“Get in touch with headquarters. Tell them we’re coming under fire. If there’s support available, we could use it on the perimeter.” It was time, Haversham thought, to start educating the Finnish Army on the facts of life. One of the earliest lessons would be that there were consequences for actions. That lesson could be applied on a lot of levels.
Lieutenant Martti Ihrasaari wasn’t particularly happy at this point. Having been detached and sent on this infiltration mission had allowed him to get out from under the crushing dead weight of the divisional and regimental commands for a while. When the Canadian division had collapsed, the rest of the division had moved up as well. Now he was back under their command. He’d got a cursory ‘well done’ for his roadblock that had this battalion bottled up along the road but now he was just back to being a small cog in a big machine. One that didn’t necessarily have his interests at heart.
What had just happened was a good example. That quick flurry of mortar fire had been supposed to wake the Canadians up and make them fire off their counter-battery salvoes, wasting their ammunition and revealing their position. The crews of the little Model 36 mortars had gone as soon as they’d finished their fire mission of course. That was the one good thing about those mortars. It was a good tactic in theory, but it had no regard for the people who were left and who couldn’t move away. The really annoying point was that it hadn’t worked. The Canadian position was still silent.
Then Ihrasaari heard a threatening roar, one that came from overhead and grew closer all the time. He knew instantly what it was. Artillery and not the pipsqueak little 50mm mortars either. This was the big stuff, Canadian 5.5 inch guns or Ami 155s. He felt his stomach clench and his body try to drive itself deeper into the snow. There was one good thing about this. Artillery came down at an angle and the shells would bury themselves in the snow before exploding so much of their force was directed down into the ground. The little mortar shells came straight down and their explosions were much more effective -for their size. That didn’t change the fact that their size was tiny compared with the big inbounds.
Ihrasaari was wrong. The shells didn’t explode deep in the ground. They burst in the air above the Finnish positions around the Canadian hedgehog. Their fragments lashed down at the troops in their dug-outs and foxholes. The first two patterns of shells were bad enough, but the third was sheer hell. Those shells didn’t explode in the air; they hit the ground and went off with a curious muffled explosion. The burst pattern was strange as well. The cloud of smoke was greater than he’d expected and had curious white tendrils that leapt out of it.
Perhaps tentacles was a better word, Ihrasaari thought, they reminded him of the octopus he had seen once at an aquarium.
Ihrasaari saw the white smoke cloud rolling towards him. A smoke-screen? Were the Canadians trying to break out of their fortifications already? He knew that’s what the divisional commanders wanted; the besieged troops to exhaust themselves in break-out attempts but this was very early for that. When the smoke engulfed him, Ihrasaari felt the heat creasing his skin. It caught him in the throat and caused him to erupt in an explosive fit of coughing. He saw his men were surrounded by a snowstorm of small, white particles that floated down upon them. Then, he realized what the rounds were and the idea filled him with instant terror. These were white phosphorus rounds, incendiaries, anti-personnel. The men who had been hit by the little snowstorm were screaming in pain and terror. Their clothes sizzled and burned as the flakes landed. They tried brushing them off but the effort only made things worse. When their hands touched the stuff the little flakes caused a horrible burn, increasing in intensity as it burrowed into their flesh.
He tried to run over to his men. Some were rolling in the snow, trying to put out the fires that were eating into them. He knew it was no good, that the white phosphorus was dissolving into the fatty tissues of their bodies where it would prevent the wounds healing. As he thought that, he heard another roar overhead. Another series of the airbursts flailed the ground with fragments. His suspicions had been right. This wasn’t going to be like fighting the Russians.
“That’s all we’re getting Sir. Battery shoot. Two rounds per gun of proximity-fused airbursts, one of Willie Pete and a last proximity salvo as an envoi. I hope that for what the Finns received they were truly grateful.” The forward artillery observer switched his radio link off and went back to eating his lunch. A can of beans, Haversham noted.
“More problems?”
Captain Becker rubbed his eyes. He was deathly tired and the bitter cold had long seeped into his bones. There was no shelter from it, Lutzow was too torn up for that. Just a shattered pile of steel slowly, painfully, heading her way towards an inevitable end on the rocks outside Thorshaven. “Diesels are overheating. It’s not surprising, we were never built to go backwards this long. The intakes are designed to scoop up water while we are going forward, not backwards. The flow isn’t enough and the engines aren’t being cooled properly. Can we turn around and go forward for a while?
The Damage Control Officer thought, or tried to. His mind wasn’t working properly; hunger, cold, exhaustion and fear had shrouded him in a blanket that seemed to strangle every thought before he could even get it out. He breathed deeply, trying to compose himself. “How far are we out, Sir?”
“Thirty kilometers, perhaps fifty? No more than that. If we can just keep running for four more hours, we can make it to the rocks.”
“We’ve got more timbers up on the false bow, we’ve stiffened it a bit. Provided we don’t go too fast, it should hold. For an hour or two, to cool the diesels at worst, get us in at best.”
“Captain.” The Navigator’s voice was slurred also. “Why don’t we send Z-27 ahead? If we go down, there’s nothing they can do for us. If we don’t, they can spread the word, get us some help. Get the men ashore across the rocks or get fishing boats out to take off the wounded. Anything.”
“Good idea. Do it. By signal lamp.” Becker rubbed his eyes again and saw Z-27 pulling away from the sinking cruiser. “Turn us around, we’ll go forward.”
The orders were carried aft by word of mouth since the ship’s internal communications had long since failed. Under his feet, Becker felt Lutzow shudder and start to swing. Behind him, the long line of men passing buckets of oil-stained water from below stopped work and looked around. Was the ship going down at last? Then they saw her make her slow, anguished turn and realized what was happening. Wearily, they started the bucket chain again, painfully passing the flood water from one hand to the other.
One of the men looked down suddenly at the contents of his bucket. “Hey, I recognize this lot. We threw it over the side three hours ago.”