His hand twitched for a moment, then his mouth hung open and his eyes rolled upwards. Mielonen understood that the end had come. They lifted the body onto the stretcher and Mielonen covered it with his overcoat. The arduous journey to the rear began.
The realization that the Captain had collapsed stunned Kariluoto. A lump formed in his throat and tears welled up in his eyes. He felt strangled by a sense of irrevocable defeat. ‘Advance, advance,’ he commanded himself, but his body refused to obey. The school refrain pounded through his panicked consciousness, ‘Black and defamed be for ever the name… of the troops who in battle enraged… watch their elders fall before them…’
His hands mangled the stems of the wild hemlock. He heard the medics’ yelling and tried to get up. Images rose up from somewhere in the dark recesses of his soul. His mother and father, bragging about him to their friends. Buddies he’d celebrated with when the war broke out. Finland would have her due… And then he remembered Sirkka. The thought nearly broke him.
Not ten seconds had passed since Kaarna’s death. Now Kariluoto got up and heard his own unbridled scream, ‘Cut them down, Kaleva! Advance! Shoot for their nuts. Charge!’
He saw Koskela running beside him, yelling, ‘C’mon guys, keep in contact!’
Private Ukkola was running on the other side, screaming like a madman with his gun tucked under his arm and his mouth foaming. ‘Ahhh-ahh! Baaa-staaards!’
A wild rage for victory flooded through Kariluoto. He emptied his pistol into the edge of the swamp, wishing in his fury that he could get into hand-to-hand combat. He hadn’t even noticed that the fire coming from the opposite edge of the forest had stopped. Nor did he look back when one of the guys with the light machine guns wobbled to his knees, hands grasping his stomach, screaming, ‘Help! Help me!’
The cry was drowned out by the men’s shouts and the clanging of the submachine guns. Hietanen followed close on Koskela’s heels, yelling, ‘Let the bastards have it, boys!’
The machine-gunners were panting heavily, staggering under the weight of their heavy equipment. Vanhala kept repeating, breathlessly, ‘Let ’em have it! Let ’em have it!’ as he struggled forward with the gun stand on his shoulder. Riitaoja, however, just cowered in his hollow, gaping at everything and grasping nothing.
They found the enemy positions deserted. Kariluoto spotted just one brown uniform darting behind the bushes. Lahtinen caught up with the firing line in time to take a shot at him, but missed. The men were panting. Several of them threw themselves to the ground, and somebody called out frantically, ‘Ensign, sir, Jaakko was hit… Ensign, sir, Jaakko Vuorela’s still back there.’
‘Two men from the group go back and help,’ Kariluoto called out. ‘All the others, keep on advancing. Don’t stop. The road’s straight ahead. We press on until we reach it.’
His wild rage had subsided and exhilaration now surged up in its place. He strode forward briskly, upright, urging his men onward. Before them lay the road – the same one they had turned off into the forest that morning. Everything was quiet to their left, but to the right they still heard intense firing in the First Company’s sector. An engine rumbled above the din. A tank tread lay imprinted on the road, and in the forest they could see sheets of moss that had been uprooted by a turning vehicle.
They paused on the road. The clamor on the right died down as the enemy turned into the forest to circumvent the First Company’s roadblock. Only now did they have time to think about what had happened.
‘We lost the Captain and Mielonen.’
‘Not Mielonen. I saw him run to help the Captain.’
‘Whew, that was something! Machine gun’s still red hot. Feel!’
‘Not a single Russki down,’ Hietanen said. ‘Not one. I watched while we were shooting.’
Koskela used his shirtsleeve to wipe off the sweaty leather band inside his cap, then said, staring at the ground, ‘They got Kaarna with a tank… The man just went and got himself killed.’
At the time, the men weren’t able to understand Koskela’s reckoning, and his face quickly resumed its usual reserve, but he remained silent all evening, staring vaguely at nothing in particular.
‘They didn’t say the Captain wouldn’t make it,’ one guy whispered, his voice low, but somebody else dismissed the idea as impossible. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Looked pretty clear from the way his leg was hanging off.’
Ensign Kariluoto was pacing back and forth along the road. He couldn’t keep still. His blond hair was blowing about wildly above his beaming face, as he’d taken off his cap and tucked it under his belt. It was as if this surge of self-confidence within him demanded that he be bareheaded. A cap would have interfered, somehow, with the roaring winds of victory ringing in his ears, unheard by the others. Lieutenant Autio came up on his left, and Kariluoto rushed over to meet him.
‘Good job, boys. That was a solid start,’ Autio said, though it sounded more like an obligatory greeting than actual praise, as Autio was not one to get overly emotional. ‘So, how’d it feel?’
‘Quite all right, once we got going. I didn’t think there was any way I’d get them moving at first… But Kaarna…’
‘I heard.’
Autio’s expression remained unchanged. He had already been through the Winter War, and so had quite a bit of experience.
‘I wasn’t aware that the tank was there, or I would have given you the anti-tank rifle. But in any case, many thanks. You’re off to a good start. Any casualties?
‘Vuorela. Light machine-gunner. I sent two men back to help, when the medics took Kaarna.’
It was not until he was talking with Autio that Kariluoto remembered the first part of the attack. His face flushed, and he diverted his gaze. But as soon as Autio started talking about the tank, Kariluoto seized on the notion. It was that damn tank! Hell… what was a man supposed to do with his bare hands up against that? Then Kariluoto’s spirits began to rise, and his shame lifted. He was so happy to be liberated of its weight that he started singing Kaarna’s praises to Autio.
‘He was too good a man to die. Far too good for death, that man.’
‘True,’ Autio kicked at a rock. ‘Though no one life is any more valuable than any other, really. But that one went too cheap, it’s true. Well, you’ll get used to that… Lammio will take over as company commander, of course.’
Autio turned to leave, then said, ‘The Third Battalion will take the lead as soon as the terrain’s been scoured. We’ll camp here. The tents and the kitchens are right behind the Third Battalion.’
Kariluoto returned to his men. ‘If only they hadn’t had that damn tank!’
His spirits perked up again. He forgot about the fact that they had all taken the tank for an anti-tank gun; he just took refuge in the fact that there was nothing anyone could do with his bare hands up against a tank. And, after a couple of minutes, he was firmly convinced that this was the sole reason he had taken cover in the swamp: because you can’t fight a tank without any anti-tank guns.
Once again, he was the vigorous ensign who had drilled his men back in the burnt clearing. He even thought of Sirkka, and felt a powerful wave of masculinity pervade his being. Sirkka was sacred to him. Kariluoto’s relationship with the girl had begun with such refinement that, indeed, there was nothing to stand in the way of their potential union. And at this very moment, that question, too, was settled. He would marry her, and when he did, it would be as captain of the army of the Greater Finland – if not as major! He would enroll at the Army Academy at the first opportunity. Yes, that’s how it would be. No law school for him.