear the rumble of a tank somewhere behind the stream, accompanied by rapid firing. A charge call rang out just then as well, but it became clear fairly quickly that it was a bluff. The enemy didn’t attack, and both the yelling and the shooting gradually died down. The men wondered what the taunt was supposed to mean, but weren’t able to make much more of it than that the enemy wanted to scare them rather than launch a genuine attack. This type of thing had actually happened before, so they weren’t terribly concerned about it. Koskela ordered Rokka to keep an eye on the platoon and headed back to see Hietanen. In the previous moment’s rush he hadn’t actually had time to see what had happened to him. He had the impression that only one of the eyes was lost.
Hietanen had a bandage wound around his head, and he was just regaining consciousness as Koskela reached him. Hietanen moved his hand, touched the bandage, and murmured, ‘What’s the damage?’
Koskela took his hand from his face and said, ‘Don’t worry. Be still now.’
‘Koskela?’
‘Yup. Don’t move. Got you in the nose a bit.’
Koskela turned to the men and drew his fingernail in front of his eyes. The men nodded. Then he raised two fingers and they nodded once more. The blood on Hietanen’s shirt sleeve drew their attention to a small wound on the back of his elbow as well. They had bandaged it, trying to make it seem as important as possible so that Hietanen would direct his attention there. ‘It hurts,’ he grunted. ‘Say, why’s my forehead wrapped?’
‘They got you in the nose. It’s not too bad…’
‘I know. I haven’t got eyes anymore.’ Hietanen’s consciousness was returning ever more fully, increasing his pain along with it. The blow had anaesthetized him against the wound, but as the shock wore off, Hietanen was realizing what had happened. He squeezed his hands into fists and then straightened out his fingers. He held in his cry for a long time, but then there came a long howl that forced the frightened new recruits to turn away.