Chapter 312: Bloody Battle
Soviet Union.
The telegram from North Africa arrived at the Soviet General Staff Headquarters, but no one had the time or attention to prepare a detailed reply.
The entire command apparatus was occupied with preparations for the next stage of Operation Spring Rain.
Clear weather had finally returned, and with it came the Air Force's turn to dominate the battlefield.
Germany had still refrained from officially entering the Finnish War. Even so, volunteer aviation units organized across the European Union, along with a small number of German mercenary pilots, had become a persistent obstacle to Soviet air operations.
Yet those aircraft were not the greatest threat.
The real danger came from the anti-aircraft defenses that had now spread across Finland.
In one respect, Stalin had been correct from the beginning.
The longer the war continued, the more difficult it would become.
Every additional week gave Finland more time to strengthen its defenses.
Anti-aircraft guns arrived in growing numbers. Minefields thickened. Heavy machine guns were dug into prepared positions. Small-caliber artillery pieces appeared behind villages, forests, and fortified lines.
The seasonal advantage Finland had enjoyed during the harsh winter was gradually fading, but European matériel had compensated for it.
Now, the firepower available to a single Finnish squad could rival that of two or even three Soviet squads.
The war had entered an entirely new level of brutality.
At the Mannerheim Line, the Soviet 10th Tank Battalion was spearheading another major assault.
Several tanks crawled forward through churned earth, using their armor to shield infantry advancing behind them.
Artillery thundered from the rear.
Machine gun fire swept across the battlefield in dense streams, bullets striking reinforced concrete and throwing off showers of sparks.
Then, without warning, Finnish artillery opened fire from another direction.
Shells descended into the Soviet rear.
Boom!
One tank was struck directly.
A second shell followed almost immediately, hitting another vehicle and triggering a violent secondary explosion.
The blast wave hurled nearby soldiers into the mud.
Several men were splashed with burning fuel and screamed as they tore desperately at their uniforms.
Another Soviet tank began turning in circles.
Its tracks carved a widening ring into the ground as the engine roared uncontrollably.
To anyone watching from a distance, it looked almost absurd.
But the tank had already been hit.
Its driver had been knocked unconscious, his body slumped against the controls while his foot remained pressed against the accelerator.
The strange death spiral lasted only a few seconds.
A Finnish soldier rose from a trench with a rocket launcher on his shoulder.
Whoosh!
The rocket streaked across the battlefield, trailing smoke.
Boom!
It struck the rear of the tank, smashing into the engine compartment and finally bringing the vehicle to a halt.
The Finnish soldier barely had time to celebrate.
Two rifle shots disappeared beneath the greater roar of artillery.
He collapsed immediately.
"Yuna?"
A few meters away, another soldier turned.
"Yuna?"
He stared at the body.
"Damn it... fuck!"
Yuka's voice cracked.
He and Yuna had entered the army together.
They were brothers.
Their parents had already died during Soviet bombing raids, and now the last member of his family lay dead in the mud before him.
Yuka discovered, strangely, that he could not cry.
There were no tears left.
Only rage.
Blood demanded blood.
A life demanded another life.
He seized a ZB26 light machine gun, climbed out of the trench, and opened fire.
Rat-tat-tat!
The weapon roared in his hands.
Yuka moved like something that had crawled directly out of hell, pouring every fragment of grief and hatred inside him into the advancing Soviet troops.
Men fell in rows.
Soldiers trying to crawl between bodies were cut down before they could find cover.
Even the field mice hiding beneath corpses scattered from the gunfire.
"Forward!"
A Soviet political commissar charged at the head of another wave, pistol raised.
"For the Soviet Union! For victory! For Comrade Stalin!"
A bullet struck him before he could finish.
He fell.
The men behind him did not stop.
A dozen Soviet soldiers immediately surged into the space he had left behind.
"Forward!"
Rifles rose.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Several bullets tore through Yuka's body.
One pierced his throat.
Another struck his chest.
He collapsed beside the machine gun, yet even as his body fell, his finger remained locked around the trigger.
"Yuka!"
Lorik watched another comrade die.
Then he saw the next Soviet squad closing on the trench.
Something savage entered his eyes.
He grabbed a Molotov cocktail, ignited it, and rose above the parapet.
"Drink this, you beasts!"
He hurled the bottle.
"Taste the Molotov cocktail!"
The bottle shattered against a Soviet soldier.
Flames erupted instantly.
The man became a screaming human torch.
Others nearby were splashed with burning fuel and threw themselves onto the ground, rolling through the mud in desperate attempts to extinguish the fire.
The flames on flesh could be smothered.
The flames burning inside the men on both sides could not.
At the Finnish command post, elderly commander Ral Klau gripped the telephone so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
"Retreat?"
His face twisted with fury.
"Impossible!"
He looked toward the trembling walls around him.
"These boys have already given everything for Defensive Line No. 10. Their blood, their youth, their lives."
His voice rose.
"As long as I remain alive, I will not abandon this position!"
Someone spoke urgently through the receiver.
Klau listened.
"What?"
His eyes hardened.
"They've committed another two infantry divisions?"
He laughed without humor.
"Then let them come."
"Let their blood drown us!"
"Let their corpses become our tombstones!"
He slammed the receiver down.
Then immediately grabbed another field telephone.
"Adjutant!"
"Order the 2nd Artillery Regiment to fire another barrage!"
"The Soviet tanks are pressing forward again!"
Back in the trenches, Lorik drank several mouthfuls of cold water.
His hands were covered in mud.
They would not stop trembling.
He watched another teammate get torn apart by machine gun fire.
Then he checked the remaining anti-tank rockets.
There were almost none left.
Before his squad leader could issue an order, Lorik made the decision himself.
He climbed from the firing position and sprinted through the communication trenches toward the ammunition point.
The exhaustion that should have crippled him had disappeared beneath the flood of adrenaline.
At the supply station, he seized two crates of rockets.
He dragged them toward the trench.
Then the Soviet artillery arrived.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
The earth convulsed.
Ground that had already been cratered by hours of shelling was plowed apart once again.
Human beings, creatures who required more than a decade of food, affection, hope, and love to raise, were reduced in seconds to fertilizer scattered across the mud.
Boom!
A shell landed directly on the position occupied by Lorik's 6th Squad.
The blast struck with such force that sound itself seemed to disappear.
Lorik stared.
His ears were already damaged from hours of bombardment.
He heard nothing.
He only saw.
His squad was gone.
His squad leader lay among the wreckage with only half his torso remaining.
For several seconds, Lorik simply stood there.
The strength left his body.
He collapsed against the heated wall of the trench.
One clear tear rolled down his dirt-covered cheek.
Then his eyes moved.
A rocket launcher lay nearby.
Lorik reached for it.
He loaded a fresh rocket, rose above the trench, aimed at an approaching Soviet tank, and pulled the trigger.
On the opposite side of the battlefield, the commander of the Soviet 16th Infantry Division watched wave after wave of soldiers advance.
He felt nothing.
No anger.
No pity.
Only calculation.
He raised his binoculars.
A Soviet squad had broken and was retreating.
The commander's voice immediately hardened.
"Send in the blocking detachment."
An aide stiffened.
"Yes, Comrade Commander."
The commander lowered his binoculars.
"Make the order clear."
"Soldiers may die facing the enemy. They may not die with bullets in their backs."
His voice was cold.
"They are permitted to advance."
"Never to retreat."
He looked toward Defensive Line No. 10.
The position itself was militarily insignificant.
But military significance was no longer the only consideration.
"If we break Defensive Line No. 10, even if it costs us dearly, it will be an injection of confidence at the political level."
That alone was enough.
The fighting continued until nightfall.
By then, the battlefield no longer resembled land that belonged to the living.
Bodies lay everywhere.
Fires continued burning among wrecked tanks and collapsed fortifications.
Smoke drifted low across the ground, covering everything in a gray-white veil.
The air smelled of mud, explosives, burned fuel, blood, and decomposing flesh.
It was enough to make even veteran soldiers retch.
No artist, however imaginative, could have improved upon the scene.
If hell existed, then perhaps it did not lie beneath the earth.
Perhaps mankind had already built it here.
Two Soviet soldiers crouched inside a newly dug trench.
For the moment, the fighting near them had quieted.
One opened a can of German meat captured from a Finnish position and ate greedily.
"I don't know how much longer this damned war will last."
He chewed slowly.
"I miss my mother."
The other soldier gave a tired grunt.
"At least Yezhov is gone."
The first man nodded.
"Maybe things will improve now."
For a while, they ate in silence.
Then, as often happened when only two exhausted soldiers were present and no officer stood nearby, the conversation drifted toward dangerous subjects.
The first soldier lowered his voice.
"Who knows?"
He stared into the darkness.
"Maybe things will get worse instead."
A pause.
"Sometimes I wonder..."
He hesitated before continuing.
"If Trotsky had taken power instead, would things have turned out differently?"
The other soldier immediately stopped eating.
His eyes flicked toward the trench entrance.
Even here, surrounded by artillery craters and corpses, certain words remained more dangerous than bullets.
He reached over and patted his companion on the shoulder.
"Enough, Olev."
His voice was quiet.
"Don't say things like that."
He looked toward the dark battlefield beyond the trench.
"We have enough problems already."
After a moment, he added:
"Just think about staying alive long enough to go home."
....
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