“I am surprised, I’d thought the Finns were certain to reject those terms.” Loki relaxed in his chair, spinning it slightly from side to side as he absorbed the news. “And Finland is out completely?”
“Completely.” Tage Erlander had also found it hard to believe that Finland would collapse. “It was the bombing that did it, that and the way their Motti tactics failed against the Canadians. Their success against the Russians and the lack of any real strikes against the homeland had persuaded Ryti that carrying on the war was risk-free. As he saw it, Finland had everything to gain by carrying on and nothing to lose. Then, the Canadians cut up the Finnish Army and the Americans burned Helsinki down. Win or lose, Finland was going to get hurt and hurt badly.”
“How many died in Helsinki? Anybody know yet?”
“Final total? No, nobody will know for days or weeks. The estimates are rising every hour. It was 10,000 at dawn, now it is 20,000 and still it rises. The Finns had no real air raid precautions in place, not against the sort of raid the Americans launched. Oh, they had antiaircraft guns, searchlights, all those things and sirens to warn people. But all they’d experienced before was some Russian planes scattering a few light bombs. Their buildings had strong cellars and, as usual, people went there to hide from the bombs. They died there, roasted by the fires. The only ones who lived were the ones who started to run early and kept running. It is rumored the American had night fighters over the city and they strafed the refugees as they ran.”
Loki snorted. “Not likely. I’d guess they were attacking the anti-aircraft guns to protect the bombers.”
“Of course.”
“Good, and I will tell the Swiss government.”
“True Tage. But we wanted them to secure a less severe peace for the Finns, not force the original down their throats. You know, when this is all over, all of the Nordic countries are going to have to think about this very carefully. If the Russian Bear is on the move up your way and the Americans will back those moves, it doesn’t look very good. If you don’t hang together.”
“We will all hang separately.” Erlander half-chuckled at the quotation. “But Danes, Norwegians, Swedes hanging together? That would be a first time. And to have the Finland in there as well. Or what is left of Finland. It will not be a happy or comfortable alliance.”
“So much worse than being Russian provinces?” Loki was irritated. The petty quarrels of his original homeland in the face of impending disaster rankled him. “Look, Tage, we all share much more than our differences suggest, you know that. Scandinavia has to put up a united face when this damned war ends or it’ll get eaten alive. You know that as well.”
Tage Erlander sighed, this strange Swiss banker was right, the times when Scandinavia could remain absorbed in its own petty affairs while the rest of the world ignored it were fading fast. This war would end and Sweden had better be prepared for it. Otherwise, the fate of Helsinki could be repeated many, many times. Then, he asked himself the one question that he had always been afraid to ask.
Watching him, Loki saw the message sink home. He had tried before to bring Scandinavia to the center of the world stage. His efforts had been a disaster.
There had been a time when artillerists had fought their guns to the barrel. Gunners would fight cavalry and infantry hand-to-hand around their guns to prevent the disgrace of the artillery pieces being lost. When indirect fire had become the normal way of doing things and the guns had been positioned miles behind friendly lines, it had seemed those days were gone. Russia had quickly dispelled that idea. First tank thrusts that penetrated the defenses and suddenly emerged kilometers behind friendly lines had brought the guns back into the front line. Then had come the partisans whose sudden strikes could turn a safe haven into a battlefield without warning. Gunners had had to fight their guns to the barrel again and know how to use the weapons that kind of fighting required.
Sergeant Heim had been in Russia since the heady days of 1941. Then, the Heer had driven through western Russia, scattering the Soviet Army before them. For a while the huge encirclements brought in prisoners by the tens or hundreds of thousands and cities had fallen with the regularity of a ticking clock. It had seemed like the war really would be over by Christmas. But the Heer hadn’t made it to Moscow by the time the winter arrived. In the snows of that first winter, the Soviet counter-offensive had driven the Germans from the gates of Moscow. That’s when Heim had learned that artillerymen still had to fight like infantry sometimes. The lesson had stayed with him in the years that came next, the fall of Moscow in 1942, the last German drive forward, the arrival of the Americans, the descent of the war into a bloody, futile deadlock. As every year rolled by, the gunners had had to protect their guns. Now they had to do it again.
The perimeter of the defensive position had been weak. Just a squad of panzergrenadiers. A total of eight men with two machine guns and four rifles. One of the machine gun teams had gone in the first second of the attack, a grenade thrown out of the trees had landed in the pit beside them, killing both men instantly. Then there had been the roar of rifle, machine gun and machine-pistol fire. It had been followed by the sight of the white-clad partisans and ski-troops slipping through the trees to assault the paper-thin defense line.
Both sides had been blasting off ammunition at each other. That was something else that had changed since 1941. Now virtually every soldier had an automatic, or at least semi-automatic, weapon. Attacks tended to be concentrations of automatic fire poured at the other side. The hope was to pin them down until the artillery got them. Only, there was no artillery in this battle. The partisans had light mortars only, weapons that were of little use in the dense trees. Their rounds exploded in the treetops, scattering down light fragments but without the power to do crippling damage. The German unit had Heim’s four surviving 150mm self-propelled guns but they had been lined up on where the train would have to appear and men would have to work on the torn-up tracks. The gun was in a limited-traverse housing. Turning the whole vehicle around just wasn’t going to be possible.
So, this battle was infantryman against infantryman and would be decided by the weapons they carried. And the numbers on each side of course. There, the partisans had an advantage. They had struck the weakest part of the German position. Already they were wearing the defenses down. The partisans themselves weren’t normally the best of soldiers. Today, the Siberians were mixed in with them and they could stand toe-to-toe with the best Germany had to offer. The squad guarding the rear wasn’t going to last much longer. Then, Heim knew he would be fighting as an infantryman again.
“Pass word out, all the gun crews, get ready. Man the machine gun with two men per gun. The rest of you, get rifles and get between the vehicles.” Each one of the self-propelled guns had an MG-45 machine gun mounted on the gun casement for exactly this emergency. They would act as pillboxes while the rest of the crews prevented the enemy getting too close.
A single figure dressed in white suddenly backed out of the woods. He was firing his rifle from the hip, short bursts ripping out at an unseen enemy following him. “Kameraden!” The word rang through the waiting guns. The man turned and ran for the guns. He dived into cover as he reached the illusion of protection offered by their steel shapes.
“Come here.” Heim’s voice was sharp and insistent. The man quickly mounted the self-propelled gun and dropped into the fighting compartment. “What is happening.”
“Partisans. And ski troops. They have chewed us up, I am the only one left. There are hundreds of them.”
Heim shook his head. There weren’t, it just seemed like that. His mind flipped back to that winter offensive of 1941/42 and the Siberians sliding through the snow. They had harried their enemies the way wolves brought down their prey. “We’ll hold them here. Join the men by the guns.”
