Despite the devastating strikes dealt to the Finnish coastal batteries, the western shore of Vyborg Bay did not become the clear path the Soviets had envisioned.
Walter crouched behind a frost-covered granite crag, his pupils constricting slightly. Through his optics, thousands of dark-red heat signatures were surging toward the shore, trampling over the corpses of their comrades and the thin, newly frozen ice.
"Second Lieutenant, they're within five hundred meters! Those Russians are even pushing heavy machine guns forward on sleds!" an old Civil Guard veteran shouted from Walter's left.
The man was covered in stubble. Walter didn't recognize him, didn't even know which company he belonged to, but the veteran's rifle, though trembling slightly in the extreme cold, remained locked onto the front.
Walter said nothing. He was a tactical executor. Like the rest of the defenders, he could only hold his breath and watch as the Soviets stepped into the death trap laid by Finland's brilliant combat engineers.
Just as the two lead Soviet T-26 tanks roared across a submerged reef line in the middle of the bay, an engineer hidden in a shoreline bunker pressed the plunger of an electric detonator.
A muffled, heavy thud echoed from beneath the ice.
The charges planted deep within the frozen layers ignited. A massive underwater shockwave shattered the meter-thick ice cap from below. With a world-shaking crack, the ice for hundreds of meters around collapsed in succession.
Walter watched as the two large tank heat signatures in his field of vision suddenly pitched forward into the pitch-black seawater, the sudden loss of buoyancy sending up massive geysers of spray.
"They're in! They're going down!" a soldier nearby shouted excitedly.
But the Soviet offensive did not falter. The following infantry stepped onto the sinking tank hatches and the bodies of their fallen comrades, continuing their crawl forward. Walter watched them collide with the second obstacle: "Thorns on Ice."
These were mobile wooden frames laced with barbed wire, pre-positioned by the engineers.
"Fire!"
A roar erupted from the frontline positions. Walter pulled the trigger.
The Soviet soldiers, their legs ensnared by the wire, had no cover on the flat ice. They were mowed down in droves. Then, the true hell of the beachhead opened up.
As the first wave of Red Army soldiers finally stepped onto the seemingly soft snow of the shore, Walter heard a faint but dense series of clicks. It wasn't the sharp metallic snap of standard mines, but the sound of the numerous wooden box mines buried beneath the snow.
The Soviet magnetic detectors were mere scrap metal in the face of this minefield. With every explosion, the wooden casings splintered into countless razor-sharp shards, shredding the legs of the Soviet infantry. Immediately after, several SM-35 "S-mines" leaped into the air, detonating at waist height and spraying hundreds of steel balls in a lethal fan pattern.
Meanwhile, the remaining Soviet tanks attempted to force their way ashore using the raw power of their treads.
Through his four-power scope, Walter saw the desperation of the tankers. On these shallows, the Finnish engineers had utilized the natural terrain to pile multi-ton granite boulders into staggered, precise anti-tank stone arrays. The heavy chassis of the T-26 tanks became wedged in the crevices; their tracks slipped and spun uselessly against the hard granite, emitting a shrill, tooth-grinding screech of metal on stone.
"Walter, it's our turn," Simo said from nearby.
Walter pushed aside his awe at the fortifications' effectiveness and refocused his weight against the rifle stock. With a single shot, Simo picked off a tank commander who was trying to push open his hatch to escape the stone trap.
Ice, seawater, wood, stone.
Walter didn't know the engineers who laid the traps, nor did he know the comrades firing beside him. But he could feel it: this defensive line, constructed from primitive materials, was effectively stalling the onslaught of the Soviet 28th Rifle Corps.
"Reload! Keep firing!"
…
The localized setback did not stop the Soviets. Their formations, originally crawling across the ice, began to fan out to the flanks, leaving the center completely clear for the heavy artillery groups in the rear.
On the distant horizon, the flashes from the Soviet heavy artillery batteries merged into a single line of leaping flame.
"Everyone! Into the bunkers! Now!" Walter roared, diving into a narrow gap beneath a massive boulder.
Then came the desperate, high-pitched whistle of incoming shells.
Corps Commander Vasily Popov was no longer trying to clear mines with the lives of his men; he chose the most primitive and violent method: "clearing the earth" with artillery.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM!!!
Hundreds of 152mm howitzer shells and 203mm B-4 "Sledgehammer" rounds slammed into the narrow western shore of Vyborg Bay. Walter felt the granite at his back trembling violently; the massive shockwaves surged up his spine and into his skull.
Every heavy shell that landed whipped up a scorched storm of black earth and jagged ice. The meticulously prepared defenses appeared fragile before such absolute brutality. The holes created by the underwater demolitions were leveled by the waves of ice kicked up by the barrage. The mobile barbed wire frames the engineers had labored to carry were torn into scrap and tossed into the air like waste paper by the vacuum of the blasts.
The most horrific scene was the minefield.
Crack! Rumble!
Entire sections of wooden box mines were sympathetic-detonated by the carpet bombing, causing clusters of black fire to bloom across the white snow. The S-mines didn't even have a chance to jump; they were buried deeper into the earth by the falling shells and detonated underground, leaving nothing but smoking pits.
In less than ten minutes, more than half of the trap zone, the ice, water, wood, and stone, had been transformed into a scorched wasteland.
Walter peered out from a crack in the rubble. Behind the swirling gray-black smoke, the Soviets gave the Finns no room to breathe. Commander Popov had seen the blackened gap in the beachhead through his binoculars. If the mines and wire had been leveled, that was the breakthrough point.
"Ura!"
The overwhelming roar of the charge pierced through the smoke. The Russians no longer advanced in scattered lines; they employed a brutally blunt mass assault. Thousands of Soviet infantrymen, steel helmets gleaming and bayonets fixed, surged through the corridor plowed by the artillery toward the reef where Walter lay. In their midst, the remaining T-26 tanks roared, their guns suppressing the few surviving Finnish fire points.
"They're concentrating everything on us!" a veteran screamed.
Colonel Martola had already rushed to the front line. Standing behind a shattered stone wall, he bellowed at the shell-shocked soldiers.
"Stop looking at the dead! The living Russians are right in front of you! Machine gun teams, crossfire on the center point! Bottleneck them in that gap!"
The reservists and Civil Guards, dazed by the bombardment, regained their senses at their commander's roar. Machine gunners, their ears bleeding from the pressure, racked their charging handles. The heavy, rhythmic chug-chug-chug of the Maxim guns once again echoed across the beach.
"Walter, we take out the leaders. Don't let them reach that high ground!"
Without looking back, Walter pressed his right eye firmly against the Zeiss four-power scope. Against such a dense charging formation, he barely needed to lead his shots. Every bullet that left his barrel claimed a life in the packed ranks.
Bang!
A Soviet officer, waving a Nagant revolver as he tried to leap over a piece of granite, froze mid-air as a hole was punched through his chest by the M39 rifle.
Bang!
Next, a radio operator trying desperately to guide the following tanks into the breach slumped backward.
The Soviet tactic was simple and cruel: use human lives to build a path. When the front soldiers fell, those behind stepped over the corpses. In the center of the destroyed minefield, the bodies of Soviet soldiers soon piled up, becoming a thick, grisly ramp for the units following them.
A T-26 tank roared as it rammed aside a massive fragment of granite. With the mines cleared, it accelerated without hesitation, its steel treads grinding sparks off the hard coastal rock.
"Molotov cocktails! Now!" Colonel Martola shouted to the flank.
Several soldiers crawled through the rocks on hands and knees, shielded by the smoke. Walter held his breath, his finger moving steadily. He didn't target the tank; instead, he locked onto the Soviet combat engineers trailing behind it, who were carrying satchel charges to blast the Finnish pillboxes.
Bang! Bang!
Two shots in rapid succession. The engineers collapsed, and the explosives they carried detonated within their own ranks, creating a whirlwind of blood and shrapnel.
Taking advantage of the tank's momentary visual confusion, a Molotov cocktail struck the engine deck with precision. Orange flames erupted instantly, followed by billowing black smoke. The tank, like a wounded beast, spun in circles on the beach, crushing a carbonized tree.
"Hold this position! Vyborg is behind us!" Martola's voice echoed through the sea breeze.
This was no longer a mere defense; it was the ultimate contest of will. On this scorched coastal line, the only thing that remained warm was the flowing blood. It meandered into the bay, staining the newly frozen ice a deep, haunting crimson.
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