Having led the Finnish offensive on the Karelian Isthmus through April and May 1940, fighting southwards from their starting point on the Mannerheim Line to the outskirts of Leningrad in six weeks, the 21st Panssaridivisioona, nicknamed “Marskin Nyrkki” - The Fist of the Marshal – had been withdrawn from the Front to reequip and train replacements for the casualties. As part of this re-equipment, two of the Division’s Jääkäri Battalions had been equipped with the new Sika Armoured Fighting Vehicles together with a miscellany of armoured and unarmoured support. Much of June and early July had been spent reequipping and training in the rear and thus the 21st Panssaridivisioona would not be heavily involved in the initial defensive fighting and counter-attacks on the Syvari in late July and early August 1940. They, together with the other 3 Armoured Divisions, two of them the newly created Divisions using captured Red Army tanks and equipment, would be held back in reserve, leaving the localized counter-attacks to the Infantry Divisions, who bore the brunt of the fighting through the furious battles of mid-Summer. Their moment to shine would arrive soon enough.
Like the other officers of the 21st, if not the men, newly promoted Luutnantti Hakkarainen fretted at their inactivity through late July as the fighting carried on. Training palled, but worry turned to hope and then to elation as the news of the fighting at last turned positive and Finnish defensive positions were regained, Russian units annihilated or driven back. In the second week of August, the 21st was moved up towards the front and crossed the Svir, halting in the bridge head that the men and the guns of the British Commonwealth Division and the Armiejan’s 8th Infantry Division had forced as the Red Army fell back in increasing disarray under the relentless counterattacks, breakthroughs and encirclements. And now the 12th Infantry Division had moved ahead, breached the weakened Red Army lines, creating an ever-wider gap through which the 21st would pour, the spearhead of the attack, the massed armour, infantry and guns pounding down the road towards Leningrad, two other Armoured Divisions and the Infantry Divisions of the Strategic Reserve thrown in to the offensive while the Infantry Divisons of the Eastern Karelia Army fanned out, rolling up the Red Army’s flanking units, eradicating the rear area support and logistics units. And all the while the men of Osasto Nyrkki and the Parajaegers were deep in the enemies’ rear, cutting communications, eliminating headquarters units, destroying supply dumps, supported by the fighter bombers, bombers, ground attack aircraft and ground attack gyrocopters of the Ilmavoimat in creating havoc. And always overhead flew the air superiority fighters of the Ilmavoimat, dominating the skies, forever watching for any Russian aircraft which dared to approach.
The destruction of the Red Army on the Svir Front was a prelude to the great “cauldron” battles of Barbarossa. It was to be a classic demonstration in the use of armor in warfare along the lines articulated by some of the early theorists in tank warfare such as Basil Liddell Hart – or indeed, of Tukhachevsky with his “Deep Penetration” theories - finding a weak spot and pouring an “expanding torrent of mobile firepower through it slashing at the enemy in the weak underbelly of his rear echelon, cutting communications and supply lines and driving him into defeat.” As a battle it is now virtually unknown outside of Finland – more or less deliberately forgotten by Russian historians, unnoticed by the British, who were at this time deeply involved in their own struggle for survival and in the midst of what would become known as “The Battle of Britain”. The Germans vaguely noted the Finnish victory but saw it merely as part of the ongoing Finnish defeat of the Red Army – a sign of weakness that predicated the success of their own inevitable offensive against the Soviets. For the Americans, the battle was a footnote in history, noted for a day by the military attache’s in Helsinki and duly forgotten. The senior officers of the British Commonwealth Division, who were heavily involved in the battle, took lessons from it but were never in a position to apply those lessons during WW2.
Kapteeni Kaarna was injured by a stray Russian artillery burst as they moved up towards the front after crossing the Syvari. It was a fluke. Battalion HQ had ordered a halt to refuel and replenish ammunition before they moved up to their start positions. They’d paused at the designated point, waiting for the log vehicles to catch up, Kapteeni Kaarna had ordered an impromptu Orders Group when a few stray Red artillery rounds dropped in. First, the evil shrieks of the shells, then violent explosions off in the forest to their left which set the earth quaking, trees toppling. The men were ducking for cover either in or out of their Sika’s. Lammio and Hakkarainen dived to the ground, Hakkarainen wriggled a little further into a slight depression, Kariluoto hid behind the illusory protection of a tussock of grass. Koskela was running back to his Joukkue, Kaarna continued to stand there, looking down at them, a bemused smile on his face. “Just random artillery,” he said quite calmly, “not aimed at us.”
Ashamed at seeking cover while the Kapteeni continued to stand, Hakkarainen was about to rise to his feet when something exploded very close. The ground heaved, a crashing explosion half-deafened Hakkarainen, a shower of dirt enveloped him, and as he struggled to brush the dirt of his face, he half-sensed the Kapteeni and Mielonen, the Kapteeni’s Orderly, collapsing. As Hakkarainen struggled to his knees and then to his feet, Mielonen rose instantly and stumbled to where the Kapteeni was lying motionless, his body strangely twisted. Mielonen knelt beside him, deathly pale, calling out in a shaky voice. “Medic …. Medic ….. Quickly, Quickly ….He’s bleeding ….. Quickly!”
Hakkarainen and the Medic from the Kapteeni’s HQ Sika arrived simultaneously. Hakkarainen carefully turned the Kapteeni over on his back and the men saw that one leg was bent unnaturally to the side. Kaarna had taken a direct hit and only the tattered cloth of his breeches kept the leg from falling off altogether. Dully, Mielonen mumbled as if to himself: “Got me in the arm too …. Got me, too ….. Medics …… where the hell are they …. Medics!”
A couple of the men moved Mielonen out of the way, cut the sleeve of his shirt, began to apply emergency dressings to his arm. The medic and Hakkarainen worked furiously on the Kapteeni, Hakkarainen frantically trying to remember his first aid training as the Medic issued instructions dispassionately. The medic had wrapped a tourniquet round what was left of Kaarna’s leg, stopping the bleeding, Hakkarainen was working to keep it on while one of the men applied a pressure pad to the stump. The Medic had found a vein, stuck a needle in and was frantically fitting a bottle of distilled water to the tube as one of the soldiers with medic training worked to reconstitute a 400cc bottle of freeze-dried plasma. The three minutes it took to reconstitute seemed like a lifetime, but the distilled water kept the blood volume up enough to keep his heart beating. As soon as the plasma was ready the medic had it hooked on to the drip with a second unit already being prepared. Kaarna’s eyes opened and looked around, his mouth working. Hakkarainen took one of his hands, leaned in above him. “You got hit sir, medic’s getting you stablized.” In the background, Hakkarainen could hear Lammio talking urgently into the Radio, then yelling at the men. “Clear the road and mark a strip, one of the Storch’s is on its way, be here in ten minutes.”
It was the longest ten minutes of Hakkarainen’s life as they poured unit after unit of reconstituted plasma into the Kapteeni, redid the tourniquet on his leg, dusted the stump with sulpha powder, reapplied pressure pads and bandages, injected morphine, checked for any other injuries. The Storch arrived in nine minutes, sinking down to the narrow strip of road and landing almost next to them. Even before it had stopped an armiejan doctor was out the door and running towards them, medical pack in hand, yelling instructions at the men to bring the stretcher from the Storch over. Kneeling beside them, he did a quick check, nodded his approval and opening his pack, retrieved a bottle of Fresh Whole Warm Blood from his cooler and swapped it in, removing the almost empty plasma bottle. By the time he’d pumped a couple of 1 litre bottles of real blood in, Kaarna was looking more like a casualty and less like a corpse. They moved him tenderly onto the waiting stretcher, strapped him down, waited while the Doc fitted another unit of Fresh Whole Warm Blood and then loaded him into the Storch, the Doc dancing attendance the whole time. He looked out at Hakkarainen just before they shut the door and grinned. “He’ll make it now,” he said. “You men did everything right., never lost a man yet that was in this good shape.” The door shut, the Storch lifted almost vertically, banked over the treetops and was gone.
Hakkarainen stood, looked around, realized his hands were shaking. Kersantti Lehto was beside him, his face as expressionless as ever, proffering a pack of cigarettes. Hakkarainen opened his mouth to say he didn’t smoke, then snapped it shut and started to take one, found he couldn’t get it out of the pack. Lehto flicked the bottom of the pack with one finger, Hakkarainen managed to take the cigarette that popped up, put it to his mouth and gratefully accepted the flaming match that Lehto held to the tip. The cigarette smoke was strangely soothing. Hakkarainen noted that his hands were no longer shaking. Lehto looked at him for a moment, as if checking that he was all there, then turned and walked away. Lammio was beckoning him over. “Battalion CO on the RT,” Lammio said sourly, “He wants a word.” Hakkarainen took the proffered headset and mike.
“Alpha One Leader acknowledging” he said.
Majuri Sarastie came up. “You’re in command replacing Kaarna. You’ve got a field promotion to Kapteeni. I’ve told Lammio. I’m sending you up a replacement for your Joukkue. Be prepared to move out in an hour.”
Hakkarainen blinked. “Alpha One Leader acknowledging, take command, be prepared to move out in an hour. Out.”
“Good man,” Sarastie said. “And good work getting Kaarna patched up. The Aid Post called in to say he’s good, they got him stable and he’s being moved to a Field Hospital for emergency surgery. Tell the men he’s going to make it. BUT! From now on, remember patching up the casualties is the Medic’s job, not yours. You should have taken command right away. No damage done so you’re forgiven. Once. And Kaarna, he’s going to be a hard act to follow, so don’t fuck up on me. Out.” He cut out.
Hakkarainen handed the headset and mike over to the waiting Sig. Lammio still looked sour. “Any orders Sir?” he asked.
Hakkarainen blinked. The log vehicles were arriving. “Get the Sika’s replenished, be ready to move out in an hour, your joukkue will take the lead. There’s a replacement officer for Second Platoon coming up, we’ll put them in the middle with my HQ section. Koskela will bring up the rear.” He looked around. “Where’s Korsumaki?” He breathed in the comforting cigarette smoke and realized it was almost gone, he’d smoked the entire cigarette without realizing it. Well, there was no chance of women out here. Wine possibly, if you counted the rotgut that Rahikainen no doubt had stashed away in his Sika somewhere. Song? Possibly, but singing didn’t really qualify as a vice. Smoking would just have to do for now. He realized he was still a little surprised at his sudden promotion and assumption of command. Kaarna would be a hard act to follow, he’d been an officer that the men admired. He’d led all of them, Hakkarainen included, in battle down the Isthmus to Leningrad and very few of them had been killed under his command. He refused to waste his mens lives with needless heroics. Not that he mollycoddled them, rather, he had been scrupulously fair and he made sure the officers and the NCOs led by example. That, the men respected. Enough woolgathering, there was work to do. He shook his head as Korsumaki’s voice behind him said “Sir?”
A day later, a day that seemed as long as a lifetime, Kapteeni Matti Hakkarainen looked from his perch in the back of his command Sitka back down the double line of vehicles drawn up on either side of what passed for a road. Three joukkueisiin of his Sitka’s plus his Headquarters joukkue, twenty Sitka’s altogether plus the two armoured trucks with additional fuel and ammo, an attached joukkue of six Kettu Armoured Cars, a couple of half-track Mortar Carriers, two Half-Tracks with the new vehicle mounted Flamethrowers that could fire a jet of the stuff out over a hundred metres, a dozen of the small light Bantam gun-buggies attached from the 1st Jääkäri Brigade that the Brigade CO, Jääkäri Lieutenant-Colonel Väinö Merikallio, had personally assigned to him. And the kicker was the Joukkue of four of the new 76mm Anti-Tank guns towed by their own little Bantams – “If you run into anything serious,” the Majuri Sarastie had instructed him, “fall back behind the anti-tank guns, fight a delaying action to pin them down while CAS hit them and the rest of the Pataljoona moves up in support. No mad charges into the teeth of any real opposition, that’s not what we’re here for, the tanks can do that better than us.”
Hakkarainen was confident that it’d take a lot to stop his Jääkärikomppania. Mind you, the Russkies did have a lot, he thought somewhat absently as he checked the vehicles and men for about the fiftieth time in the last hour. Each of the Sika’s bristled with a twin Lahti 20mm cannon and twin 12.7mm machineguns mounted on each side, each of the Kettu’s armed with their deadly little Bofors 37mm’s and a Lahti 20mm, even the Bantam Gun-Buggies had a twin machinegun and a pedestal mounted Lahti 20mm each and the four men in each bristled with an assortment of personal weapons, looking even more like pirates or bandits than his own men.
Already, Hakkarainen was inordinately proud of his not so little Jääkärikomppania. Rynnäkkökomppania Hakkarainen – Assault Group Hakkarainen – as the men were already calling themselves somewhat cynically (the rather more cynical, he knew, were calling themselves Itsemurhapulja Hakkarainen - Suicide Group Hakkarainen), was ready to roll. The men themselves were mostly sitting in the shade or on the hulls of their Sika’s and Kettu’s and Bantams, eating kangaroo-tail stew from the Field Kitchen unit that had set up next to them. Some of the men were flirting with the Lotta’s, who were giving as good as they got. Rahikanen had been standing there talking to them since the girls had arrived. Matti grinned and spooned down his own stew before it got too cold. He’d come to like the Australian stew over time, and it never seemed to run out. In fact they’d never run out of food since the war started and the ships with food from Australia and New Zealand and Argentina had started arriving. He’d heard some of the men talking about that early on, in the Isthmus days. How they’d never been hungry since the war started. They’d also talked about what it was like in the years before, the Depression years of the early 1930’s. In a rare moment of talkativeness, Lehto, who was the same age as Matti, had told them how he’d lived on the streets of Tampere, going to the soup kitchen with an old tin which they filled with soup once a day. They’d been tough times for everyone back then. Absent-mindedly, Hakkarainen wondered how many kangaroos there actually were in Australia. Obviously more than enough to feed the entire Armiejan for months on end. And from what the Quartermaster had said there were warehouses of the stuff back home. He tried to visualise enough kangaroos to make that mush stew, failed, and laughed at his failure.
Somewhere ahead of them as they sat around were the sounds of battle – artillery firing, artillery shells exploding, rifles and machineguns crackling, occasional bullets whining overhead. The front wasn’t far away, the remnants of the fast moving battle – burning Russian tanks, trenches, shell holes, decomposing bodies bloated by the sun and swarming with flies, discarded weapons, the stink of sudden and violent death, lay all around them, ignored. After eight months of war, the debris of battle, the bodies, the smashed and burning vehicles, the flies and the smell, all of it was just a fact of life, something you ignored as best you could. Still, all of them were tense, they’d seen enough fighting in the last few months to know what lay in store for them. His own crew, except for Riitaoja, his Sig who was monitoring the Pataljoona radio net, not that he expected any radio calls, were no exception. Linna, the front gunner, was over in the sun reading a book, one of the half dozen he had stuffed away in his ruck. Beneath Hakkarainen’s perch high on the hull, Sihvonen, who was a real fighter, and Salo were seated in the shade, talking. Just the usual talk, a bit of grumbling, he’d be worried if they weren’t grumbling and complaining. That’d mean something was really wrong.
“Hope we get a longer rest. Sounds like the infantry are managing OK by themselves up on the Front-line.”
“Perkele, listen to that artillery fire!”
“I hear it.”
“Then don’t talk about resting. They’re having hard times up there.”
“Its war, not a party. Their turn today, ours tomorrow.”
“Maybe sooner than tomorrow.”
“Perkele! Don’t remind me.”
Behind him, down in the bottom of the troop compartment, Riitaoja, grunted. Riitaoja was a coward, everyone in the Company knew that. It was one of the reasons why Hakkarainen had made him a radio operator. Tucked down in the Sika where he could see nothing, he had no chance of running away and Hakkarainen could kick him if he balked. So far it seemed a good choice, he was happy not to have a gun to shoot or to have to fight, but it turned out he was meticulous with his radio equipment. And despite everything, he still complained. Hakkarainen wondered what he was going to come up with.
“You know we’re screwed, right Kapteeni? Out in front, dicks hanging in the wind. If the Russkies have anything major in front of us, we’re screwed, we’re all going to die.”
Despite his own nervousness, Hakkarainen couldn’t help grinning. “You’re right,” he said. “So you better be quick on the RT when the shit hits the fan, no screwing around, right!”
“Yes boss,” Riitaoja snivelled. Hakkarainen chuckled. At least with the Radios, Riitaoja was always quick to do his job, on the ball. It kept him away from guns. He’d been the Joukkue radio operator back from when they first got the new-fangled Nokia radios, and back then he’d grumbled about the weight, the reliability, the atmospherics,
He looked over his command once more. Talk about leading the way, he was at the front of the entire Division. Behind his Jääkärikomppania stretched the entire Jääkäripataljoona, a long line of Sitkas, Armoured Cars, some attached Tanks, Self-propelled Mortar Carriers and even some Artillery and the new Rocket Launcher half-tracks - fairly bristling with guns, some of the men hunkered down inside their vehicles, waiting. Other men outside, standing or lying in the sun wherever they could find somewhere comfortable. Some had their shirts off, some their boots, hardly one dressed in the regulation uniform. With sudden good humour he thought that although his men were a scruffy looking lot, nothing like the soldiers of the Brittiläinen kansainyhteisö divisoona that they’d passed through just yesterday as they moved up towards the starting point for the 21st’s attack. But they were really rather good at what they did which was perhaps why they were the leading company. When Hakkarainen had been a boy, he’d always thought of soldiers as being immaculately uniformed, saluting and standing to attention and obeying orders without question, brave and heroic.
Well, his men (and he too for that matter) were certainly nothing like that, although they were soldiers, but of a rather different kind. Rag-tag, no two in the same uniform, half of them wore boots taken from dead Russians (Hakkarainen did, for that matter, the Russian boots were better than the Maavoimat boots, although the boots from Australia and New Zealand were pretty good – if you were lucky enough to have been issued them), always complaining and grumbling and trying to put one over the NCOs and the Officers. But their weapons were immaculate, their machines were all well looked after, they could fight like devils when it got down to fighting with the Russians. Over by the next Sika, leaning on the side, Lehto grimaced and spat onto the ground. He must have been thinking much the same thing, because his next words echoed what Hakkarainen had been thinking. “Thirty million of us and we’d roll all the way to Vladivostok.” He spat again. “Still, I guess Leningrad will have to do for now.”
Out of sight down the road behind them was the rest of the Divisoona, columns of tanks, more infantry, more guns, the supply carriers and trucks, engineers, all the rest of the tail, all waiting to move. All waiting to follow his Jääkärikomppania down the road towards Leningrad. “Marskin Nyrkki” - The Fist of the Marshal – was getting ready to punch the Russkies in the balls once more. Hakkarainen wondered if he’d survive, then tucked the thought away. If you started to think like that, you’d catch one. He’d seen it all to many times over the months of fighting. His thoughts broke off at the sound of a motorcycle coming up the road. Eating halted. Spoons stayed between their mouths and the mess tins. A quick look at the neighbour and some wrinkling of foreheads was all the men did. The eating resumed, faster now. The sound of the motorcycle came closer and louder.
“Eat up fast!” That was Korsumaki’s voice, loud enough to be heard from one end of the komppania to the other. Hakkarainen waved and then jumped off the side of the Command Sitka to the ground as the dispatch rider drove over. The men knew without being told that this was the signal to move. They stood, stretched, drew on boots, shrugged shirts on, checked their personal weapons, some among them collected the dishes and spoons and passing them back to the Lottas who wished them luck and gave out a carton of cigarette’s for each of the vehicles. The men picked up their breadbags and threw them into the vehicles. Shrugged into their body armour, adjusting the straps and buckles, picked up helmets.“The company is to prepare for action to move forward through the gap the 8th Division has created. Move out at oh twelve hundred hours.” They’d already got clear orders. Knew what they were supposed to be doing. Knew what the objectives were, where they were supposed to halt for the relieving kompanie commanded by Helminen to pass through and assume the point. Knew where they were supposed to be replenished with fuel and ammo. And, unspoken, replacements if needed. And they all knew no plan survived contact with the Russkies. They also knew not many Russkies survived contact with the Armiejan. Especially so with the Ilmavoimat CAS boys flying support. There was an unspoken air of confidence among the officers, NCO’s and men as they readied themselves for the business ahead, grumbles now forgotten.
Hakkarainen checked his watch. Eleven forty five. Fifteen minutes. The Joukkue commanders and Sika commanders were already gathered. He turned to them. “Have the men mount-up, we move out at oh twelve hundred on my signal. You all know the plan, stick to it, everyone monitor the radio net. No radio chatter until we’re in contact with the enemy and then keep it to the point.”
He looked at his senior Luutnantti, then at the rest of them.
“Luutnantti Koskela takes over command if I am incapacitated. Everyone ready?”
There was a chorus of “Yes”. Lammio looked sour.
Hakkarainen looked at them. And suddenly and rather unexpectedly, he grinned. “Right, this one is going down in the history books so let’s go do it then, Leningrad or bust!” Most of them grinned back. A couple of the younger ones looked tense. Hakkarainen patted the new officer, Vanrikki Kariluoto, on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it Kariluoto,” he said, “if it looks like a Russkie, tell the men to shoot it still it stops moving. If it’s not moving, shoot it anyhow just to be on the safe side. What could possibly go wrong?” They all laughed then, mostly at his tone of voice, which implied that sure enough, everything would screw up. From experience, they all expected that it would. But then again, they were all taught to improvise. “No plan outlasts contact with the enemy” was a given in the Armiejan, and men that couldn’t improvise and adapt under fire didn’t last long in this war. Hadn’t lasted long. Everyone here was a survivor, they’d all fought their way down the Isthmus, even young Kariluoto who’d been an Officer Cadet back then, and lived to talk about it. The tenseness dissipated with the laughter and then they were all striding to their vehicles, last checks that nothing was loose, everything was ready.
His crew were already in the Sika, in their positions, looking around seeing that everything was in order, checking their weapons, cocking the machineguns, checking the ammunition belts. His driver, Maatta, started the big Cummins diesel up as Hakkarainen scrambled up the side and into his usual position tucked down in the front corner where the gunner could fire but he still had a good view. Exposed, but he could see everything in front. He plugged his headset in and tested the intercom. They all did. Ahead and behind, diesel engine after diesel engine rumbled into life, the throaty burbling music to his ears. Now that something was about to happen, not even Riitaoja was snivelling. Yet He checked his watch. Five minutes to go. And then they’d be leading the entire 21st Panssaridivisoona on a charge towards Leningrad through the hole had been carved in the Red Army’s frontline. Straight down the road, guns blazing, overrunning everything in their path. Hopefully! Ilmavoimat and Armiejan reconnaissance said the Russkies had thrown everything into the offensive, and then when that had been smashed, into holding the Svir. Now that they’d been forced back from the Svir and the front had been pierced, there was nothing much between the 21st Panssaridivisoona and Leningrad – and the objective was to hit Leningrad from the South before the Russkies could react, to show that they could, if they wanted, take Leningrad. A demonstration of strength, they’d been told, followed by an equally rapid withdrawal before the Red Army could regroup. Hakkarainen checked his watch. Almost time. He raised his arm high, held it high as the engines of the Sika’s and Kettu’s and Half-track “Hogs” and Bantam’s revved, counted down out loud.
And then it was time. Time for what men in future would come to call the Ukkosvyöry, the Avalanche of Thunder.
- and thx everyone for the Finnish lessons!
