Extracts from a sergeant's war diary 3/5
Written by then sergeant H. Kolehmainen, translated using machine translation (w/corrections) from "Kansa Taisteli"-journal issue 3/1957.
I have attached a map at the bottom of the post of the area with some points of interest marked. Click to see larger image. I am still trying to find out the unit the writer belonged to for some additional details.
21 February 1940, in the intermediate position
Our dugout is on the banks of the Pero River. It was built as a machine gun
emplacement, but its firing port faces the enemy and its area of fire is
limited. We have placed the machine gun in a trench behind the dugout. The
river at this point is 10 metres wide and heavily frozen. So heavy that it can
carry tanks, as evidenced by the tracks of the tanks that drove close to the
Road Base a few days ago.
The commander of the machine gun platoon, Sergeant Ovaska, also lives in our
dugout. This morning he went on an errand to the Road Base, but returned a
moment later to tell us that he had dropped in to take a peek at a stretch of
anti-tank trench that cannot be observed from our positions. The trench had
been full of Russians. He thought they could easily be destroyed by a small
surprise attack. We roused some of the men who were resting and, led by
Ovaska, crept under cover of darkness to the edge of the trench. Hand grenades
exploded in the pit. The submachine gun completed the job. Twenty-two were
deducted from the Russian strength, including one lieutenant. On our return we
had with us a watch, binoculars, map case, compass, flare gun, sniper rifle
and several semi-automatic and standard rifles.
The company commander ordered anti-tank mines to be placed in the tank tracks
leading past our dugout, in case the Russians thought of using the same route
again. The sergeant-major brought five mines by sleigh, and it was my job to
set them in place. We went to work with Jäger Lappalainen. With my field
shovel and two mines, I crept down to the river. I dug holes for the mines,
set them and crawled back. Then Lappalainen went out, dug the holes and
started to arm the mines. Something went wrong. There was a huge bang. There
were no more mines and no more Lappalainen. He was from Lapinlahti in Sakkola.
One Saturday, during the extra exercises, I was at his house in the sauna.
At dusk, a Russian soldier, Pyotr Sergein Shuvalov, tried to come and greet us,
but the man on guard duty was in such a hurry that he shot him in the head.
The stranger's friendly intentions towards us should have been evident from
the fact that he had dragged his rifle behind him along the trench, humming a
sad song as he went. In one hand he had an opened bottle of vodka and in his
pocket was another unopened one. How and by what means he had got into the
trench unnoticed by the guards is a mystery. From his documents, the
Russian-speakers could tell that he was from Kiev, 24 years old and a
mechanical engineer by profession. He had been something of a 'ladies' man',
as he had many pictures of beautiful girls in his pocket. Shame about the
girls. But the vodka was good.
23 February
Yesterday, the Russians stormed the road again, their artillery thundering from
dawn to dusk. They were content to fire their tank and direct fire cannons at
our company's front line, apparently because their own men were too close. The
distance between our positions is less than a hundred metres. But behind our
positions, the woods were reduced to a shrubbery. The second company held its
ground at the Road Base, regardless of casualties. Last night, a company of
the Uusimaa Regiment relieved them.
Our company had a bad day today. Not so much because of the enemy, but because
of the sour pea soup we had this morning. Peeling off the many layers of
clothing and equipment for a discharge is a demanding operation because it can
only be done without incident if your metabolism is normal. When the sour pea
soup festered in the intestines, the process was not successful at all, not
for anyone. In the afternoon, I don't think anyone even bothered to try it
anymore. We were reduced to the level of an animal. But animals have it easier
-- they don't have pants. We had to carry in our trousers what they leave
behind. In the morning, the boys asked to see a doctor because of their
diarrhoea, but we couldn't leave the positions empty. A medical officer went
around handing out kilos of charcoal tablets.
24 February
Our dugout is at the forest line, along which we can see for a kilometre across
the Pero River and diagonally behind the road. We built a lookout and sniper
post on the roof of the dugout on our very first night. During the daylight
hours there is always someone in position watching from behind the sniper
rifle we received from the Russians, which we first sighted in the rear. I
doubt the Russians have a clue where the death is coming from that is
harvesting their men behind the road 500-600 meters from our dugout. That's
apparently their footpath, as there's plenty of movement all day long. The
most diligent stalkers boast that they can get up to twenty kills a day. I
don't know. I mean, you can't verify every kill. But you can always count the
ones that the guys have to drag off the line. It's happened that they've had
to send four guys after another, when the first ones have always turned from
draggers to dragged. You can see that they think the cause of the casualties
is right on the front line and try to protect themselves in that direction.
The Russians tried again today with their tanks in the direction of the road.
Not along the road, but in the woods a few hundred meters from the road. That
attempt went badly wrong for them. The boys of the Uusimaa Regiment set fire
to eight tanks with their Molotovs.
Diarrhoea continues. Albeit already milder than yesterday. But it has made me
feel as if I am powerless. Fortunately, we will be able to rest for a couple
of days next night. The second company will take the front line.
26 February
We live in dugouts near the brigade headquarters. We are on our second day of
rest, and the worst of the fatigue has passed.
Washing up, shaving and changing underwear are mundane chores in everyday life.
Now they have a sense of celebration. Even if the water melted from a pack
full of snow doesn't make you feel very clean after two weeks of not washing,
it feels like you're becoming human again. So, happiness and joy in human life
are relative and dependent on the circumstances.
This time we got some rookies who had been in training for a couple of months
as replacements. Our company was reorganised today. The remaining old
replacements were transferred to the supply platoon and the young men from
there to the rifle platoons. The old ones looked happy. They believe that they
can keep their lives in their posts more surely than in the trenches. But the
part of the company supply man is not much better than that of the rifleman in
terms of safety. But they believe it to be so, and what a man believes is
truth to him.
27 February
Last night we took over the defensive positions of the third company. The enemy
is attacking fiercely in the terrain of Lake Näykkijärvi and Honkaniemi stop
and has made a small breakthrough there. One of the jäger battalions has been
ordered to restore the positions.
The boys of the 3rd Company have had a joint water opening with the enemy on
the ice of the Perojoki River. The water has been fetched in turns, and the
water fetchers have not been shot at. Just now at dusk a hasty recruit
happened to be on guard. He couldn't resist firing at a Russian water
retriever crouching 40 metres away. Probably now we have to melt the coffee
water from the snow, it's bad because for some reason there is only black snow
here.
However, more serious damage occurred a little later. Twenty engineers came to
mine the terrain on the front line. They had mines and other supplies in a
vehicle, which they drove close to the front line. I was given the task of
guiding the engineers to the mine site. I discussed the operation with their
leader and proceeded to walk ahead to open an opening in the barbed wire
barrier. The engineers stayed behind to move their mines into a sled. A single
mortar shot was heard from the enemy side, the shell whizzed over and -- hit
the sled. The pressure of the explosion knocked me over. Three engineers were
taken to the first aid station, -- of the others there was nothing left to
take anywhere.
28 February
In the morning, the enemy launched a massive artillery barrage. It continued
for a couple of hours, then gradually quietened down. We waited for the
attack. It did not come. All day long there have been noises -- as if moaning
-- from in front of the positions, and solitary enemies have been seen
crawling here and there. When the moon rose, we held an "area firing" with all
guns in front of our positions. The artillery took part with a few grenades,
as did the battalion mortar platoon. The voices fell silent.
Then a lone Russian started shouting repeatedly, "Stalin! Stalin! Stalin!"
The scream seemed almost eerie in the otherwise quiet night. It turned out that
the shouter was a wounded Russian who had become entangled in our barbed wire
barrier. We decided that if the Russians came for their man, we would let them
do it in peace. No retrievers came, and the shouting continued. Not wanting to
send any of our own men to be exposed to Russian fire, a burst of light
machinegun fire was sent out. The shouting stopped.
1 March
Last night, two patrols went out to investigate the area in front. They found
that the front of the positions was full of fallen Russians. There was not a
single survivor in the surrounding area.
As the day wore on, things began to clear up. A patrol was sent out, which
stayed on its way for half an hour, and on its return confirmed the report of
the night patrols.
With the company commander and a few men, we went to investigate the area.
Behind the river there is a zone about 200 metres wide with large fir trees.
Then the marshland begins, with open areas and small islands of forest. The
forest zone revealed the tragedy that befell the Russians. In an area of about
four or five hectares, there were fallen Russians almost side by side. We did
not attempt to count their number. But an estimate based on the area of the
site suggests that the number of the fallen was certainly closer to four
hundred than three hundred. Many of them still had the bread in their hands
that they had been eating when the Retriever came. It turned out that the
Russians had brought a reinforced battalion within a couple of hundred metres
of our positions during the night of 28 February. Its purpose had been to
attack through our positions and then continue eastward, turning onto the
road, which would have put our troops -- three companies -- on the west side
of the road in danger of being encircled and their only supply route would
have been cut off.
Yes. This had been the plan. Maybe a good one for them. But there had been at
least one miscalculation. A mistake made by the man who drew up their
artillery fire plan. He had probably made a mistake in calculating the
distance of a kilometer when he set the targets.
A kilometre here or there -- What does it matter in a war. In this case it did.
It was downright fatal. For the fire preparation for their attack, intended to
defeat us, had fallen on their own battalion, ready to attack and completely
exposed.
There sat a fire control officer with a map in front of him and a telephone
receiver in his stiffened hand. He must have been hit as soon as the
bombardment began, because he had been unable to stop it. Heavy artillery
ammunition they must have been mainly. Large 16- to 18-inch fir trees had
fallen like matchsticks under their force. One of them had snapped in half,
and the top had fallen on the neck of a man sitting at the foot of the tree,
resting on the branches. The lieutenant-colonel had an open bread bag in front
of him. It contained wheat bread, tinned food and a slightly less than full
bottle of vodka. The Retriever had come to him, too, in the middle of his
'last meal'.
The battalion was no ordinary battalion, but an NCO school based in Leningrad.
It had been brought by train directly from the barracks to a place near Kämärä
station. Only two days before, they had been on an evening pass in the
amusement parlours of the big city.
They were all 22-23 years old, strong-looking young men. They wore new
overcoats of some silky fabric, with a plain military summer uniform, also
new, underneath, and two pairs of flannel, clean underwear. Their faces were
neither wrinkled by the winter winds nor blackened by the camp fires, but with
smooth faces and shaved beards they had gone to war as to a party.
In addition to the Lieutenant Colonel, the dead included officers from Captain
to Junior Lieutenant and many non-commissioned officers. The map cases were
full of maps and papers. And, amazingly, their maps were already printed in
the printing press with the unfinished dugouts, emplacements and obstacles of
our unfinished intermediate position. The maps also had thick arrows drawn in
coloured pencil showing the course of their planned attack.
It was a snowy day. The enemy remained silent. Only a solitary shell would
occasionally whistle overhead. We cut a hole in the barrier and trampled our
way to the killing field. We drove in one horse at a time and loaded the
sledge full of spoils. All the company horses and some of the battalion horses
came during the day to pick up a load of spoils of war. Twelve new machine
guns were loaded into the first loads. They had been painted white and were
still so new that they had not even been degreased. They could not be fired
immediately, but the Russians must have thought that the artillery made such a
clean job that there was no need to fire the machine guns - and there was
none. We got mortars, light machine guns, submachine guns, automatic rifles
and all the stuff that a battalion carries. No pistols appeared in the loads,
but the boys had plenty of them in their pockets.
One platoon at a time, the boys took it in turns to collect the loot. Each one
saved something for himself as a war souvenir. The fallen had an unusually
large amount of money. Paper money, coins and badges of all sorts. In the
afternoon, my platoon's trench was covered with Russian paper money as the
boys emptied the wallets they had collected from the pockets of the fallen. It
occurred to me that if you could put together a couple of rucksacks full of
them, who knows if you'd live to be a rich man, but where would you have been
able to find rucksacks in such a hurry? So the money was left to get mixed up
in the mud of the trench. Strangely shifting "values" in the world. The money
that people spend all their lives trying to accumulate, the money for which
the greatest crimes and villainous deeds are committed, now no one bothered to
deposit more than one or two notes, which were deposited not because of the
money itself, but because of the commemorative value it contained.
Although we have had an easy day today, the enemy has been attacking more
fiercely towards the Honkaniemi stop and has made a deep breakthrough there.
The intermediate position is abandoned. In a few hours the delay phase will
begin again. Supply is already withdrawing behind the Valkjärvi track. Our
company sets up a delaying position in the terrain south of the Pilppula stop
at the halfway point of Lake Kämäränjärvi. A battalion of the Uusimaa Regiment
will leave patrols at the intermediate position to maintain contact with the
enemy.
