The Winter War
Mia DiFranco
January 1940
Northeastern Finland
The Winter War -- Finland versus the Soviet Union
The tundra clearing rang with the sound of bullets. It was almost dusk now, on the third day of fighting, and snow was still falling. It covered the ground in layers and sprayed upwards in a cloud of white whenever a stray bullet punctured the dirt underneath. The riflemen had begun taking shifts to shovel the snow out of the trenches, and, like the battle itself, it was never-ending labor. Every shovelful that was flung out and upwards by frosty fingertips was soon replaced with fresh precipitation.
Aleksi narrowed his blue eyes, gaze searching the ground below him from his position up a tree in the bare forest that surrounded the clearing. He was sure nobody could see him; everything he had was specially camouflaged for the snowy terrain of his homeland, from his white coat to the gray-flecked sniper rifle he carried slung over his shoulder. His boots were the flecked color of the cloudy sky above him, and they found purchase easily on the thick wooden branch below him as he tried to see beyond the fighting and the falling snow to find some sort of salvation.
There. A gap in the Soviet line. A chance for his unit to escape the losing battle that they had been trapped in for far too long. A chance to break the Soviet line and evacuate the injured, regroup for supplies, and maybe even plant the seeds of a motti.
Aleksi scanned the enemy line one more time. Satisfied that the Finnish line seemed to be holding for now, and that the Soviets weren’t making an effort to advance, he carefully made his way down the tree before dropping onto the frozen ground below with a soft crunch.
He had to move quickly or else he would be seen. Holding his rifle in his hands in case he had to engage in combat at short notice, he set out at a swift jog towards the end of the trench line. Hopefully he was adequately covered by the trees, though he doubted it -- they were much too bare.
I need to rely on the snow and my speed for now, then, he reasoned. His breath clouded the frozen air as he moved, appearing and disappearing in a steady rhythm like the puffing of the steam train that used to run through his hometown. The sounds of combat faded as he moved deeper into the bowels of the forest, eyes searching the trees for any movement.
The Finnish and Soviet troops had been fighting in the area for three days, with the Finns trapped and spread thin as the enemy constantly attempted to outflank them. Supplies hadn’t been able to get through, which meant food and supplies were running dangerously low for Aleksi’s unit. They needed to either find a way out or break through the Soviet line by force. The latter was no longer an option, really; they had discovered that after several failed attempts and wasted supplies. Though they had the combined advantage of fighting on home turf and having accomplished snipers in the trees, Aleksi’s unit had gotten themselves into serious trouble. They had far less troops than the Soviets to begin with, but the Soviets just kept sending more in while the Finnish reinforcements were delayed by the blocked roads. Much to Aleksi’s frustration, it was hard to get a good shot with his sniper when the enemy spent a fair amount of time hiding in trenches and behind rocks. That was why he had been allowed to separate from his unit and try to find a way out.
“What do you mean?” A voice carried through the forest.
Aleksi flattened himself against the nearest tree.
“We’ve been here for far too long.” Another voice answered.
“Because those Finns just won’t give in. They should just go home, at this point. They can’t hold out for much longer, I know.”
The second man grunted a gruff agreement. “I wish we could just advance now, stage a full assault. I know it will work. I’ve half a mind to go tell the general myself, but God knows he won’t listen to me.”
The voices were much too close, speaking Russian. He hadn’t even thought that he was on the Russian side of the clearing yet. What are they doing this far down the line? Have they surrounded us already?
Not good.
Well, he really had to be careful now. If there were two soldiers, there could be more. Plus, he was all on his own: an immediate disadvantage.
Aleksi scanned the area and ran to crouch behind a nearby boulder that was large enough to cover him. Pressing his back against the cold stone and risking a glance around it, he could see two Soviet soldiers. Both appeared to be standard infantrymen. One of them, a brunet with a slightly crooked nose, was sitting on a small boulder and cleaning his gun, hunching his shoulders against the cold. The other, a tall blond, was much closer, but facing away from Aleksi and peering off into the distance.
He didn’t have any time to waste, so Aleksi took only a moment to weigh his options before he acted. These two soldiers could be the only people standing between his unit and the escape route that could save them all. If the way was cleared, they could slip away when it got dark and live to fight another day. If they couldn’t, then a frontal assault like the one the Soviet soldier had mentioned could prove catastrophic.
He would have no remorse, he told himself, even as his stomach churned to say otherwise. They were nothing more than another enemy in his way.
Aleksi dropped into the snow and prayed that the brunet wouldn’t look over as he slipped his rifle from his shoulder and positioned himself, fighting the building adrenaline that made his heartbeat seem to pound through his coat and into the snow. The cloud of cold air that came from his lips as he exhaled blocked his view down the sight of his rifle for only a moment.
He knew this feeling, this sense of purpose, of rightness that came from setting his sights on the animal that would be his next meal. This feeling was different, though. By making man his target, the feeling was perverted, twisted into something more sinister. Something that pressed its hands onto his shoulders during the day and crept deep into his sleeping bag at night, whispering Are you still the same boy who left your home to protect it? What right have you to take lives? until he fell into a cold and comfortless sleep.
But he didn’t have time to mull over that. Not now.
Aleksi shifted a little bit to the right and quickly brushed some of his ash-blond hair out of his face. His index finger moved to rest over the trigger of his rifle before he slipped into the silent, thoughtless moment characteristic of snipers in the field. He relaxed everything, from his shoulders propping him up on the frozen ground to the toes in his boots. He opened his mouth and exhaled one more time.
He fired.
The recoil would have disrupted inexperienced shooters, but Aleksi was ready. He felt it travel through his body in a jolt and rolled to the side as soon as the wave passed, back towards the cover of the boulder. The shot rang through the quiet forest with a sharp crack, and the brunet fell to the ground.
The other man whipped around, face obscured by a cloud of frozen air as he yelled something. Then he turned and ran.
Aleksi swore under his breath, hurrying to collect himself as he slung his rifle back onto his shoulder. That man could be a coward, or he could be smart; heading back to his fellows and informing his leader that there had been an ambush could provoke an all-out attack or movement of Soviet troops.
Aleksi only let him get a few moment’s head start before he followed at a jog, fighting to keep the Soviet soldier in his sights while remaining near what sparse cover he could find and praying that the soldier would be stupid enough to not turn around.
As the forest got thicker, the Soviet soldier took a sharp left turn. Aleksi swerved, trying to remain outside of his field of peripheral vision, and followed behind. He was moving in the direction of the supply road, which was the opposite way from the clearing, back towards the Finnish line--
He broke out of the tree cover into a clearing. There was a click of a safety being turned off.
“Don’t move,” a voice said in accented Finnish.
Aleksi froze, his rifle heavy on his back but unable to be reached. He didn’t move, but his gaze frantically searched the area. Who had spoken? Who had outsmarted and outmaneuvered him? Who was potentially going to kill him?
He had regrets, he realized, and the thought struck his very soul with fear.
“Aleksi.” The tall, blond Soviet soldier emerged from behind a tree to his right.
Aleksi’s heart quickened and his stomach sank like a rock dropped into a frozen lake, but he didn’t move a muscle as his old friend walked over to stand in front of him. His face had been concealed by one way or another for most of their earlier encounter, but, even if it hadn’t been, Aleksi wasn’t sure he would have recognized him. This close, though, there was no mistaking him. His once-round cheeks were now sharp and defined, an unsettling mix of rugged handsomeness and lack of adequate food and heat. His voice had grown much deeper, no longer that of a boy but a grown man. His blonde hair had once been longer, but it had been shaved close to the head, no longer shielding the slate-gray eyes that were looking at Aleksi now.
Somewhere in the distance behind him, an artillery shell exploded.
“Erik.” Aleksi forced himself to speak evenly, slowly, without unnecessary inflection. “It has been a while. I see you spent some time out east after you were exiled from the village.”
“And I see you haven’t changed one bit.” Erik’s tone was icy cold as he looked Aleksi up and down. He had lowered his gun, but Aleksi knew he could bring it back up at a moment’s notice. “Still small, but you now have a weapon. A sniper, by the looks of it. How about you give me that?”
“Why?” Aleksi tested. He hated the way Finnish sounded in Erik’s mouth now. It wasn’t the same language that they had shared as they had played explorers in the forests back home and walked to and from school together. His accent was undeniably Russian now, which had to be purposeful. It made Aleksi feel sick.
Erik set his jaw. “Give it to me, Aleksi. Be a good boy.”
He stared for a moment and then, slowly, removed his rifle from his shoulder.
Erik took it in gloved hands, turned it around, examined the way it shone in the light, and checked the empty chamber. The motions were deliberate, methodical. “Fleeing the battlefield with an empty gun? That’s not like you.”
Aleksi’s face burned with anger. He clenched his jaw so tight it hurt, not trusting himself to speak.
A flash of light from one of the surrounding trees drew his attention.
No way.
Erik frowned, seeming as if he had been expecting more than just silence. Aleksi looked back at him quickly, trying to bring that anger from before back to the surface and praying that his brief lapse in attention hadn’t been noticed.
“Well then,” Erik continued. “If you aren’t in the mood to catch up with your old friend, I suppose there isn’t much left to do.”
In one fluid, frighteningly quick movement, Erik dropped Aleksi’s rifle and raised a sidearm pistol. In a split second, Aleksi was looking straight down its barrel.
“Anything you want to say before we get this over with?” Erik asked.
Aleksi dropped down into the snow as a bullet tore through the air, right on target. Erik was dead before he hit the ground, the snow stealing the noise like a secret.
Aleksi looked up just in time to see a flash of gray and white disappearing into the trees at the edge of the clearing, back towards the heart of the fighting.
He’d been saved by another sniper who had strayed from the main clearing. The only reason Aleksi had noticed them was because something had reflected the meager winter sunlight. Whether it had been purposeful, like a signal of some sort, or accidental, like a reflection off of their rifle or a piece of clothing, he would never really be sure.
Aleksi pushed himself to his feet, winded from adrenaline. Red darkened the snow around Erik’s body, leaking outwards from his back. The snow began to fall faster, a single fleck catching in the lash of an unblinking, slate-gray eye.
“Niin metsä vastaa, kuin sinne huudentaan,” Aleksi muttered to himself. It was a phrase his mother used to use all the time. ‘The forest answers in the same way one shouts at it.’ Or, ‘What goes around, comes around.’ She’d used it when Aleksi had cried about being bullied as a small child, and used it again when a teenage Aleksi, headstrong and seething with anger, had told her about Erik’s departure from the village.
“Niin metsä vastaa, kuin sinne huudentaan,” she’d told him, placing a hand on his shaking knee. “He will get his due.”
Aleksi wondered for a moment what his own due would be, what the forest would give back to him for shedding blood in its halls, but then he shook his head and decided it was no use thinking about it now.
That’s how war is sometimes: anticlimactic at best. If it had been a movie, maybe there would have been some sort of tense confrontation between Aleksi and his old friend, a spectacle filled with drama and tears and shouts of accusation, old wounds opened and rubbed raw until they stung enough to make a good scene. But there in that frozen clearing, the ghostly sounds of gunfire still just barely audible in the distance, Aleksi didn’t waste any tears or words. He just picked up his rifle from the snow, dusted it off, and set off back towards the line.
There was still so much work to do.
Mia DiFranco (she/her) is an 18-year-old emerging writer from Ohio, United States. Since discovering her love for storytelling as a child, she has written many short stories, poetry, and a novel-in-progress based on her grandparents' immigration from rural Italy in the late 1900s. When she's not doing schoolwork or writing, you can probably find her watching or researching anime or learning languages.
