The Bloody Road to Death (22 page)

‘That’ll teach him to keep away from those damned Russian dances,’ philosophizes Porta. ‘Give me something more smoochy. At least you’ve got a partner to hang on to when you’re doing the waltz.’

‘Ought really to get hold of the padre, and get our sins off our consciences,’ says a dragoon.

‘So we can start off again with a clean sheet, too right!’ agrees Porta.

The door flies back with a crash against the wall and a little soldier in grey Finnish uniform stamps noisily into the ward. Over his shoulder he is carrying a brand-new captain’s uniform. He bangs his heels together and salutes.

‘Jaeger corporal Jussi Lamio from Taijala, here by mistake.’ He hangs the captain’s uniform on the lamp, crawls up on to the table, cuts himself a couple of slices from a long loaf and slaps a thick piece of sausage between them.

‘Any of you been on Naesset?’ he asks between mouthfuls.

‘Get undressed now and into bed,’ orders a nurse as she enters the ward. ‘Down off that table and get that uniform off the lamp!’

‘You German bitches good to give orders!’ shouts Jussi, ‘make no mistake. I am Corporal Lamio from the 3rd Sissi Battalion, and in Kariliuto they call me the scourge of God. In Karelia we don’t stand for any German bitch to tell us when to go to bed. We want to sit on the table we sit on the table, by God. I hate women who try to give orders. Women’s place is in the kitchen or else to give us a good time in the sauna!’

The nurse shakes her head, and leaves as soon as she has made up the bed.

‘On Naesset we fixed a battalion of bitches from Leningrad, good! They were
real
daughters of Satan. Not like that piss-pot emptier there who thinks she can tell a Finnish corporal what to do. I
want
to sit on the table I
sit
on the table.’

‘
Women
soldiers?’ asks the flak gunner wonderingly.

‘In Russia it is not necessary for you to have a prick dangling between your legs to do an infantryman’s filthy job in the trenches. These Communist bitches gave us their machine-gun bullets for as long as they lasted. And then they come in with the butts. We had two companies of Jaeger troops from the Sissi Battalion and we were on their tails all the way from Suomi-salmi. It was a tough trip. We are often over in the enemy territory. We are moving so quick it is hard to live a normal life. These Russians can feel us Finns breathing down their necks all the time. Our Company Commander, the son of heathens from Lahti, who had death and women and nothing else on his mind, had decided he was going to have some of these women from Leningrad. People who read more than the Bible, and know what they are talking about, say it is wonderful to get such an ideology bitch in the hay. Maybe we should have
read
some of those books in the libraries we burnt on our way. Then we should not have been so happy, perhaps. Twice we are close to getting them. Ahiii they were
bad
bitches! You can feel in the air this fanatic Communist fever. We promise them everything if they will only put their hands up and give in. Our captain had a machine to make his voice louder and could speak Russian so they knew what we were saying to them.’

‘
Veruski roj
!’

‘But they lay no weapons down. I do not know how many times he shouts ‘
Stoil
!’ through his machine. I am not a bookkeeper but it was many. No man in God’s image can persuade these Communist bitches to lay down the guns and end the fighting.’

Jussi sends a long stream of spittle out through the window and takes a fresh piece of sausage. He is chewing tobacco at the same time.

‘Does that taste all right?’ asks Carl in wonder.

‘Otherwise I would not do it, would I?’ answers the little Finn carelessly, biting into the bread. ‘In the end we get these bitches backed up against the sea where they could only have got home again by swimming,’ he continues, ‘but their politics had not made them
sa
mad. Now we are Christians, most of us, and we feel it is wrong to shoot women dead, even when they are Communist bitches of soldiers. We do not go so hard at
them at the start but soon have to change our minds. They sing heathen songs and go at us with infantry spades so we have to stitch them up back and front with our machine-gun bullets. Our Suomi’s
⁹
were red-hot. But we have to go on until every one of them is dead as a herring on the square at Wiborg. Then we liberated what there was and there were many good things to take with us. Our captain, that son of a devil, took all their hair. Out of this he made fine brushes to hang on the walls of his house and remind him of these bitch soldiers from Leningrad.’

The nurse comes back with two Medical Corps feldwebels who are looking for some action, but before they can say a word Jussi gets down from the table, bangs the big Finnish ski-cap on his head, salutes, and breaks into a roaring song:

It was war that led our feet
through hail and snow and sleet.
We went where bullets whined
far from country, kith and kind.
Life in the trenches here
is not all skittles and beer,
and maybe in the end
we’ll die for what we defend.

‘Don’t say any more,’ he turns to the nurse. ‘
I
have got down from the table, and I will take my officer’s uniform from the lamp and I will go to bed. But make no mistake. This I do because
I
wish it, not because
you
say I must.’ Without a glance at the nurse and the two feldwebels he hangs the Finnish captain’s uniform on the rack behind the bed, brushes it off carefully with a small clothes-brush, polishes the Finnish lion on the lapels and salutes it.

Silently he undresses and rolls his own uniform up, as is the custom in the Finnish Army.

‘What kind of a uniform is that you’ve got there?’ asks Porta with interest.

‘You can see it is the uniform of a Finnish Captain of Jaegers.’

‘What the ’ell do
you
go around with it for?
You
ain’t a captain!’ asks Tiny.

‘Lord Jesus but these Germans are stupid people. I do not understand how you ever have dared to get into a war! You do not even know that the hen is bigger than the chicken. Who has said that
I
am a captain of Jaegers? If anyone has, then I say that he is a liar.
I
am a corporal in the Sissi Battalion, and the uniform I have fetched from the tailor at Kuusamo. Captain Rissanen should use it for a fine party, but Lord Jesus be praised we have not paid a mark for it yet. The captain will no doubt still be sitting waiting for me in his underpants. He had only his battledress which he had been chasing the enemy in for many months, so that it had become a little worn and stained. Nobody can go to a fine party with pretty women and smart staff officers in an old Finnish summer battle blouse, even if there are stars on the collar. Sooner or later I will get this uniform to him. I think I must ring to him before I get back. I must tell you that Captain Rissanen can get very angry indeed in the head. He was, for some time, at the Lapintahti Asylum near Helsinki because, in a rage, he had shot a Forest Ranger, but when this war came they are short of officers and declare him well again. The Colonel has orders not to excite him. When he is not angry he is a very nice man. If it had not been for you stupid Germans, Captain Rissanen would have had his uniform long ago and would have been able to go to many fine balls and parties.’

‘Don’t talk shit,’ laughs the flak gunner. ‘How could us Germans be responsible for your captain not getting his uniform?’

‘If you had ever met your SS mountain artillery regiment
“Nord
” you would not be asking the question of a fool,’ replies Jussi throwing his arms out helplessly. ‘They commanded me to go with them, made a very great noise and said a lot of nonsense in German. As you can hear I am able to speak good German, but these peasants could not understand me. In Oulu I was suddenly, in some strange way, on board a large steamship which carried the name of S.S.
Niedeross
, and on this ship we travelled to many places which I would never have seen if these skull people had not made me accompany them. They then sent
me from regiment to regiment. It is not impossible they have wished me well and would relieve the monotony of this war for me. I was in Ssennosero, Kliimasware, Rovaniemi and Karunki, and then one day I was sent to Hammerfest with the 169th Thuringian Infantry Division. From there we continued by ship, an ugly piss-pot of a ship, and it seemed to me that everyone was in some way afraid. We moved as if Satan himself was behind us turning the screw. We would go ashore then quickly away again. We were many, many places in Norway. I do not know the names of all the towns. They were not specially noticeable, so there was no reason to remember them.

‘One morning we come to a new country. Sweden. All the waggons were sealed and these Swedish men ran about with weapons and tried to look very terrible. They looked foolish instead. If the enemy had seen them he would have gone home comforted.

‘In Engelholm twenty-three men disappeared. The Germans said that men always disappeared in Engelholm no matter how careful a watch was kept. It was as if Engelholm swallowed them up. That trip was very strange trip altogether. Everyone sang and was happy until we reached Engelholm but as soon as we left it you saw nothing but sad and disappointed faces.

‘In Trelleborg I go for a walk, but this is something one should not do if one is not Swedish. Everything is idiotic and the other way round in that country. You wait quietly to cross the road looking to the left as you have been taught at home, and suddenly there is a truck which almost takes off your nose. You panic and begin to run, still looking to the left, but these devils keep coming at you from where you least expect them. When you come to the middle of the road and begin to look to the right, as sensible people do, they come racing at you from the left and hunt you like a rabbit. I became so angry that I pulled out my bayonet and began to shout the Finnish Army’s ancient war-cry:

‘
“Hug ind, nordens drenge
!”’
¹⁰

‘You can believe me when I say these Swedish men moved. Our Russian neighbours could not have been quicker. One of their police with a sabre at his side tried to stand in my way.

‘“Crawl back up where you came from! Up your mother’s cunt!” I cried. “Make way for Finland’s free sons!”

‘More came and tried to arrest me, but they did not succeed. No long thin-legged Swede can stop a Finnish corporal of Jaegers who has blown more than a hundred of our godless neighbours to Satan. But then the German MP’s arrived with victory helmets of iron and all the personal artillery they could carry hanging on them. They shouted all kinds of heathen words at me. It sounded like Russians having a party.

‘We enjoyed ourselves for half-an-hour or so. Blood flowed freely and uniforms hung in ribbons. It was a lovely day.

‘“God be thanked,” I thought, when I was again on board my ship. “Now you are on your way to Finland again with Captain Rissanen’s new uniform.” But I was to be disappointed. I was landed in Germany! “Very well,” I told myself, “now you will see Germany, Jussi. You will have some stories to tell when you get back to Karelia!” But they will think it all to be lies. Will you do me the favour of writing your names in my pay-book? Stamped all over it is. I would not be happy to think they might put me against the wall for a deserter when I get back home again.’

‘You’ll need a devil of a lot of stamps to
get that
tale believed,’ chuckles Porta.

‘Let them doubt me, then,’ cries Jussi, banging his fist down on the blanket. ‘Doubt does no harm. It is a healthy thing. What if we were to believe all the lies the politicians tell to the poor?

‘In Berlin I met a Finnish major, a tall thin man with his cap pulled down over his eyes as if he was afraid of being recognized and taken before a court to answer for his crimes. He was a bad man, with spurs and black riding boots although he was not even a dragoon. I do not like these people who wear spurs but have not even been issued with a bicycle. He wore on his face the same look that all these high gentlemen have and militarism radiated from him. He boasted that he could have me sent back to Finland very quickly.

‘Two men from the Finnish Military Mission took me to the train. On the way to the station we had a look at the town and we managed to get a good Finnish drunk on. After some discussion
with the Germans at the station we were allowed to pass through the barriers. The Germans helped me into the train and off I went. My two Finnish friends waved and shouted hurra as long as they could see the train.

‘What had happened in Berlin I do not know,’ continues Jussi, ‘but the train was going in the opposite direction. Instead of getting to Helsinki I am now in Belgrade and here I have been wounded. They are mad here. They shoot at people from all over the place. “Stop, you sons of Satan! I am no German! I am a Finnish corporal of the Jaegers, who has nothing to do with this war here!” I shout to them. But still they kept shooting at me and in the end they hit me, those devils!’

He pulls his blanket over his head, rolls himself into a ball like a dog, and falls straight asleep. The rest of his time at the hospital he does not speak a word to anyone.

Early one morning they are discharged and given new movement orders. They are, as Porta says, become as new men with all their old sins forgiven.

At the railway station they are told that their train will not leave until late at night, and they go over to
Tri Sesira
where Porta extravagantly orders
Basansk cufe
. They eat the meatballs cold, but this does not make them taste less exquisite.