Chapter 10: First Blood (Part 2)

"Heads up! The tank is turning!"

Antti’s panicked voice cut through the air.

The T-26 light tank had spotted their fire position. Its 45mm main gun rotated slowly, the dark void of the muzzle leveling toward the trench where the First Squad lay.

"Get down!" Simo barked, lunging to shove Toivo, who was in the middle of swapping an ammo belt.

BOOM!

A shell detonated five meters in front of the trench.

A geyser of permafrost, snow, and shrapnel mixed with black smoke erupted toward the sky. The massive shockwave, carrying the acrid stench of cordite, slammed into the trench. Everyone’s ears rang instantly, and their vision swam with dancing gold spots.

Eero let out a shriek, clutching his head as he curled into a ball at the bottom of the trench, shaking like a sieve.

"Stop wailing! If you aren't dead, get up and fight!"

Juha scrambled up, covered in grit. He spat out a mouthful of dirt and grabbed his rifle, firing two blind shots into the smoke.

Walter shook his head to clear the dizziness, a flash of red light flickering momentarily in his grey eyes. Ignoring the swirling soot, he pressed his cheek back against the cold stock of his rifle. The tank was still advancing, and behind it, more Soviet infantry were attempting to charge under its cover.

Number two.

Walter locked onto a machine gunner trailing the tank.

Bang.

The Soviet soldier, just as he was preparing to set up his light machine gun, suffered a sharp jerk of the head. His helmet flew off, and he slumped limply into the tread marks.

This time, even Walter’s heartbeat remained steady.

"This is war," he muttered to himself, his finger squeezing the trigger again. In this frozen wasteland, life had become the cheapest of commodities, and he was rapidly adapting to his role as the "consumer."

However, despite Walter’s precise and efficient sniping, with every pull of the trigger signaling the fall of another Soviet soldier, the steel beast did not slow. It rolled right over the corpse of the gunner Walter had just killed, the treads mercilessly grinding flesh, cloth, and ice together with a bone-chilling crunch.

The roar of the engine grew louder, vibrating the trench walls until frozen dirt trickled down into the soldiers' collars. Walter tried to find a weakness in the monster through his scope. But in the absence of heavy weaponry, a deep sense of futility took hold. His Eye of Death allowed him to see the rust on the armor rivets and the glint off the vision blocks, but rifle bullets were less than a tickle against that armored plating.

The oppression rose exponentially as the distance closed. The pungent smell of burning diesel filled their nostrils. The primal fear of a behemoth about to crush one's bones felt like a cold hand tightening around every throat in the trench.

Suddenly, the tank accelerated.

The T-26’s treads kicked up a localized blizzard of snow; it was now less than a hundred meters from the trench. Machine gun fire raked across its hull, yielding nothing but a few impotent sparks.

"Dammit, where’s the anti-tank gun? Are the guys in the rear asleep?!" Juha roared in desperation, firing his rifle blindly at the tank’s periscope.

"Shut up."

Simo Häyhä’s voice remained steady. He wasn't using his Mosin-Nagant; instead, he had dragged a heavy, long-barreled weapon from the muck at the bottom of the trench, a distributed anti-tank rifle. He calmly chambered a specialized armor-piercing round and aimed for the driver’s vision slit, a gap as narrow as a squinting eye.

The tank was bucking violently across the uneven snow. To hit a slit only a few centimeters wide seemed like a fantasy. But Simo didn't even hold his breath for long.

BOOM!

A dull, distinctive report drowned out the battlefield’s clamor.

The thundering T-26 suddenly shuddered as if its spine had been snapped. Simo’s terrifyingly accurate shot had punched straight through the vision slit, pinning the Soviet driver to his seat.

But the steel monster didn't stop. On the contrary, the dying driver seemed to have slumped onto the controls or the throttle. Deprived of its brain, the T-26 instantly transformed into a rabid bull. The engine let out a heart-wrenching howl. No longer traveling in a straight line, the tank veered left with a momentum that threatened to obliterate everything in its path, straight toward the section of the trench where Walter and Simo were positioned!

"God dammit! It’s coming right for us!"

Juha’s eyes bulged, his hands frozen on his bolt. The two sets of glinting steel treads magnified rapidly in his pupils. "RUN!!!"

"Stay down! Don't move!" Simo grabbed Eero, who was about to bolt from the trench, and shoved him hard into the frozen mud at the bottom.

Walter felt a wave of oily diesel stench and heat hit him. The vibration of the earth made his very internal organs tremble. He instinctively curled up, hugging the trench wall. In that moment, time seemed to stretch to infinity.

Walter looked up, watching in horror as the massive underbelly of the T-26, accompanied by a howling wind, crested the trench’s parapet. The treads spun wildly in the air, flinging clods of frozen earth and slush like hailstones onto them. The several-ton steel monster, carrying immense kinetic energy, practically grazed Walter’s scalp as it flew over.

CRASH!!!

A massive impact.

The tank had been moving too fast, and the frozen soil at the edge of the trench couldn't support the sudden, violent force. It collapsed instantly, causing the tank to lose its center of gravity. As it cleared the trench, it flipped violently mid-air and slammed into a snowdrift two meters behind them.

The earth buckled so hard that Walter’s teeth cut his lip, filling his mouth with the taste of copper. The overturned tank lay on its back, its treads still spinning idly with a rhythmic clack-clack-clack, like the final twitch of a dying beast. Finally, the engine let out a grinding metallic screech, emitted a plume of black smoke, and died.

After several seconds of suffocating silence, there was a heavy thud as the side hatch was kicked open. A blood-masked, dazed tanker tried to crawl out of the iron coffin.

Bang!

Simo didn't even stand up. He simply turned, raised his rifle, and fired. The tanker went limp, his upper body hanging out of the hatch like a ragdoll. Blood dripped down the armor plating, searing small holes into the pristine snow.

With the dramatic demise of the lead tank, the Soviet infantry who had been using it as a mobile shield were suddenly exposed in the open field. In that instant, the Soviet assault, which had been advancing like a flood, came to a bizarre, eerie halt.

Walter wiped the mud from his face and reset his rifle. Through his scope, he saw a scene that defied belief. Deprived of their tank cover and their commissar’s direction, the Soviet soldiers looked like puppets with their strings cut. The front rank stared in horror at the capsized tank right next to the Finnish trench; they froze, then tried to turn back. Meanwhile, the men surging from behind hadn't received orders to stop and continued to press forward with fixed bayonets.

The two waves of men collided violently in the snow, shoving and trampling their own comrades.

"What are they doing?" Pekka poked half his head above the dirt, staring wide-eyed. "Is this... a war or a crowded market?"

It was a perfect moment for slaughter. The Soviets were bunched together, less than fifty meters from the trench, without cover or command.

"Matti! Toivo! Open up! Don't spare the ammo!" Simo roared.

The Maxim heavy machine gun, silent for a moment, resumed its tearing-cloth roar.

Rat-tat-tat-tat—!

A stream of white-hot lead swept through the chaotic mass of men. Mist-like sprays of blood erupted across the white plain, layer upon layer. The Soviet soldiers fell like mown wheat. Finally, their fragile morale shattered completely.

Starting with one or two, the entire Soviet line began a frantic retreat. Some even threw away their weapons, scrambling on all fours toward the safety of the forest, wishing they had been born with two more legs.

Ten minutes later, the gunfire thinned out and eventually faded into silence. Aside from the occasional distant wail of a wounded man and the crackling of the burning tank, the banks of the Taipale River returned to a deathly quiet. On the snow before the trench lay over thirty corpses. Their brown greatcoats, soaked in blood, froze rapidly in the extreme cold, turning a macabre shade of dark purple.

Walter leaned against the trench wall, gasping for breath. As the terror of the tank and the subsequent adrenaline high receded, exhaustion hit him like a tide.

"Is it... over?"

Eero pulled himself out of the muck at the bottom of the trench. One lens of his glasses was missing, and his face was speckled with oil from the passing tank. He looked like he couldn't believe he was still alive.

"The Russians... they aren't so scary after all." Juha looked at the fleeing backs of the survivors, his heart still racing but his voice carrying the reckless bravado of a survivor. "Their command level is basically a village brawl."

"Don't be stupid, Juha."

Walter interrupted him coldly, his voice devoid of any triumphal joy. "You think we won? We just got lucky."

He pulled a windproof lighter from his pocket and sparked a cigarette. The sharp sting of nicotine helped cut through the lingering smell of diesel and blood in his nostrils.

"Their commander died, so they panicked. Word is Stalin’s Great Purge killed off all the experienced officers; the chain of command is fragile." Walter looked at the smoking wreckage of the tank. "But look at that thing. It’s a masterpiece of industry. And us?"

"Walter is right. Don't underestimate them."

Simo pointed toward the dark, bottomless forest in the distance. "We just repelled a platoon, maybe a company. But there are thousands more in those woods."

He stood up and brushed the snow from his gear, his tone becoming exceptionally heavy.

"This fight has only just begun. Go out and recover the weapons from the bodies, especially the machine guns and grenades. That’s our capital for staying alive."

Walter looked at the glaring red stains and the corpses on the snow, then up at the leaden sky. The fear had faded, but in its place was not contempt, but a profound, suffocating weight. Even if this army had lost its brain, and even if its limbs were uncoordinated, it remained a titan with an inexhaustible supply of blood and steel.

And they were merely a few ants who had happened to survive the first gust of the blizzard.