Iske ja murra ~
The Winter War of 1940 was as harsh and unforgiving as the men who fought in it. The Finnish Army repelled in fit and starts the onslaught of the Russians. Wiley and understandably patriotic, the Finns fought without the murmuring disquiet that had led their enemy to revolution so many years before.
The Red Army were brutes by nature and took no prisoners. Already word abounded of atrocities by these men and the Finns, outnumbered and angry, met these outrages with a determination beyond the guerrilla like tactics that kept the Reds guessing and on the move. The forests were thick with snow and a cold emptiness unlike anything even the Russians had seen before. Trees, black from the winter harshness, clawed the dead sky like the cracks in a skull and all was so unnaturally quiet one could almost hear the heartbeat of the other man in the foxhole. When a skirmish happened, it was an outrage of sound. Blood was the only colour, the redness bright and alluring to look at for days afterwards on the never thawing ground.
The Finns advantage over their enemy went beyond numbers and force. They had wit and an understanding of their environment. Using the terrain, they stung and hit the larger divisions of the enemy. They adopted a successful sniper campaign that dispersed the oncoming columns into broken lines, evening the score a little. The Russians responded with their own small bands of snipers, to hunt the Finns. What followed was delicate cat and mouse tactics against the background of a larger conflict, a separate war between the forces. Sometimes, two or three men would be simply hunting another. The lone soldier would use all his knowledge and every weapon to hand; skill with his rifle, patience, subterfuge, opportunism, cowardice; all to survive.
So it was in the eve of that year. Winter held court like a god and all were in its sway.
He looked up. The trees were beautiful he thought. Against the sky, they were defined and reassuring, stark and solid. Aarne, 23, Finnish, looked around at his companions. The score of men squatted on the earth or stood sharing cigarettes. They were vermin, Aarne thought gently, ants or dust, swarming in clumps for rations, without purpose save firing at the enemy. Confused and tired. Every man was exhausted. It created a hard edge to every discourse that required speech. By now, after over two months pushing and pulling with the Russians, these men need only exchange the briefest of looks to convey understanding. And when they lost a man from their number it was as if a new language had been born from the fear and the exhaustion. Men of rank conveyed orders but behind the words, the true feelings bled for all to see. Aarne went down to a small group to share a cigarette. It was morning. Cold and grey but not snowing. Aarne liked it when there was snow. It gave pace to the day. And it was beautiful the way each flake was so delicate and danced on the air.
“They skinned two of them and hung the skin on a tree” a private continued, “the third man was tied to a tree and had been made to watch it before being torn open.. At least they hadn’t done it to him. But these Russians are cruel, they are not men. They are damned hiisi”. News of further tortures had reached these bands of Finns by hearsay and rumour, no one knew exactly what the Russians were capable of,
“But why not shoot him? Why torture, what can be gained?” This man had been a law student Aarne remembered, so he always contrived to present a logical argument.
“They do not care, it was for their own amusement” Aarne wanted to speak too, to talk about his grandfather. On the lake where he grew up, his Grampa had said of the beasts that roamed the forests at night, feeding on the fear of men. Great beasts, born of evil he said, that fed on flesh and screams. Without realising it, Aarne had opened his mouth and spoken these words he had thought.The other men looked at him cautiously, “Yes” the private said, “I have heard of these stories. These are stories to frighten children. These Hirviö are not as dangerous as these men we now fight.” Had they thought him mad? Aarne wondered and kept quiet. As children they had played in the forests now as men they fought.
He checked his rifle, a 7.62mm M-91. He never laid this gun on the ground. It was always in his grasp or placed across his arms. He slept with the wood and iron clutched to his chest. It never left him. Sometimes, when he couldn’t find merciful sleep on the freezing ground, he gazed at it. It had no colour then. It looked like bone, packed ash. At the beginning of the year, he had laid it on the ground next to him and the Russians had come through, using a big 20mm on them, flushing forward through the chaos with troops. He had been dazed and separated from the rifle. The Russian who had tried to kill him had fired his sub, as scared as Aarne was. Much younger. The bullets scattered around, peppering the snow, missing him; an undisciplined discharge of the weapon. Then, the enemy had jammed the gun and in a fit of panic and fear, Aarne had driven into him, bringing him down. When he had recovered his sense, the man was face down in the dirt, dead. All had been numb, like the world had stopped. There had been no sounds, just Aarne and the dead man. This delirium troubled him still and from that point he never let go of the weapon. He had spoken his thoughts aloud and Aarne knew they thought him mad.
Soon, the men would gather to listen to their captain. Aarne disliked this man. A man of little skill, he relied upon brash statements and even brasher tactics. Aarne had seen something in the man’s eyes once. They were all afraid of course, a fear that pressed on them constantly, so that they were strained to breaking point; so that each mind was exhausted with keeping the fear from it. But the captain’s fear was not something that he could control. In his eyes, Aarne had witnessed the blind primordial panic under fire that got men killed. Sometimes his own fear helped Aarne, made him focus all the more; in this sense he was a functioning soldier. He took away consequence of his actions save survival. His self fear became an engine of focus. It drove every nerve of him to kill without mercy in the melees. Like that first soldier he thought. That was the first.
“Today” The captain said, “we travel to our brothers, north” He pointed a full gloved flat hand out, like he was signalling on a bicycle,
“Or enemy is weakening, they are weakening!” He pounded his hand into the other for effect,
“It is now only a matter of time” He stood on top of an ammunition box, so precious few left. When this speech ended, Aarne took his place in the queue for bullets. Six today. But then he was called by the captain,
“It now falls to you to stay behind with the safety of your comrades in your thoughts, position yourself in the trees and pick off the enemy. You are best of us Aarne.” He was breathless and afraid as he spoke, handing Aarne the sniper’s rifle, a thin sleek line of steel and wood. Aarne was stunned and looked around him. The twenty men simply stared. All were quiet. So it was his turn. But he knew. Each of them would come to this in the weeks ahead, even the captain, shielded from his duty by men that were slowly dying in his charge. The machine gun was taken from him and he felt naked. The sniping gun was lighter, it felt to him as if he could not kill a fly with it, let alone halt the advance of an armoured division. He thought of the Russian he had killed again.This gave him strength. So it was his turn,
“If I was the last of our countrymen, I would defend until my final breath.” He said to them all.
“ Iske ja murra!” and turned away from them. He did not help them pack the camp and no more was said. In his dirty white fatigues, he climbed a tree that was behind a line of trees. He would not have much of a chance and could only hope to kill the enemy commander and maybe the medic before his himself was shot. Killed outright he hoped as he climbed. He felt nothing. He watched the men move away, watched the captain linger by the Bren gun, carried on the back of a horsedrawn cart. Noone spoke. Such a weapon was vital to their defences. It had the power of several soldiers and as their number dwindled, the captain would order it set up on it’s tripod where he would sit behind it, eating his rations, eyes always scanning for the next attack. It was the last time he saw the captain and any of the men. Later that day they were wiped out by an equally numbered band of Russians. The captain finally breaking, running headlong into the line of fire. None of them were skinned, they fought each other and fell on the cold earth. Aarne, around the time night fell, had heard gunfire, swallowed by the dense air and maybe guessed as much. By the time that the band of men had reached him, he had been waiting for several hours.
The sight on his rifle gave him an air of unreality, like seeing moving images on a screen. He had fired and killed several men, who had been running through the trees. Then something happened. Instead of coming forward and spreading out to find him, the Russian soldiers simply panicked and fled in all directions. Aarne watched for a moment and then, like a child throwing stones at ducks, he fired at will, picking off the men, who screamed and ran into the trees. Aarne stopped and watched; the men were terrified. Coming through the trees they had been fleeing he thought, and this disordered rout was surely not to do with his captain. There was something else. He slid down the tree. One Russian simply ran past him in blind panic, screaming and running into the darkness of the forest. The Finn watched as the Russian was suddenly gripped in the half light and ripped open. The man spun then went rigid, falling to his knees. The mess of his stomach boiled in the air, a steaming grey tangle of tubes. There was a grunt, then something like hooves pounding the hard ground, clearing off in the direction of the other fleeing soldiers. The screaming and shouting died away as the remaining men disappeared into the gloom. His breath was the only sound and his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Aarne ran to the Russian and cradled him, watching the man die. He thought of the first man he had killed. Then he heard a soft whine, like air escaping from a balloon. It was several hundred yards ahead of him but distinct. Then a sound of ripping leather, a sound of soaking linen being torn. Then nothing. He checked a round in the breach and edged forward, eyes wide. In the darkness he saw minimally, but enough to find the source. There, on a tree, a blanket of canvass was strewn from a branch to a trunk. Aarne stared at it. Carefully, he went forward and touched it. It was warm, wet. In the dim light, he saw hair, then a nipple, part of an ear. He spun around and went down on his knee, rifle poised. There was a stench in the air, and Aarne was afraid. In the darkness of the forest, surrounded by these slain men, he felt the same wonder and fear he had felt as a child, his Grampa telling him his stories, his Grampa telling him.
Aarne ran into the forest, away from the death, his feet pounded hard ground and he stumbled. His rifle was heavy. How far could he hope to get? The forest around him was still quite black. His direction was undisciplined, so he stumbled on. He should make a stand, he thought, with a sudden revival. But he ran on, a deep horror in him now, the Russian who had been torn spinning through his mind, that Russian he had killed, only a boy maybe, like he was with his Grampa at the lake...He stopped and again went down on his knee, the weapon clutched and ready. The tree in the lightening gloom seemed to have a face, a crunched thing, frozen there. Maybe that would be him. Where he would go, frozen in his agony.
Then, a howl in the twilight. He froze, his heart the only moving thing in his body. Each beat pained him like nails driven home. It was coming. A bear perhaps. But what had ripped that man and displayed him. Another howl, almost mocking. The darkness was stealing away. If he were to die, he would make a stand. He was a man, no doubt, one of the last of his countrymen. Iske ja murra, Iske ja murra, Iske ja murra.
He reached his hand, a ghost hand, onto the bark of the tree and drew the palm down, Shards fell to the ground and he did it again and again, harder then harder, he went to it frantically, with both hands onto his knees, drawing them up and down, tearing, not noticing the pain, the blood sowing into the snow to remain there, bright and clear. On his knees he threw his hands to the sky and yelled.There was a pounding over the ground towards him. Aarne saw nothing, he fired twice and his heart was gouged, still beating from his chest, and he saw his Grampa at the lake and saw no more.
The morning was silent and the sun shone, relaxing the winter’s hold on the land. The Russian commander hoped this was the thaw finally, hoped that the end was near. His men were as tired as was he. And what of this, he thought, the madness of it. Two men skinned and displayed on the trees and a third made to watch then bayoneted open, to die like this, he thought. He ordered a photograph to be taken to record the blasted Finns and their dishonour.
He ordered the remains cut down and buried.
The Winter War of 1940 was as harsh and unforgiving as the men who fought in it. The Finnish Army repelled in fit and starts the onslaught of the Russians. Wiley and understandably patriotic, the Finns fought without the murmuring disquiet that had led their enemy to revolution so many years before.
The Red Army were brutes by nature and took no prisoners. Already word abounded of atrocities by these men and the Finns, outnumbered and angry, met these outrages with a determination beyond the guerrilla like tactics that kept the Reds guessing and on the move. The forests were thick with snow and a cold emptiness unlike anything even the Russians had seen before. Trees, black from the winter harshness, clawed the dead sky like the cracks in a skull and all was so unnaturally quiet one could almost hear the heartbeat of the other man in the foxhole. When a skirmish happened, it was an outrage of sound. Blood was the only colour, the redness bright and alluring to look at for days afterwards on the never thawing ground.
The Finns advantage over their enemy went beyond numbers and force. They had wit and an understanding of their environment. Using the terrain, they stung and hit the larger divisions of the enemy. They adopted a successful sniper campaign that dispersed the oncoming columns into broken lines, evening the score a little. The Russians responded with their own small bands of snipers, to hunt the Finns. What followed was delicate cat and mouse tactics against the background of a larger conflict, a separate war between the forces. Sometimes, two or three men would be simply hunting another. The lone soldier would use all his knowledge and every weapon to hand; skill with his rifle, patience, subterfuge, opportunism, cowardice; all to survive.
So it was in the eve of that year. Winter held court like a god and all were in its sway.
He looked up. The trees were beautiful he thought. Against the sky, they were defined and reassuring, stark and solid. Aarne, 23, Finnish, looked around at his companions. The score of men squatted on the earth or stood sharing cigarettes. They were vermin, Aarne thought gently, ants or dust, swarming in clumps for rations, without purpose save firing at the enemy. Confused and tired. Every man was exhausted. It created a hard edge to every discourse that required speech. By now, after over two months pushing and pulling with the Russians, these men need only exchange the briefest of looks to convey understanding. And when they lost a man from their number it was as if a new language had been born from the fear and the exhaustion. Men of rank conveyed orders but behind the words, the true feelings bled for all to see. Aarne went down to a small group to share a cigarette. It was morning. Cold and grey but not snowing. Aarne liked it when there was snow. It gave pace to the day. And it was beautiful the way each flake was so delicate and danced on the air.
“They skinned two of them and hung the skin on a tree” a private continued, “the third man was tied to a tree and had been made to watch it before being torn open.. At least they hadn’t done it to him. But these Russians are cruel, they are not men. They are damned hiisi”. News of further tortures had reached these bands of Finns by hearsay and rumour, no one knew exactly what the Russians were capable of,
“But why not shoot him? Why torture, what can be gained?” This man had been a law student Aarne remembered, so he always contrived to present a logical argument.
“They do not care, it was for their own amusement” Aarne wanted to speak too, to talk about his grandfather. On the lake where he grew up, his Grampa had said of the beasts that roamed the forests at night, feeding on the fear of men. Great beasts, born of evil he said, that fed on flesh and screams. Without realising it, Aarne had opened his mouth and spoken these words he had thought.The other men looked at him cautiously, “Yes” the private said, “I have heard of these stories. These are stories to frighten children. These Hirviö are not as dangerous as these men we now fight.” Had they thought him mad? Aarne wondered and kept quiet. As children they had played in the forests now as men they fought.
He checked his rifle, a 7.62mm M-91. He never laid this gun on the ground. It was always in his grasp or placed across his arms. He slept with the wood and iron clutched to his chest. It never left him. Sometimes, when he couldn’t find merciful sleep on the freezing ground, he gazed at it. It had no colour then. It looked like bone, packed ash. At the beginning of the year, he had laid it on the ground next to him and the Russians had come through, using a big 20mm on them, flushing forward through the chaos with troops. He had been dazed and separated from the rifle. The Russian who had tried to kill him had fired his sub, as scared as Aarne was. Much younger. The bullets scattered around, peppering the snow, missing him; an undisciplined discharge of the weapon. Then, the enemy had jammed the gun and in a fit of panic and fear, Aarne had driven into him, bringing him down. When he had recovered his sense, the man was face down in the dirt, dead. All had been numb, like the world had stopped. There had been no sounds, just Aarne and the dead man. This delirium troubled him still and from that point he never let go of the weapon. He had spoken his thoughts aloud and Aarne knew they thought him mad.
Soon, the men would gather to listen to their captain. Aarne disliked this man. A man of little skill, he relied upon brash statements and even brasher tactics. Aarne had seen something in the man’s eyes once. They were all afraid of course, a fear that pressed on them constantly, so that they were strained to breaking point; so that each mind was exhausted with keeping the fear from it. But the captain’s fear was not something that he could control. In his eyes, Aarne had witnessed the blind primordial panic under fire that got men killed. Sometimes his own fear helped Aarne, made him focus all the more; in this sense he was a functioning soldier. He took away consequence of his actions save survival. His self fear became an engine of focus. It drove every nerve of him to kill without mercy in the melees. Like that first soldier he thought. That was the first.
“Today” The captain said, “we travel to our brothers, north” He pointed a full gloved flat hand out, like he was signalling on a bicycle,
“Or enemy is weakening, they are weakening!” He pounded his hand into the other for effect,
“It is now only a matter of time” He stood on top of an ammunition box, so precious few left. When this speech ended, Aarne took his place in the queue for bullets. Six today. But then he was called by the captain,
“It now falls to you to stay behind with the safety of your comrades in your thoughts, position yourself in the trees and pick off the enemy. You are best of us Aarne.” He was breathless and afraid as he spoke, handing Aarne the sniper’s rifle, a thin sleek line of steel and wood. Aarne was stunned and looked around him. The twenty men simply stared. All were quiet. So it was his turn. But he knew. Each of them would come to this in the weeks ahead, even the captain, shielded from his duty by men that were slowly dying in his charge. The machine gun was taken from him and he felt naked. The sniping gun was lighter, it felt to him as if he could not kill a fly with it, let alone halt the advance of an armoured division. He thought of the Russian he had killed again.This gave him strength. So it was his turn,
“If I was the last of our countrymen, I would defend until my final breath.” He said to them all.
“ Iske ja murra!” and turned away from them. He did not help them pack the camp and no more was said. In his dirty white fatigues, he climbed a tree that was behind a line of trees. He would not have much of a chance and could only hope to kill the enemy commander and maybe the medic before his himself was shot. Killed outright he hoped as he climbed. He felt nothing. He watched the men move away, watched the captain linger by the Bren gun, carried on the back of a horsedrawn cart. Noone spoke. Such a weapon was vital to their defences. It had the power of several soldiers and as their number dwindled, the captain would order it set up on it’s tripod where he would sit behind it, eating his rations, eyes always scanning for the next attack. It was the last time he saw the captain and any of the men. Later that day they were wiped out by an equally numbered band of Russians. The captain finally breaking, running headlong into the line of fire. None of them were skinned, they fought each other and fell on the cold earth. Aarne, around the time night fell, had heard gunfire, swallowed by the dense air and maybe guessed as much. By the time that the band of men had reached him, he had been waiting for several hours.
The sight on his rifle gave him an air of unreality, like seeing moving images on a screen. He had fired and killed several men, who had been running through the trees. Then something happened. Instead of coming forward and spreading out to find him, the Russian soldiers simply panicked and fled in all directions. Aarne watched for a moment and then, like a child throwing stones at ducks, he fired at will, picking off the men, who screamed and ran into the trees. Aarne stopped and watched; the men were terrified. Coming through the trees they had been fleeing he thought, and this disordered rout was surely not to do with his captain. There was something else. He slid down the tree. One Russian simply ran past him in blind panic, screaming and running into the darkness of the forest. The Finn watched as the Russian was suddenly gripped in the half light and ripped open. The man spun then went rigid, falling to his knees. The mess of his stomach boiled in the air, a steaming grey tangle of tubes. There was a grunt, then something like hooves pounding the hard ground, clearing off in the direction of the other fleeing soldiers. The screaming and shouting died away as the remaining men disappeared into the gloom. His breath was the only sound and his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Aarne ran to the Russian and cradled him, watching the man die. He thought of the first man he had killed. Then he heard a soft whine, like air escaping from a balloon. It was several hundred yards ahead of him but distinct. Then a sound of ripping leather, a sound of soaking linen being torn. Then nothing. He checked a round in the breach and edged forward, eyes wide. In the darkness he saw minimally, but enough to find the source. There, on a tree, a blanket of canvass was strewn from a branch to a trunk. Aarne stared at it. Carefully, he went forward and touched it. It was warm, wet. In the dim light, he saw hair, then a nipple, part of an ear. He spun around and went down on his knee, rifle poised. There was a stench in the air, and Aarne was afraid. In the darkness of the forest, surrounded by these slain men, he felt the same wonder and fear he had felt as a child, his Grampa telling him his stories, his Grampa telling him.
Aarne ran into the forest, away from the death, his feet pounded hard ground and he stumbled. His rifle was heavy. How far could he hope to get? The forest around him was still quite black. His direction was undisciplined, so he stumbled on. He should make a stand, he thought, with a sudden revival. But he ran on, a deep horror in him now, the Russian who had been torn spinning through his mind, that Russian he had killed, only a boy maybe, like he was with his Grampa at the lake...He stopped and again went down on his knee, the weapon clutched and ready. The tree in the lightening gloom seemed to have a face, a crunched thing, frozen there. Maybe that would be him. Where he would go, frozen in his agony.
Then, a howl in the twilight. He froze, his heart the only moving thing in his body. Each beat pained him like nails driven home. It was coming. A bear perhaps. But what had ripped that man and displayed him. Another howl, almost mocking. The darkness was stealing away. If he were to die, he would make a stand. He was a man, no doubt, one of the last of his countrymen. Iske ja murra, Iske ja murra, Iske ja murra.
He reached his hand, a ghost hand, onto the bark of the tree and drew the palm down, Shards fell to the ground and he did it again and again, harder then harder, he went to it frantically, with both hands onto his knees, drawing them up and down, tearing, not noticing the pain, the blood sowing into the snow to remain there, bright and clear. On his knees he threw his hands to the sky and yelled.There was a pounding over the ground towards him. Aarne saw nothing, he fired twice and his heart was gouged, still beating from his chest, and he saw his Grampa at the lake and saw no more.
The morning was silent and the sun shone, relaxing the winter’s hold on the land. The Russian commander hoped this was the thaw finally, hoped that the end was near. His men were as tired as was he. And what of this, he thought, the madness of it. Two men skinned and displayed on the trees and a third made to watch then bayoneted open, to die like this, he thought. He ordered a photograph to be taken to record the blasted Finns and their dishonour.
He ordered the remains cut down and buried.
