Faked Passports (35 page)

“But that's the best part of a thousand miles away from the main theatre of operations,” Gregory objected, “and conditions up there in the Arctic would make it very difficult to move large numbers of troops south over indifferent communications during the winter.”

“Perhaps Norway and Sweden would allow them free passage?”

“Yes,” Angela put in. “They certainly would if they come
in with you, but not if they stay out through fear of Germany. To do so would lose them their neutral status.”

“Not at all, Miss,” the Finn disagreed politely. “Finland is a member of the League of Nations. Russia's attack on us is the clearest possible case of unprovoked agression which could ever be put before any court. Naturally, we shall appeal to the League. If the League gives its verdict in our favour—as it must—we shall be entitled to call upon all other states that are members of the League for armed support. If Britain and France decide to give us that support any other League state may permit the passage of armed forces coming to our assistance through their territories without contravening their own neutrality.”

Gregory nodded. “Yes. That
is
part of the League Covenant. If Sweden and Norway feel that they daren't risk coming in themselves they can still let British and French troops through without giving any legal cause for Germany to make war on them. The trouble is, though, that Germany is not a member of the League and the Nazis are the last people to bother about legal causes if it suits their book to go to war with anyone.”

Erika lit a cigarette and said slowly: “I'm afraid that's true, Mr. Loumkoski. You see, Germany is so largely dependent on Sweden for her supplies of iron ore and if the Western Powers landed troops in Scandinavia they would probably choose the Norwegian port of Narvik as a base and come right down the railway through Northern Sweden to the head of the Gulf of Bothnia. That would be their quickest route to Finland and at the same time it would cut Germany off from the Swedish iron mines at Kiruna.”

“With Sweden still neutral we could hardly pinch the mines, however much we might like to have them,” Freddie laughed.

“No,” Erika smiled. “You could hardly do that; but the British are very clever at managing things when they want to. You see, there's only the one railway line up there; and over it the ore goes north-west for transport from Narvik by sea in winter and south to Lulea for transport by ship across the Gulf of Bothnia when it is free of ice during the summer. It would be found that the Western Powers needed every truck on that railway for transporting their troops and ammunitions to the Finnish front; so, while offering to compensate the Swedes for their loss of business, they would point out that it was quite
impossible for them to spare the rolling-stock for transporting the ore in either direction.”

“Yes, that's typical of our methods,” Gregory grinned. “I'm afraid there's no doubt about it that, law or no law, Germany would invade Sweden in an attempt to reach those mines first if an Allied Expeditionary Force were landed in Norway.”

“But if the Scandinavian countries do not support us themselves, and refuse to allow other countries to support us by sending troops through them, they will be signing their own death warrants,” Loumkoski argued. “Finland can hold out for a month or two but without help we must eventually be crushed by the weight of the Russian masses. Once we are defeated Russia will push West and seize the iron mines for herself with those ice-free Atlantic ports on the Norwegian coast that she is so anxious to acquire and the whole of Northern Scandinavia. Surely the Norwegians and the Swedes would rather risk trouble with Germany than allow that to happen?”

“Perhaps. I only hope so, for your sake,” Gregory replied.

“If the Scandinavians let troops through, how soon do you think military aid from the Western Powers could reach us?”

“It's difficult to say and it greatly depends on the state of the railway from Narvik, but presumably that's in good condition, and if the Allies acted at once their first troops might be arriving in the battle-line in about a month.”

Loumkoski sighed with the satisfaction of wish fulfilment. “In that case we'll be all right.”

Gregory's forecast had been given entirely with a view to cheering their new friend. His private opinion was very different.

In Gregory's opinion, if the Western Powers were asked for aid by Finland, and decided to send it, they would not do so until the spring. Submarines are slow-moving vessels and as long as Russia's under-sea fleet was concentrated at Murmansk it might be dealt with in better weather. An aircraft-carrier and flotillas of submarine chasers could be sent up there which would probably account for a considerable portion of it before the Expeditionary Force sailed. By the spring, too, it was said
that the Allies' aircraft production would have caught up with that of Germany, which would better enable the Western Powers to protect their troops from aerial attack while disembarking.

It was a sad business, but, apart from volunteers such as had gone out to the Spanish war, Gregory did not feel that the Finns could really count on any military aid for the present—unless Norway and Sweden decided that their own fate was linked with that of Finland.

Madame Loumkoski came in with coffee and sweet cakes but they had barely received cups of the steaming brew when the air-raid sirens sounded once again.

Although the Finns had been working desperately hard these last weeks to provide air-raid shelters they had had to concentrate their efforts in the more populous parts of the city; so when Gregory suggested that they should all go to the nearest, Loumkoski told him that there was no proper shelter less than half a mile distant. The deep booming of the Russian planes could already be heard, so their host said swiftly that they might easily be killed on their way through the streets and that it would be less risky for them to take refuge in a trench which he had dug in his back garden.

They hurried out through the snow and found it to be a long, narrow ditch about four feet wide partially covered with planking and a few sand-bags. Some rubble had been thrown into its bottom to drain away the water but the sides were damp, cold, virgin earth, and there were no seats, so having scrambled down, they had to crouch uncomfortably in it.

They were hardly inside the trench before the bombs began to fall; but it seemed that the Russians were directing their main attack upon the port, which was some miles away. The distant thudding continued for about ten minutes then a few crashes sounded nearer. Suddenly there sounded the sharp “rat-tat-tat” of machine-gun fire overhead. Loumkoski poked his head out from underneath the boards and gave a whoop of joy. “It's one of ours,” he shouted; “it's one of ours!”

They had been about to pull him back but his excitement was so infectious that even Gregory temporarily lost the extreme caution which had so often been the means of saving his life. He had seen dog-fights, in the air before and knew that it was a senseless risk to expose oneself to possible death for the sake of seeing the fun; but there was something so very gallant about that solitary Finnish airman up there in the midst of the Red
air-armada that for once he felt bound to take a chance and see the result of the fight.

The small Finnish plane had just circled under a big black bomber and come up on its tail. There was another burst of machine-gun fire; a wisp of smoke streamed out behind the Russian plane, then it seemed to falter. Next moment it was hurtling earthwards with red flames spurting from it and a great tail of oily black smoke smearing the blue sky in its track; while the little Finnish plane streaked away to northwards to attack another enemy.

It seemed that the whole neighbourhood had also come out from their shelters to watch the fight, as the sound of cheering began on every side from the moment the Russian was hit and swelled to a roar as it crashed like a box of lighted fireworks about a quarter of a mile away.

The cheering continued for a moment but was cut short by a fresh series of crashes quite close at hand; another Red plane was unloading its cargo. The earth shook and trembled as each of the great bombs burst with the roar of thunder somewhere on the far side of the house. Stones, earth, and pieces of red tile from the roof-tops came sailing through the air to fall with a clatter upon the boards of the trench under which they had once more taken refuge. For another quarter of an hour they crouched there until the detonations ceased. A few moments later the “All-Clear” signal sounded for the third time in five hours.

It was only a little after three when they climbed out of the trench but the early winter dusk was already falling and Gregory felt that in another half-hour or so they might make their attempt to secure the Sabina. In the little sitting-room of the Loumkoskis' house they found the coffee which Madame had provided, and which they had had to abandon on account of the air-raid, still fairly warm. She wanted to re-heat it for them but they would not let her, as they knew that she was anxious to find out what had happened to her neighbours and give them any help she could.

While they drank the tepid coffee they stood looking out of the window at the sad spectacle the street now presented. Three air-raids in five hours had shaken even the courage of the Finns and—very wisely, Gregory thought—all those who had no duties which detained them in the city had apparently decided to evacuate it.

In front of the small, wooden, workers' houses, sleighs and
carts were drawn up and on to them men, women and children were hastily piling their bedding and their most precious belongings. Already a continuous stream of evacuees was passing down the street from the direction of the centre of the city towards the open countryside. Many of them had no conveyances and carried huge bundles on their backs while they led small children by the hand. It was a sight which filled the watching party at the window with a bitter anger against the Russians and the deepest pity for these poor people who had been driven from their homes.

The hearts of the girls were wrung more than those of the men, because they had already been some weeks in Finland and so appreciated more fully the horror of such an evacuation in mid-winter up in that northern land. They knew that, unlike the country round London, Paris, and Berlin, where hundreds of thousands of houses could be used for billets in such an emergency, the Finnish countryside outside Helsinki was very little built over. Only a very few of these poor refugees who were being driven forth by the terror of mutilation and death would find accommodation in the farms and barns; the vast majority would have to camp out in the woods where the snow was already two feet deep upon the ground. Thousands of them who were fleeing without even bedding would be frozen to death during the night or get frost-bite which would injure them for life.

Gregory, too, felt particularly badly about it, because he knew that he had been to a large extent responsible for the last-minute decision of the Finnish Government to defy the might of Russia, but he tried to comfort himself with the thought that the Finns were at least still free men; whereas, if they had surrendered without firing a shot a month or two would have found thousands of them marching through the Russian snows in forced labour gangs.

Madame Loumkoski returned after about twenty minutes to tell a harrowing tale of the havoc wrought by the bombs that had fallen in the next street. A whole row of workmen's dwellings had been blown down and many more were in flames through fires caused by the explosions. The fire-fighters and ambulance people were at work there so there was nothing she could do except—as she told them—render thanks to God that, whereas she had thought that He had cursed her all these years with barrenness she now knew that He had blessed her by preventing her from having any children of her own.

Gregory took out his wad of Finnish notes and peeling off three large ones said to her: “Madame, there is very little that we can do to help but I should be glad if you would take this money. It will buy you a railway-ticket to Sweden and keep you there for a few weeks without want, at least; and I'm sure that your husband would rather have you safely out of all these horrors than that you should risk your life to stay with him. If you're lucky you may be able to get one of the trains leaving tomorrow morning.”

She shook her head. “It is mos' kine of you, sir, but I not leave im at zis time, no, no.”

Her husband and the others all tried to persuade her to do so but she was quite adamant in her refusal. The best that they could do was to make her take the money to put aside so that when her husband was called up—which would mean separation for them in any case—she would then be able to use it to leave the country; which he said would be a great comfort to him while he was serving with his unit.

At a quarter to four they said good-bye to Madame Loumkoski and set off in the car again, back to the aerodrome. It was slow going, as the road was now crowded with an army of refugees who were pouring out of Helsinki to face the bitter cold of the woods rather than spend another night in what appeared to be a doomed city. It was quite dark when they reached the aerodrome and Gregory asked Loumkoski to drive them along a road at its side for about half a mile; then he signalled to him to halt and they all got out. Before taking leave of the friendly chauffeur Gregory asked him if he could spare a spanner with which request he willingly obliged, and they then parted from him with many expressions of goodwill on both sides.

Crossing a ditch Gregory's party began to tramp through the thick snow of the open fields. After ten minutes' laboured going they came up against a wire fence which they knew, from what they had seen in daylight, marked the boundary of the aerodrome. Slipping through it they ploughed on through the snow on its far side. In spite of the darkness they could see for quite a distance owing to the light which the snow reflected, but on this night of death and terror it was not the pale, white light normally reflected from snow, by which, it is said Confucius, as a boy, learned to read on winter evenings because he was too poor to buy candles. It was tinged with a sinister crimson from the blood-red glow shot with fiery orange that hung like a devil's
pall above the burning buildings of the city. The light had a horrid, eerie quality about it yet, as they advanced, it served to show them the line of the hangars in one of which the Sabina plane was housed.