The Calm Before the Storm

(Source)

Sergeant Bill Greaves was almost surprised, Private Wallace had been behaving himself very well as of late, and now this, his rifle was spotless. Even Wallace's uniform looked exactly how the regulations specified.

"Very nice Wallace, we might make a soldier of you yet."

Greaves moved on to the next man as Private Billy Wallace shot a glance at his mate, Private Connor McGuire. McGuire had to bite his tongue to keep from smiling. Wallace was trying very hard to conform but he had very clear opinions on drill and inspections.

"I tell ye Connor, all this bloody square bashing and these interminable inspections won't stop the bloody Huns when they come charging down from Belgium. First we let the Poles get overrun by Nazis and Communists then we bloody sit here playing at soldier while the poor Finns got their arses kicked by the bloody Bolshies. Why are we even bloody here?"

Not that McGuire didn't agree with his old chum, but at least Billy had learned not to voice his opinions around the wrong people.

Greaves had looked at the last man in the formation and marched to the front. The men couldn't help but notice that it was starting to snow and their overcoats were back in their quarters. Of course, that's when the lieutenant decided to give the men a pep talk.

2nd Lieutenant Joseph Miles-Roberts was new to the regiment, though his family had a long history with the Royal Scots Fusiliers, his grandfather had served in the 1/5th Battalion Territorial Force and had been killed in action at Gallipoli. Family tradition had it that a Roberts had been at Blenheim with Marlborough during the War of the Spanish Succession.

He had disembarked in France only a week ago and had been assigned to command the platoon in which Greaves, Wallace, and McGuire served. When he had left London there was talk of forming an expeditionary force to land in northern Norway and march east to assist the Finns. While assisting the Finns was no longer on the table, some in the government were making noises about stopping German ore shipments out of Sweden by interdicting them in Norway. He had thought about putting in for an assignment to that force, but it was still talk when he received his orders to report to the RSF here in France.

"All right lads, listen up." Miles-Roberts spoke in a tentative tone, softly and it was readily apparent that some of the men in the back ranks couldn't hear him. Sergeant Greaves cleared his throat and gave his lieutenant a stern look. Miles-Roberts spoke louder.

"We're here to do a job lads, just like our grandfathers did during the Great War, support the French and defeat the Huns. I know you're all sick of drill and inspections but that will end, I'm sure, when spring comes. The Huns are just waiting for better weather before they get stuck in."

"Stuck in, what does he think this is, a bloody football match?" Billy hissed at Connor.

"Haud yer wheesht!¹" Connor hissed back at him. He saw that Greaves baleful eye was looking in their direction.

(Source)

Jan Kołodziej had managed to join a work party going into Warsaw, the Germans worked him like a dog. To the Army he was a Silesian, to the men in his company, he was a Pole.

But this work party was another crappy detail, the SS needed men to clean up around the proposed headquarters for the Gestapo. Rather than have their own men do it, they requested help from the Army.

While most of the Army was headed west for what Jan assumed to be the coming attack on France, his own unit would remain in the East on garrison duty. Jan was starting to wish he'd left with the others when Poland fell. But he had to find Elżbieta. He assumed that she would go to Warszawa, she had family there. As he looked at the ruins of the city, he began to wonder if she had survived the battle for Poland.

Elżbieta Chlebek had arrived in Warszawa accompanied by a young Polish lieutenant, Bogusław Gulczyński. They had separated at the train station, she to go to her parents' apartment, he to report to the General Staff. She thought to keep in touch with Bogusław but then decided that that would not be wise. She had told Jan that she loved him, and she did, but he was rather old fashioned. Keeping in touch with another man, an officer no less, would probably anger him.

When she arrived at her old neighborhood, there was nothing left. She had found one man who knew her parents, but before she could ask where they were, he had shaken his head in sadness. She was still reeling at the thought that her parents were dead. Killed, like so many Poles, by the invading Germans.

Now she stood on a corner seething with anger as she watched German troops walk the streets of what was left of her beloved city. A convoy of German Army trucks were passing by as she waited to cross. She had never hated anyone or anything in her life, but for the Niemcy² she was developing a deep hatred.

Oddly enough, she heard her name being shouted, she looked around, the voice sounded familiar.

"Elżbieta! Here!" Jan was stunned, he knew that that was her standing on the street corner, but she looked smaller, and so forlorn. She heard her name and looked up. The look of sheer hatred on her face stunned him.

Then he realized, she didn't see him, she saw the uniform.

She was angry and embarrassed, some of the other people waiting to cross were looking at her, wondering why one of the hated Germans was calling her name. At least she assumed they were looking at her, why would a soldier yell out the name of an older woman?

Funny thing was, the man yelling her name looked very much like Jan. But Jan was in the Polish Army, for all she knew he was lying dead on some battlefield or, if he were lucky, had fled to the West with others she knew of.

"Miss, are you going to cross?" An older man asked her as she stood, staring off into space.

"O tak, dziękuję.³" She muttered as she came out of her trance with a start.

Crossing the street she wondered what she would do next. She had no place to stay and the city was in ruins. Perhaps return to the university in Kraków? But would the Niemcy permit that? She just didn't know.

¹ Shut up (Scottish slang.)

² Germans (Polish)

³ "Oh yes, thank you." (Polish)

Retreat into the Storm

(Source)

Kersantti Kaino Tuomola told his section, "All right boys, pack it up. We're falling back."

The youngest man, Vilhelm Nurmi, asked, "Where to?"

Tuomola pointed to the northwest, "That way, seems that the Russkis are willing to continue to throw bodies at our lines, regardless of cost. Our neighbors have fallen back, so our positions here are untenable."

Nurmi looked puzzled but before he could ask the question, Aleksis Leppänen answered, "Untenable, means we can't stay here, the boys on our left flank got their asses kicked, so we have to run. Understand, Nurmi, or do you want a picture?"

"Enough Aleksis, not all of us went to university. But yes, Vilhelm, what Aleksis says is true. Our left flank is in the air, it's like someone left the back door open, so we pull back."

Ustin Rodionovich Kazankov had found himself leading three more men in addition to Kolobkov and Bezrodny. He had come across them cowering in a ruined Finnish dugout and simply told them to follow. They did, much to Kazankov's surprise. He had yet to learn their names but as they followed him willingly enough, that could be dealt with later.

At the second Finnish defense line Kazankov had the men take cover in a trench while he tried to figure out what he was supposed to do next. Soviet society didn't encourage initiative but he knew that he should do something, even if it was just to look for an officer to tell them what to do.

One of the new men looked in his direction, "Tovarishch Komandir! What is our mission?"

Kazankov looked at the man for a moment, then said, "I'm no commander, just a Red Army Man like yourself, what's your name laddie? In fact, all of you, who are you?"

One by one, the three men identified themselves, Kazankov realized he probably wouldn't remember their names after a few minutes, but the one who spoke out, Kusma Zakharovich Beriya, he'd probably remember, provided he wasn't killed in the next day or so. As for Vladimir Antonovich Dudin and Valerian Dmitrievich Berezhnoy, they looked sufficiently terrified that he doubted they would present any problems.

"All right then, we're going to stay right here until someone comes along who can tell us what to do. We could keep charging ahead and probably fall into some Finnish ambush, anybody want that?"

All the men shook their heads, no one had any immediate wish to die. Kazankov figured that that was good, these boys weren't stupid.

The wind was rising and the snow was falling harder. The men were hunched over, leaning into the wind, Tuomola was beginning to worry. One of the men, Juhani Lahti, had already nearly wandered off the trail. If he hadn't noticed him, Lahti would have probably been there until spring. It wasn't only the Russians who froze to death in this weather.

"Kersantti, how much longer?" Otso Venäläinen had to shout to be heard over the wind. "We're going to start losing people if we keep marching into this blizzard."

"I know, but we have to stay with the column. I have no idea how close the Russkis are, and where would we stop? It's death to stop, we have to keep moving!"

Tuomola saw a man stagger, then drop to his knees. He hurried over to the man, he didn't recognize him, someone from another squad. As he shook the man by the shoulders, there was no response.

He stood back and watched helplessly as the soldier fell forward onto his face. Death from either exposure or sheer exhaustion, Tuomola guessed it didn't really matter.

Dead was dead, no matter how it happened.

Kapitan Ivan Filippovich Telitsyn and his orderly, Krasnoarmeyets Maxim Romanovich Grushanin jumped into a trench where there were six men huddled against the elements.

"Who is in charge here?" he barked at them.

One of them, a rather large man with the look of a veteran soldier about him, spoke up, "I guess that would be me, Tovarishch Kapitan. Krasnoarmeyets Ustin Rodionovich Kazankov and five other survivors from the 44th."

"Where is the rest of your unit?"

"I don't know Tovarishch Kapitan, we assaulted the Finnish position some kilometers back, we lost a lot of the boys coming across no man's land. We stopped here, awaiting orders."

"Good, come with me, we need to continue the pursuit."

"Tovarisch Kapitan, into this snow?" Grushanin protested, his captain was already lost, they should have contacted the main body of the battalion an hour ago.

Telitsyn looked over the lip of the trench, visibility was down to mere meters. He also had no idea where he was, nodding, he said, "Well, you are right once again Maks. We shall wait here until the storm lifts. At least we're out of the wind."

Kazankov looked at his men and shook his head, he didn't like this new officer, he seemed the type to get men killed.

Tuomola and his men finally caught up to the tail end of the column. They had halted while the officers decided what to do. One of them, a major, came up to them.

"How far behind are the Russians?"

"I don't know sir, but we haven't seen anyone since the storm worsened. Perhaps they have halted, waiting for the wind to die down."

"And you are?"

"Kersantti Kaino Tuomola of Separate Battalion 8, Sir!"

"Find someplace out of the wind, we too shall wait for the wind to die down. We're losing too many men to the elements as it is, we shall wait."

As Russians, Finns, and a number of foreign volunteers continued to fight and die, both from combat and the elements, the Finnish government put out peace feelers. The army was on the brink of shattering from the continuous Soviet pressure, bombs were falling on Helsinki, and anticipated help from the West was nothing but talk.

Time to quit before Finland was swept under by the Soviet's massive advantage in numbers.

Niitä on Liikaa!¹

(Source)

Sotamies Jonne Salminen and Alikersantti² Tuure Mäkeläinen were manning a Lahti-Saloranta M/26 machine gun, slightly forward of the main Finnish defense line. They had skied into position about an hour before sunrise, stopping when Mäkeläinen figured they were some hundred meters in front of their platoon. The idea was to get in position before the Russians would notice them, or so they hoped.

The idea was to break up any Soviet attacks before they hit the main line of resistance. The Soviets had a habit of swarming out of their positions, yelling "Oorah" at the top of their lungs and advancing in waves. Often, if you could inflict enough casualties on them, they would go to ground and not budge until their officers and commissars could get them moving again. Often at great cost to those officers and commissars as motivating the men required them to expose themselves to Finnish gunfire.

Their company commander, Kapteeni³ Rauli Karjalainen, had had this bright idea (so their lieutenant called it), some two days ago. Though the platoon commanders tried to dissuade him of this course of action, they had been unsuccessful.

Vänrikki⁴ Aatos Järvelä had told the two men, "Take no chances, fire a few bursts, get the Reds to go to ground, then get your asses back here to the main line. Clear?"

The two men had nodded their assent, then headed out to where they were now, lying in the snow and wishing they were anywhere but here.

"Do you think they will come?" Salminen asked his corporal.

"Yes, they will, whether today or the next day, they will come. These Russians mean to steal our lands and they haven't quit yet, even after we've killed so many of them." Mäkeläinen said this as he nodded towards the Russian positions. The Russian dead were everywhere, nearly all of them frozen solid.

It was like a vision of Hell.

The five Soviet soldiers were pressed against the forward wall of the trench, each clutching his rifle as if it were a talisman. Kolobkov, Sayankin, Kazankov, Tsiryulnikov, and Bezrodny were all country boys, Bezrodny from a village so far out in the steppe that many people living there thought there was still a Tsar in Moscow.

"Potap, when did the lieutenant say we were going?" Vitaliy Afanasievich Kolobkov was young, he barely shaved, yet here he was, on the front lines of the war against Finland, asking his friend, Potap Yegorovich Tsiryulnikov, when they were expected to assault across no man's land. He had seen the frozen dead of earlier attacks scattered between this trench and the Finnish lines, to say he was scared was something of an understatement.

"Vitya, how many times are you going to ask me the same question? When the guns stop, we go."

Ustin Rodionovich Kazankov, who had been in the army for almost a year, growled at the two youngsters, "Would you two just shut up? We go when we go, not one second sooner, not one second later. When the lieutenant blows his whistle, we go. He's an officer, he knows these things. Follow him."

At that moment the men could hear a rumbling to the rear of their position, moments later shells began to impact the Finnish trenches on the far side of no man's land. The five men all tensed up, knowing that soon they would have to climb out into the open. Into the fire of the Finnish guns.

"Dear Lord," Salminen moaned as the Russian artillery began landing behind them, on the positions of their platoon, "The Ivans will be here soon, I think."

Mäkeläinen nodded and pulled the butt of the gun tight against his shoulder, "Keep feeding the gun, as soon as we're out, we head back."

Salminen looked towards where the shells were tearing the earth to shreds, "Back to that?"

"Well, it's that or stay here and fight the Russkis hand to hand."

Salminen shuddered, then whispered a silent prayer that he would live to see nightfall.

Kazankov heard the whistle, the guns were still working over the Finnish position, but he understood that it was best to move now, while the Finns were keeping their heads down. Looking at the others he shouted, "Let's go lads, over the top with you!"

While the others began to scramble up the side of the shallow trench, Sayankin hesitated.

Kazankov growled and said, "I won't ask twice, boy!"

Sayankin scrambled out with Kazankov directly behind him. Kolobkov, Tsiryulnikov, and Bezrodny were a few meters ahead, hunched over as if to make themselves smaller, clutching their rifles to their bodies as if the metal barrel and wooden stock would protect them when the Finns began firing.

To either side of that small group, dozens of other small groups were emerging from the Russian lines. First they would throw steel against the Finns, then flesh and blood, the High Command meant to break the Finns once and for all. Comrade Stalin was growing impatient with the impudent Finns.

Salminen saw them first, "Here they come, Tuure. My God, there are thousands of them!"

Mäkeläinen sighted down the barrel, "Hundreds, Jonne, just hundreds, but they certainly outnumber us, don't they? Time to even the odds a bit."

The M/26 began to chatter and Russian soldiers began to die.

Kazankov actually saw the muzzle flash from a Finnish machine gun, he screamed "DOWN!"

Tsiryulnikov hesitated.

Tsiryulnikov died.

"Damn it, the barrel is overheating."

Salminen could see that the barrel was nearly glowing. "Do you want to swap it out now?" He asked incredulously.

"It's that or run!" Mäkeläinen hissed as he began to remove the bolt from the weapon. The Russians had gone to ground to their front, they had only seconds to swap out barrels. "Do it Jonne!"

The Russians were starting to stir once the gun had stopped firing.

"Shit, shit, shit." Salminen moaned as he and his corporal changed out the red-hot barrel for the spare.

"Come on boys, they've either run out of ammo or are changing barrels. Make a dash for that next line of shell holes, quickly or you'll be joining Tsiryulnikov soon!"

The men jumped up and sprinted forward, Sayankin could barely breathe as the cold air was searing his lungs. He was a step away from safety when the Finnish gun resumed firing. His corpse slid into a shell hole, dead before he hit the ground.

Kazankov swore, there were only the three of them now. He looked at the surviving friend, Kolobkov, who had yet to notice that Tsiryulnikov wasn't with them. Kazankov supposed that when you're trying to stay alive, other things became of little consequence, at least until the fight was done.

As he sat there, listening to the chatter of the Finnish gun, he heard something else, Russians, cheering ...

Salminen heard it too, he tapped Mäkeläinen on the shoulder and yelled, "They're flanking us Tuure!"

"Hey!" Salminen turned around, it was Järvelä! "Come on lads, we need to pull back, there are far too many of them, they've already overrun 3rd Company!"

"I thought you were in the trenches?" Salminen asked.

"We would be if that fool captain had his way, first shell burst killed him, so I had the men come forward into the shell holes from yesterday. Only lost two men other than the captain. Now come on!"

Mäkeläinen fired one last burst, the barrel was glowing hot once more. Passing the lieutenant he said, "I think I've ruined the gun!"

"We'll get you another, let's go or you won't need one!"

Kazankov, Kolobkov, and Bezrodny let their bayonets lead the way, they had fallen in with another platoon as they charged into the Finnish positions, shouting "Ura pobeda!⁵" for all they were worth. For the first time they had turned the Finns out of their positions, artillery and sheer weight of numbers won the day.

But at such a cost, Kazankov's little group lost two men, 40% of their strength. Casualties elsewhere ran close to 50%. Looking back over the field, Kazankov couldn't count the newly dead and the wounded, most of whom would be dead soon in the bitter cold.

What price victory?

¹ There are too many of them! (Finnish, pronounced: Nee-tah on Leeekaah)

² Corporal

³ Captain

⁴ 2nd Lieutenant

⁵ Hoorah, Victory! (Russian: Ура победа!)

Motti - The Attack of the 44th Stalls

(Source)

Puzanov, Kharzin, and Strelnikov were moving in what they thought was the direction of Suomussalmi where they assumed that the Soviet 163rd Rifle Division was still fighting. Little did they know that the 163rd had already been destroyed by the Finns. Their own division, the 44th, was in danger of being destroyed itself.

Finnish attacks all along the Raate Road had broken the 44th into small pockets, or motti as the Finns called them. They had left their lieutenant, Pashin, and a small group of men, including the battalion commissar, Konnikov, about five hundred meters to their rear. The lieutenant was gathering more men to continue on, Puzanov had volunteered to scout ahead, then report back. But things were going badly, Puzanov was sure that he was lost and Strelnikov was having trouble keeping up.

"Boleslaw Stepanovich, you must try to keep up. If you stop moving you could freeze to death." Puzanov was urging them on but he had a bad feeling about this, his first "command." It was only him and these two men, but the lieutenant had entrusted them to him.

"Seryozha, give me just a minute, my thighs feel like they are on fire. I just need to sit for a moment, catch my breath." As Strelnikov said that, he sat heavily onto a snow bank.

"Ah, I already feel better, just give me a moment."

Kharzin looked at Strelnikov, then at Puzanov, whispering he said, "Seryozha, why is Strelnikov slurring his words?"

Ignoring Kharzin, Puzanov knelt down next to Strelnikov, "You must continue on, you will die here if you do not."

"Boleslaw Stepanovich, wake up, don't sleep, don't ..."

"What is the matter with him, Seryozha?"

"He is dead, the cold has killed him. Tell me, Sasha, can you feel your toes?"

Kharzin looked at Puzanov for a moment, then said, "Yes, they hurt but I can still wiggle them and feel them."

"All right, we must get back to the lieutenant, there is no way forward. That way," he said as he gestured up the road, "there is only the white death."

Pashin fired at another muzzle flash in the dark. He had picked up one of the men's rifles, his pistol was useless at anything beyond a few meters. After he fired, working the bolt to load another round, he noticed something odd. It took him a moment to realize what it was, the Maxim gun had stopped firing.

"Lera, go back and see what's happened with the Maxim."

Commissar Konnikov sat there staring at Pashin, "Me?" The idea of him moving from this cover appalled him.

"Who else can I send? Now go, before the Finns start firing again." The Finns in the woods would fire, then shift positions, giving the surrounded Russians only fleeting targets.

"Comrade, I think I am better used here, with the command group ..." Konnikov didn't want to go, that much was obvious.

"Lera, I need you to find out why the Maxim has stopped, I can't go, do you think that fool of a gunner will listen to one of the private soldiers? I think not. If that gun doesn't begin firing soon, the Finns can rush us, then it's over."

Konnikov sat for another moment, then blurted out "Proklyat'ye!¹" as he crawled out of the shell hole they were in. He vanished in the direction of the Maxim, a flurry of shots from the woods chased him.

Krasnoarmeyets Pyotr Aleskeevich Tsiryulnikov muttered, "I thought the commissars did not believe in God, Tovarishch Leytenant."

Pashin grinned and said, "Don't you know, Pyotr Aleskeevich? There are no atheists in foxholes."

Konnikov had nearly pissed himself when he heard the hiss of a rifle bullet near his ear. He got lower and crawled faster, muttering imprecations against the Red Army, the Party, even Stalin himself. Eventually he arrived at the Maxim's position, the man who had been the gunner lay dead in the bottom of the hole, the other two men sat stupidly next to their gun.

"Comrades, why aren't you firing the gun?"

One of the men turned and looked at Konnikov, "The water is gone, Dudek always said not to fire the gun if it had no water."

"Who the Hell is Dudek?" Konnikov asked.

The man simply pointed to the corpse.

"Damn it! You," he said pointing to the man who had answered his question, "scoop up some snow." As he ordered that, Konnikov began to undo the "tractor cap" on the top of the water jacket, turning to the second man he said, "prepare a belt!"

"What is your name Comrade?" Konnikov asked the man with the snow.

"Pavlov, Comrade Commissar!"

"Keep stuffing snow into that hole, the heat from the barrel will melt it fast, keep the snow coming or the barrel will overheat, then the Finns will come for you. Do you understand Pavlov?"

"Da, da."

Turning to the other man, who said that his name was Bezrodny, he grabbed the ammunition belt he offered and loaded the gun. Konnikov was surprised that he remembered how. As he cocked the gun, Pavlov was still stuffing snow into the water jacket, he heard Bezrodny moan.

"The ghosts Comrade Commissar, the ghosts are coming!" The man crossed himself. Much to Konnikov's astonishment.

Shaking his head, Konnikov barked, "Keep the ammunition coming, Bezrodny, or you will have more than ghosts to worry about!"

Sure enough, Konnikov looked up and there they were, Finns in white, on skis, gliding out of the forest like so many wraiths from a fever-dream. Swallowing hard, Konnikov swung the gun in that direction.

Pashin saw the Finns coming, he knew that if Konnikov didn't get the gun firing, they were doomed. As he loaded his last clip, he sighted down the barrel and hissed to the men with him, "Wait until they are close ..."

Then Pashin heard the Maxim begin to chatter. Watching, he saw a number of the white clad Finns topple over, the rest sought cover wherever they could. Many skied back to the trees, not all of them made it.

A desultory fire was kept up by both sides throughout the night. The Finns couldn't advance, the Russians were pinned in place. Eventually, when the cold held the battlefield in its icy grip, the firing stopped. The Finns, those who survived, had disappeared into the night.

Pashin looked around the position, his runner, Leonid Victorovich Bebchuk, still aimed his rifle, but at some point in the night the cold had taken him. His eyes were glassy orbs in his frozen face.

Ivan Konstantinovich Sayankin, his orderly, sat motionless, a rifle bullet had burrowed into his head and ended his life. He looked surprised, as if something unexpected had befallen him.

During the night Puzanov and his one remaining man, Kharzin, had joined them in the shell hole. They were still there as morning crept over the horizon. Pashin realized that with the way ahead completely blocked, and the pressure starting to close the road here, he had no other option but to fall back

Of his small command group, only three men other than himself survived. When the dawn began to lighten the horizon to the east, Pashin led his surviving men back to where the Maxim was.

The gun had kept the Finns at bay, it had fallen silent shortly after the last Finns had withdrawn. Though single rifle shots kept coming in at random, Pashin assumed these were meant to keep them awake. He realized that Konnikov had overcome his cowardice and had, perhaps, saved all of them.

When they arrived at the gun, they found one man slumped over the water jacket, a second lay beside the gun, still holding a belt of ammunition as if to feed the gun. The third man slumped over the back of the gun, thumbs still on the trigger, was Batal'onnyy Komissar Valerian Vitalievich Konnikov. All three men had frozen to death in the extreme cold.

"Well, I'll be damned." Puzanov muttered.

"So will we all unless we keep moving, let's go lads, we must leave this place."

Pashin led the remnants of his company back down the Raate Road. This battle was over.

¹ Goddammit!

Motti - The Push to Save the 163rd Rifles

(Source)

Krasnoarmeyets Sergey Yegorovich Puzanov and his two man section of Aleksandr Tikhonovich Kharzin and Boleslaw Stepanovich Strelnikov were walking behind a T-26 tank, perhaps ten meters behind as the smell of the tank's exhaust, while warm, was making them sick.

"Tovarishch Puzanov, how far are we to advance today? My feet hurt." Kharzin was always complaining, today was no different.

"Sasha, you complain more than the old women in my village." Strelnikov muttered.

Puzanov turned and was walking backwards, looking at the two men as he did so, "I could send you boys back to the politruk¹, you could complain to him. I'm sure he would explain to you the duties and responsibilities of the New Soviet Man. None of which, I assure you, involves complaining. It reflects badly on the Red Army and Comrade Stalin!"

At the mention of Stalin's name, Kharzin stopped talking. His grandmother had used that name to frighten the children into behaving.

"You have to understand them Lera, most of them are from small villages, far from the cities. Many of them didn't even wear shoes in the summer before they were conscripted. These are not educated city folk, nor your vaunted vanguard, the Soviet worker." Starshy Leytenant Pashin lit his pipe as he walked beside the battalion's political officer, Valerian Vitalievich Konnikov.

"But Lubomir, it is our task to educate them, to make them understand the necessity of this struggle." Konnikov was passionate about his work, Pashin had to give him that.

As Pashin exhaled the smoke from his pipe, it was so cold it was hard to tell his breath from the tobacco smoke, he heard a familiar sound from further up the column. The chattering of machine guns and the bark of cannon fire.

"The Finns!" Pashin drew his pistol as he beckoned to his small command group to follow him. Looking at Konnikov he yelled, "Come on Lera, there is fighting to be done to spread the joys of socialism to our neighbors the Finns!"

Konnikov drew his side arm and reluctantly followed Pashin forward. He wished his colleague would be a bit less sarcastic, he also wished he would stay further away from the fighting. Konnikov knew he was a coward and it bothered him, though he couldn't, for the life of him, explain why.

Puzanov was confused when Strelnikov had asked, "Why are they throwing bottles, Seryozha?"

Looking forward he caught a glimpse of a bottle just before it smashed apart on the back deck of the tank they were following. Immediately the deck burst into flames and then the tank jerked to a stop as the burning liquid dripped into the engine compartment.

The turret on the T-26 began to rotate to the left, even as Puzanov got his little command into the ditch beside the road. He yelled at his boys to search for targets as he tried to figure out just what the Hell was going on. There was lots of shouting, machine gun fire, and the hissing of fire as another bottle smashed against the top of the T-26's turret.

It happened so fast, too fast for Puzanov to make sense of any of it. The flaming liquid flowed into the crew compartment. As he watched, the hatch slammed open and the tank commander began to climb out, beating at the sleeves of his jacket, which were on fire.

Puzanov heard the screams of the other two crewmen as the flames filled the interior of the vehicle. Another bottle hit the tank, this one broke and completely engulfed the commander who screamed in anguish before collapsing back into the tank.

Puzanov turned his attention back to his duties, his two men were firing into the woods near the track. "What are you shooting at!"

Strelnikov said, as he reloaded his Mosin-Nagant², "I don't know Seryozha, but everyone else is shooting!"

"Hold your fire you two, don't shoot unless you see something to shoot at! We're wasting ammunition!"

Pashin commandeered a machine gun team as he headed up towards the front of the column, the men had been content to sit and do nothing as no one had given them any orders. As their leader had said, "What if we are needed elsewhere? The lieutenant expects us to be here, so we wait here."

It had take Pashin waving his Tokarev³ in the man's face to get him to follow. In addition, the man had recognized the insignia of the politruk Konnikov standing next to Pashin. His fear of the Party overwhelmed his idea of duty. Initiative was not a trait to be encouraged in the Red Army.

"Set your Maxim up here, Comrade, cover that tree line to the left. There! Do you see the muzzle flashes?" Pashin felt as if he were driving mules into position, not soldiers.

After the gun was in position, the men manning it began to fire at the Finns, serving the gun was something they knew how to do. "Just give us a target, Gospodin⁴! We'll do the rest!"

"The man is a Tsarist!" Konnikov protested as he followed Pashin further up the stalled column.

"No Lera, just a simple peasant. When will you understand?"

The firing died down as the sun began to set. Puzanov was worried, he wasn't sure if they were expected to spend the night in the open, many of the men would die if that was the case. But they needed to break through to the 163rd Rifle Division, trapped in Suomussalmi. If they fell back now they would only have to fight for this ground again. There was no time.

Puzanov heard someone come up the road, just as he heard outgoing fire from what had to be a Maxim, perhaps they were being reinforced, his lieutenant, Pashin, joined him in the ditch. Also, much to Puzanov's surprise, the commissar, Konnikov.

"Situation Seryozha?" Pashin managed to gasp out, it was obvious he had been running hard.

"Comrade Lieutenant, I think the Finns pulled back, they hit us, draw blood, make us deploy, then they move off to do it again. But we can't stop Comrade, it will be bitter cold tonight."

Konnikov grimaced and said, "How could it possibly get any colder?"

Puzanov sighed and said, "It just does Comrade Commissar, I don't know why, it just does."

In the dying flames of the burnt out T-26, Lieutenant Pashin gathered his men and they began to push ahead. Other Russians were also pushing forward. Somewhere, up ahead, their comrades in the 163rd were waiting.

But in the darkness and the deepening cold, so were the Finns.

¹ A portmanteau of the Russian words "politicheskiy rukovoditel'" (политический руководитель) - political officer.

² Standard Soviet infantry rifle.

³ Standard Soviet issue side arm.

⁴ Lord, an old term for a man of the nobility

Motti¹ - The Beginning

The Raate Road, Suomussalmi
(Source)

"So Nurmi, you finally take your oath?" Kersantti Tuomola asked the youngest member of his squad as he distributed the mail.

Vilhelm Nurmi grinned and said, "Yes Sir, I am no longer a recruit."²

Aleksis Leppänen turned to look at Nurmi, "How the Hell are you out here and still a recruit? You should have taken the oath during training."

"I was at the medical clinic that day, the doctors thought I had ruptured an ear drum. When I got back to my training platoon, I guess they just overlooked that." Nurmi answered. Then he added, "Luutnantti³ Järvelä saw me coming off guard duty and administered the oath. So now I'm a Sotamies⁴, just like you Aleksis."

Leppänen grunted and said, "Ha, give it a few years then you can say that." Leppänen had been in the Army for six years and had been promoted then reduced in rank more than once. While not a bad soldier in the field, he tended to get into mischief while in garrison. He was more than a little fond of Koskenkorva.⁵

"Speaking of the company commander, there he is now." Leppänen said, gesturing towards the path into their bivouac.

Luutnantti Järvelä came into the camp and said, "Tuomola, get your boys up, we've got the Russkis cornered on the road to Suomussalmi, regiment is putting us back into the line! Let's move!"

Telitsyn and Grushanin almost made it to the cover of a fallen tree when the chattering Finnish machine gun found them. Telitsyn dropped like a stone, falling face down then sliding a few centimeters in the snow which had been trodden to an icy slush by the many men fighting to get to cover.

Grushanin stumbled but managed to keep his feet long enough to join Mladshiy Komandir Beriya and Krasnoarmeyets Dudin in the shallow dip in the ground they were huddled in behind the downed tree.

"Grab him Ustin Antonovich, he's wounded." Beriya shouted.

Dudin complied, as he pulled the man to safety, he recognized Grushanin, he was from Kolobkov's squad. "Maks, get down, you're safe here!"

Maxim Romanovich Grushanin, Maks to his friends, nodded and smiled, "Thanks, Ustin Antonovich, it's pretty rough out here, can I ..." Grushanin's eyes rolled into the back of his head.

"Comrade Komandir! Maks is dead!" As Dudin turned to his officer, he saw that man slumped down in the slight depression, eyes closed, a spreading patch of blood on the chest of his greatcoat. 

Dudin looked around, he could see the muzzle flashes of Finnish rifles and machine guns in every direction but to his rear, which he knew was the head of the battalion column. He had the sinking feeling that they were surrounded.

Dudin piled the two bodies of his dead comrades along one side of the depression and got behind them. Patting one of them on the back he said, "Sorry comrade, but I am still alive and mean to stay that way!"

(Source)

Kersantti Tuomola nodded to the machine gun team while he directed the other men in the squad where to set up. He nodded to the team leader and said, "Looks like we've got the Bolsheviks in a sack."

Tuure Mäkeläinen nodded in a neighborly way, "Yup, welcome to the neighborhood, I'd offer you something to drink but we weren't prepared for company, at least not the friendly kind." As he said that he tapped his gunner on the shoulder.

Tuomola looked in the direction that the machine gunner began to fire in, he saw a group of Russians trying to scramble across the road. They didn't make it.

One man, who had fallen to his knees, stared stupidly in the direction of the machine gun team, then he nodded as if to say, "Ah, there you are," then he toppled over to join his comrades in death.

"Well, if they're lucky their commissars are right and there is no Heaven or Hell, just oblivion." Mäkeläinen remarked as the team continued to watch for more Russians moving in the woods.

"And if they're unlucky?" Tuomola asked, a puzzled expression on his face.

"Then they're in Hell right now, being introduced to Satan himself." After saying that Mäkeläinen spat into the snow in front of the gun.

"Why not Heaven?" Tuomola asked again.

"They're Bolsheviks, of course they're going to Hell."

As Tuomola thought about that, the Maxim gun began to chatter again.

Night was starting to fall, as was the temperature. The Finns had the better part of an entire Soviet Rifle Division surrounded in the dark woods along the Raate Road. Tuomola almost felt sorry for them, then he thought of the destroyed villages along the route the Russians had taken.

He rather hoped the Bolshevik commissars were wrong about the afterlife.

¹ Finnish for encirclement.

² You might remember that Nurmi's rank was "Alokas" (recruit) in earlier chapters. It was simply a term for privates in the Finnish armed forces who had not taken their military oath yet. Normally this is done shortly after a man enters training. For reasons, to be explained, Nurmi never took the oath before the Russians invaded.

³ Lieutenant (equivalent to US 1st Lt.)

⁴ Private, the lowest enlisted rank

⁵ Koskenkorva is a clear Finnish spirit that is distilled from a combination of locally grown barley and unfiltered spring water. Often dubbed as vodka, the drink is produced with continuous distillation, which involves highly developed producing techniques that utilize 100% of the grain—none of it goes to waste. (Source)

Survival

(Source)

Batal'onnyy Komissar¹ Valerian Vitalievich Konnikov walked out of the battalion commander's hut and shook himself at the shock of stepping into the cold after being next to a hot stove. He should have taken his greatcoat off when he had been inside. The temperature had to be well below freezing.

He was on his way to the line being held by the 2nd Company, they had sent out a patrol the day before and out of twelve men, only three had returned. Konnikov was determined to find out what had happened, he personally suspected cowardice on the part of the three men who had returned. He was quite sure that they had run away and that the other nine men were still in the field.

Konnikov was university-educated and had been a dedicated Communist for as long as he could remember, it was his job to educate these simple peasants on their duty to the Party and to the State. Which in his mind were synonymous.

Starshy Leytenant² Lubomir Gennadiyevich Pashin saw someone approaching as he looked past Krasnoarmeyets Kharzin. Damn it, it's the battalion commissar. No doubt come to save the Soviet Union by having one or more of the Rodina's³ fighting men shot or sent to the Gulag.

"Thank you Sasha, your story matches that of Tsvetnov and Puzanov. You may return to your platoon."

As Kharzin left, rather in a hurry as he had seen the commissar as well, Pashin took a deep breath, he was tempted to have a cigarette but no doubt the Commissar would disapprove. This party functionary disapproved of everything

"Yes Comrade Commissar, what can I do for you on this fine day?"

"I am here to speak with those men who ran from the front."

"I have already spoken with them, they are going to go out with another patrol, a stronger patrol, in fifteen minutes. It seems the Finns are getting active in our sector again. I am leading this patrol myself, would you like to accompany us?" Pashin said that knowing full well that Konnikov would find an excuse to have to go back to battalion rather than get anywhere near the front.

"I will have to return to headquarters and get my gear, but then there is a meeting with the other political officers this afternoon, so no, I can't go on the patrol. What is your plan for disciplining those cowards?"

"What cowards are we speaking of, Comrade Commissar?"

"The men who came back without the rest of their patrol, you know who I mean."

"I shall take care of them Comrade Commissar, you need not worry about them."

Konnikov walked away, he was fuming but there was little he could do about this arrogant lieutenant. His own superiors would no doubt frown upon his casting aspersions on a man twice decorated with the Order of the Red Star⁴.

"We are close Comrade Lieutenant, at the edge of these woods is a small valley with a gulley running diagonally across it. We used that to get to the other side, when we emerged the Finns opened fire on us." Krasnoarmeyets Sergey Yegorovich Puzanov would never forget pulling his squad leader out of the line of fire only to discover that the man was dead.

Starshy Leytenant Pashin had the men spread out into a skirmish line, when they were within ten meters of the clearing, he had them stop and take cover. He gestured for Puzanov to follow him. When the two men reached the edge of the wood, Pashin pulled out his field glasses and scanned the other side of the small valley, perhaps a hundred and fifty meters away.

The recent snow had covered the ground, he guessed that another 30 centimeters of the white stuff had fallen since the day before. If there were bodies on the other side of the valley, he couldn't see them. So he continued to scan the forest on the other side. He was a patient man so he took his time doing so. He saw no indications of the enemy, but that meant nothing, the Finns were very good at hiding.

"Do you see anything Comrade Lieutenant?" Puzanov asked.

"No, but that doesn't mean nothing is there Comrade Puzanov, this snow has covered everything. We shall need to cross the valley. Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Yes Comrade, do you see that pine tree, the one which has been snapped in half?"

Pashin nodded, he did see the single tree, probably hit by lightning in the past summer, half of the trunk was canted off to one side, the other half stood upright and still lived.

Pashin left half of the patrol back on the edge of the forest, he had told the Starshina⁵ to take charge of those men and to provide covering fire should his element run into any trouble. They had made it across the valley and had entered the shallow gully which ran up and out of the valley.

Puzanov had pushed forward, Pashin thought to stop him but then realized that the man had seen something. When Puzanov dropped to his knees and began brushing snow away from a hump in the terrain, Pashin joined him.

Puzanov sat back and sighed when his efforts revealed the outline of a frozen corpse. He sat there on his haunches for a long moment, then he spoke.

"It is Yakimenko, Comrade Lieutenant. This is where I pulled him after he had been shot. You can see where I undid his coat to check his pulse."

Pashin did indeed notice that. He had the men uncover a number of other mounds, within minutes they had uncovered another eight men, all dead from what appeared to be shots to the head, that sort of damage couldn't be concealed even when frozen. It seemed that only Yakimenko had not been hit in the head.

"Yakimenko was shot in the chest you say?" Pashin asked.

"Yes, Comrade Lieutenant, he lived for a few minutes after he was shot. I tried to help him but with the other men dying ..."

"Honestly, Comrade Lieutenant, I panicked a little. When the snow started coming down harder and the wind picking up, I knew that our only chance was to run. So I yelled at Kharzin and Strelnikov to follow me. We got away. Barely, the snow had started to slow down just as we reached the other side of the valley. That's when I noticed the broken tree and the man in white."

"The man in white?" Pashin asked.

"Yes, he was on skis, only a single man."

"Probably one of their scout/snipers. We have been using this gulley for a week now to scout the other side. No doubt the Finns noticed. You learned an important lesson yesterday, Sergey Yegorovich."

"What lesson is that, Comrade Lieutenant?"

"In order to survive, you have to sometimes run away. I am giving you Yakimenko's squad, can you handle that?"

"There are only three of us left!" Puzanov protested.

"Then it should be easy, Comrade."

¹ Battalion Commissar, the political officer responsible for a battalion.

² Senior Lieutenant

³ The Rodina, the Motherland, i.e. Russia

⁴ A Soviet decoration awarded for many reasons, in Pashin's case for bravery. Twice.

⁵ First sergeant

Sisu¹

(Source)

"Tovarishch Leytenant are you sure we're heading in the right direction? I see no other tracks in front of us, the rest of the battalion should have preceded us, this path is too clean." Tank driver Krasnoarmeyets² Aleksei Yegorovich Shishov yelled back at his tank's commander. This wouldn't be the first time that Mladshiy Leytenant³ Arkadiy Kirillovich Shkuratov had gotten them lost.

For his part, the lieutenant sat in his commander's seat studying his map. Looking out through his vision ports he could find nothing in the snowy landscape which matched his map. Damn it, he was lost.

"Driver, halt!"

Krasnoarmeyets Victor Stepanovich Agapov, the gunner, was watching the back of Shishov's  head, he grinned when he saw the driver shake his head in exasperation.

"Tovarishch Leytenant, we are out here by ourselves, is there no one behind us?" Shishov sounded nervous.

Shkuratov looked in that direction, his view was obscured so he popped his hatch and stood up. There was no one behind them, no one in front of them, and no one to either side. All he saw was snow and forest some hundred meters to their front into which the track they were on disappeared. This was not good.

"What are they doing out here by themselves, Kersantti⁴?" Sotamies⁵ Otso Venäläinen was the senior man after Kersantti Kaino Tuomola. The other three men were very inexperienced and didn't notice things like why a lone Soviet tank was wandering the countryside. All they saw was a tank, a dangerous thing.

"I don't know Otso, perhaps we should hit it with our Lahti." Tuomola said, grinning and nodding at one of the younger men in the squad.

Sotamies Juhani Lahti looked puzzled as his sergeant said that. So Venäläinen explained.

"We have an anti-tank rifle called the Lahti, the L-39. Kersantti is joking Juhani. Do you get it?"

Lahti had to think for a minute, then he said, "So you want me to attack the tank?"

Even the recruit, Alokas Vilhelm Nurmi grinned at that, "You're so gullible Juhani, Kersantti is making a joke."

Lahti blushed.

"Kersantti, what are those Russkis doing now?" Venäläinen nudged Tuomola and pointed out at the Soviet tank, which looked like it was trying to turn around on the narrow, snowy track.

Shishov was trying to get the tank turned and was listening carefully to the lieutenant shouting over the noise of the engine. Their intercom was broken so the lieutenant had to shout. As he worked the steering levers, he had to listen carefully and keep an eye on the instruments, the engine was starting to run a little hot.

What the lieutenant and his driver didn't know was that, concealed under the snow, was a downed tree next to the track. It was old but still substantial, with remnants of branches along the trunk. As Shishov jockeyed the tank, the right side track caught one of those branches.

The branch snapped off and rolled up under the drive sprocket, neatly taking the track out of its guides. Shishov didn't notice at first, then, when he realized he'd lost control of the right track, he yelled at the lieutenant to check it.

"Blyat'⁶! The track is off on the right side! Stop the tank Alyosha⁷!"

Both the gunner and the driver knew that they now had to dismount and try to get the track back on the rollers, or they would have a long walk back to their bivouac.

"What are they doing?" Nurmi asked as he saw the Russians dismount from the tank and start accessing various tools stowed about the vehicle.

Tuomola was watching the Russians through his field glasses, he saw what their problem was. "They've thrown a track! Otso, do you think you could hit them from here? I make the range to be about one-hundred-fifty meters."

Venäläinen shouldered his rifle and looked down his rifle's sights. "Should be no problem, Kersantti. Might be good if we all fired, give these lads some target practice."

Shkuratov nearly jumped out of his skin as he felt the passing of what could only be a bullet then heard the spang of steel on steel as a rifle round ricocheted off the turret. "Someone is shooting at us! Get back in the tank!"

"But sir ..." Agapov began to protest, then he coughed blood and slumped down next to the tank.

"Tovarishch Leytenant, what do we do?" Shishov was on the ragged edge of panic.

"Get in the tank, we have to return fire! We'll worry about Vitya⁸ later, if we're still alive!"

"We've lost our chance boys, hold your fire. If the Russkis bring their guns to bear we're all dead!" Tuomola ordered, as he did so he turned to look to their rear. There was a good path to withdraw. They would report this lost Soviet tank. Someone else could deal with it.

Then Venäläinen spoke up, "Kersantti, I can take Lahti with me and head to the right, get to one side of the tank, you take the other men and go left. There's cover both ways, he can't shoot in two directions, can he?

Tuomola thought for a minute, then he muttered "Sisu, let's do it." Gesturing to Leppänen and Nurmi, he nodded at Venäläinen , "Be careful, Otso."

"Always, Kaino." With a wink, he and Lahti moved off to the right.

"Do you see anything Tovarishch Leytenant? Maybe the Finns took off?" Shishov tried to see out of the gun's periscope but it was too narrow and the tank was at an awkward angle.

At that moment the wind caused some snow to fall from one of the trees standing out from the edge of the forest. "There Alyosha, do you see it? Fire!"

"The gun barked, the shell went high and vanished into the forest.

Shkuratov looked hard, then said, "Nothing, it was just the wind. Keep your eyes open Alyosha, they must be there."

Shishov looked hard, even moved the turret back and forth to try and get a better look. Nothing, it was as if the Finns had disappeared into the air.

Venäläinen saw the tank's turret move, back and forth. Like a dog sniffing the wind, he thought. But he's looking where we were, not where we are. Looking past the tank, he saw his sergeant, ever so briefly. He had a sudden idea.

"Juhani, take cover behind that boulder near the bank. When I give you the word, start firing your rifle to the far left of the tank. I want them to hear you, but I don't want to chance hitting Kaino and the others. Clear?"

Lahti nodded, then moved off quick and low.

"Alyosha! They're behind us! Turn the turret to the rear, quickly." As he said that, he tried to spot the Finns through the pistol port in the turret, no, wrong direction. He would have to wait. He had caught a glimpse of someone running towards the bank to their right rear. Was there only one man?

Shishov got the turret pointed to the rear, as he did so, there was a flurry of rifle fire in their direction. Shishov actually saw a muzzle flash and went to lay the gun on that target.

"We've got you now, ublyudki⁹!" 

As he triggered the gun, he didn't notice the light increase inside the turret, nor did he hear his lieutenant grunt, "What the Hell?"

Kersantti Kaino Tuomola had seen that the hatch on the small T-26 tank wasn't properly secured, probably so that the tank commander could get a better view of his surroundings. He jumped onto the back of the tank and kicked the hatch open, startling the young Soviet officer inside. Just then the tank's gun barked, nearly tipping Tuomola off the vehicle.

He saw the Russian's mouth fall open, then he pulled the trigger on his Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun. The officer was shredded by the 9 mm rounds spurting from the barrel of Tuomola's weapon.

The man in the turret next to the officer was also hit, but his wounds were not immediately fatal. Tuomola had to admire the man's courage as the Russian reached for another round of ammunition for the tank's cannon.

Tuomola finished him with a second burst.

When the squad rejoined, they checked the Russian outside the tank, the man Venäläinen had shot from the edge of the forest. He was dead.

"We killed them, Kersantti," young Vilhelm Nurmi whispered. He had never seen a dead man before, and he had helped kill these men.

"Them or us laddie, them or us." Leppänen offered.

"That last one had balls, I'll give him that, he tried to reload the gun, staring down the barrel of my MP." Tuomola was amazed by that last act of defiance.

"I guess sisu isn't solely a Finnish trait." Venäläinen remarked.

"No, I guess it isn't." Tuomola agreed.

¹ To the Finnish people, sisu has a mystical, almost magical meaning. Sisu is a unique Finnish concept. It is a Finnish term that can be roughly translated into English as strength of will, determination, perseverance, and acting rationally in the face of adversity. (Source) Pronounced "see-soo."

² Literally "Red Army Man," the 1939 term for a private in the Red Army.

³ Junior lieutenant.

⁴ Sergeant.

⁵ Private.

⁶ Fire truck - without the "ire tr"

⁷ Nickname for Aleksei 

⁸ Nickname for Victor

⁹ Bastards!