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Thirteen: Gustaf


The old man stared at the young woman. This end of the covered terrace had gone quiet, even if discussion was still continuing in the other end of the long table.

The young woman's face was turning progressively redder.

The older man again looked down on his plate, and his mustachied upper lip trembled with something very much like disgust.

Finally, as it often was, it was up to General Walden to break the deadlock.

”Miss”, he said to the young woman wearing the immaculately white apron, ”you can take away the fish and bring the field marshal the meat option.”

The young woman looked at the old general.

”Sir”, she stammered, ”the meat option? I am not sure if the chef has...”

”Sure he has, miss”, the general and industrialist, Mannerheim's right hand in the Defence Council answered.

He lowered his voice.

”Just take away the fish. Please. Tell the chef that the field marshal will take anything else he has.”

Carl Gustaf Mannerheim was a great admirer of fish dishes. He liked fish in many forms, fried, boiled, poached, smoked. But the one sort of fish he absolutely detested was pike. He did not want to encourage the existence of pike dishes, or the animal itself, by indulging in consuming said travesty of a fish.

The long and short of it was that eating pike was entirely below him.

The chef had not been informed.

Gustaf sighed and looked out across the long table set on the airy terrace of the provincial restaurant. The evening was cooling down after a long, hot day, and Gustaf was in mood of getting some food into his stomach to fortify him after several hours of meeting foreign guests and reviewing troops taking part in the war games arriving to the Viipuri area. There had been a field lunch, sure, but then it had been very light and some time had passed since it.

The fact was that the old cavalry officer was both hungry and thirsty, and, even if he would not have wanted to admit to it, a bit tired.

It all made him somewhat irritable.

Happily, though, the wine they had been served was quite good. Gustaf took another sip from his glass, thinking back on the day. With a glass of schnapps already in his system, in a moment he was feeling a little light-headed.

In the other end of the table, the Prime Minister was telling something to his foreign guests. Given that one of them was the Swedish Defence Minister and another the Commander in Chief of the Danish military, he was using Swedish. Gustaf cocked his head and focused on what the man who looked like the very image of a university professor was saying.

”...In my personal opinion. If we had bought more weapons some years ago, by the beginning of the war they would have already been obsolete! The pace of invention in military technology is such these days – what with tanks and bomber airplanes, and what have you...”

Just then, as if to underscore what the man was saying, Gustaf could hear the drone of aircraft engines in the distance – most likely those of the Blenheim bombers the Air Force was due to give a demonstration with the following day.

”...And so, by not buying weapons that would have been needed to be replaced with more modern ones by the war anyway, we have saved for the Finnish people a pretty penny! We'll buy weapons when we need them, not to be kept in storage, costing the people money for warehousing and upkeep and so on. It is good economy, gentlemen.”

It took Gustaf's entire willpower not to scoff audibly at the Prime Minister's words. You can't arm and outfit an entire military in days or weeks, not when the whole continent seems to be going out of its mind with talks of war. Weapons should be bought in times of peace, when demand for them is low, the old soldier thought. When the war is already on, all nations will hold on to their armaments with tooth and nail. And that is why the Prime Minister was wrong. The field marshal had tried his level best in the recent months to secure funding for the Finnish military for new purchases, but it had not been easy. After the Finnish overtures for defence cooperation with Sweden had been mooted, Mannerheim's recent effort had been to secure loans from the United States to buy significant numbers of modern weaponry. The discussions were still ongoing.

Cajander shared some pun about frugality with Sköld, drawing a chuckle from the Swede, and Gustaf found himself thinking how much simpler things might have been without democracy allowing fools to ascend to high offices of state.

He took another sip of the wine, and then relented. It was not that the Prime Minister was a fool or a simpleton – he was, in his own way, a perfectly intelligent man. It was just that his intelligence was of the university sort, not that of a politician or a soldier. He was not like Mannerheim was, nor like his trusted Rudolf Walden. Not like the bald, shrewd-looking young minister of the interior sitting obliquely across the table from him, either, the old officer thought. Cajander was an academic, a man of theory and abstraction, and as such he was peace-time politician at best. In the current situation that was his chief shortcoming.

It was not that Gustaf had anything against democracy, either. Not as such. Republican governance had its strong points, too– at least when compared with dictatorships like that of Bolshevik Russia, or that of Hitler's Germany. Only if one could make it so that the democratic machine would raise up only men who were up to the task at hand...

Finally, the waiter brought Gustaf his main course – roasted beef with seasonal vegetables. The old man tasted his food and found it entirely agreeable. After a few mouthfuls, his spirits were much improved. He felt good enough to converse some with General Linder across the table, about the political situation in Europe. When the waiter then brought him more wine, he even smiled benevolently to the young woman he had only recently glared at because of the damn fish.

After the dinner is over, Gustaf thought, I need to apologize to the girl. She is, after all, only doing her job.

”...And then we need to wait what comes of the discussions between the Soviets, on one hand, and the British and the French, on the other. Will there be an alliance against the Germans? Or will Stalin still be too suspicious to trust the capitalist nations?”, Linder mused rhetorically. Gustaf was happy that his old colleague did not know about the Soviet demands recently made to Finland. It would have definitely darkened his mood, too.

Mannerheim's thoughts went back to the events of the day. He had seen infantry and mounted troops marching along the dry, dusty roads to the designated war game area, tanks and trucks ending into small traffic jams on narrow roads between trees, artillery pieces being manhandled into position. Successful as the preparations he had seen had appeared, the railway chaos of the day before loomed in the back of his mind. Several people had died, in not just one but two separate accidents. The last-minute additions to the war games had thrown the railway system off kilter, and Mannerheim believed those accidents were then a feature of systemic problems to do with mobilization arrangements.

He would have to task a logistics officer to look into the matter as soon as the war games would be over.

”I would like to propose a toast to our hosts”, he heard a man say in Swedish. He looked to the end of the table to see it was General Prior who had spoken up. With a glass in his hand, the Danish officer was looking at him.

”Prime Minister Cajander, Field Marshal Mannerheim. Ministers, generals, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all, for giving us the opportunity to see Finland, and view the Finnish military in action. A toast to the good fortune of these war games.”

Mannerheim raised a glass with the others, with a practiced, steady hand.


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Arvo

Lost in thought, Lieutenant Arvo Vaara was grooming his mount for the night. Apart from their personal gear, mounted troopers were responsible for caring for their horses as well. Through his training, the necessity of taking good care of his mount had been drilled into Arvo Vaara. Even now, when he as an officer could have tasked an ordinary trooper to take care of his horse, Arvo considered it his duty to see to the well-being of the horse he would depend on the next day, the one that had carried him through this day as well. ”Take care of your horse, and your horse will a friend that takes care of you. A cavalryman who does not care for the well-being of his mount is not worth his uniform”, Arvo's instructor had told him during his first weeks in the Häme Mounted Regiment.

The night was falling in southern Karelia. The cavalry unit's camp was made on a clearing in a forest next to a road, just on the other side of a small copse of woods from another camp. It included artillery units from Field Artillery Regiment 2. Several other men were seeing to their horses, too, and some were tending camp fires, or doing various sundry work to prepare the unit for the day to come. The night was falling, but it was still warm. The day had been hot and dry, and riding to Viipuri had been a sweaty and dirty job. Especially unpleasant had been the part of the ride where the squadron had tested their gas masks along the way. It definitely had not been the best weather for riding in gas masks. Arvo was sure that some photographer along the way had got some dramatic photos of it, though.

Arvo's current mount was a chestnut mare called Mary, a Finnish warmblood like most of the Regiment's horses.[1] Mary was not a very big or strong, as cavalry mounts went, but she was tenacious and brave, and responded to his commands so well that she seemed almost able to read his mind. Arvo believed that Mary was very smart.

Alone with the mare, Arvo spoke to her in a low, soothing voice, telling her of the last couple of days. He told her about the railway accident, about how when he came to, everything was a mess and then he tried to help injured and trapped people the best he could. Given the conditions of the accident, people on the train had been very, very lucky. Only the two men in the locomotive had died, and an older woman who apparently had perished due to a cardiac arrest. For the rest, there had only been various injuries. Arvo himself was still feeling the effects of the crash in his back, and in his lower thigh where he had a nasty bruise. There was a cut on his arm as well – his uniform tunic had been ruined.

All in all, the accident had been sorted out more easily than he would have thought possible, experiencing it first hand. The local Civil Guards and Lotta Svärd had quickly put together an ad hoc relief organization, and all soldiers aboard the train had worked admirably, led by an infantry major who had after the initial confusion taken command of the scene.

”It gives a man pause, getting involved in an accident like that”, Arvo told Mary.

Mary neighed in return, like it had understood perfectly what the young lieutenant was saying.

Arvo was still brushing the horse's flank when he suddenly heard a voice behind him.

”Vaarra! Here you are!”

Lieutenant Arvo Vaara pivoted around with the brush in his hand.

”Captain”[2], he said, attempting a salute. The older officer waved off the formality.

”Lieutenant Vaarra”, Captain Arnold Majewski said with a smile, abusing Arvo's last name in his usual manner. The closest thing Arvo Vaara had to a mentor as a military officer, for better or for worse, Arnold Majewski was one of the regiment's most well-known officers. At age 47, he still rode with a flamboyant, skilled abandon a few younger troopers could muster. The son of a Polish-born officer from an old noble family, the captain seemed to have the skills of a cavalryman in his very blood. Due to his Swedish-speaking mother, though, his native tongue was Swedish. This all made his spoken Finnish quite idiosyncratic.

Majewski was a legend among his men and in the town of Lappeenranta, and not only because of his military skills. The captain was an easygoing officer who spent what money he had on drinks, good food and women. This was a man who had debts all around town, as well as illegitimate children, it was rumoured. The concerns of ordinary mortals didn't seem to affect the strong-willed man who was always in good spirits and of whom many funny anecdotes made their rounds around the town and the garrison.

”Vaarra”, Majewski repeated, glancing at the man next to him, the regiment's long-suffering veterinarian, ”we're very lucky to find you here. Your presence is required at a... high-level meeting”, he said, beaming.

”Captain, I...”, Arvo started.

”Not a word, Vaarra”, the older officer said, ”Listen. I find that I have here in my possession a bottle or two of fine brandy. And on the other side of those trees...”

He pointed to the west.

”...Is the camp of artillerists...”

The captain turned his head and spat on the ground for effect.

”...And it is our duty as officers of the Häme Mounted Regiment to go and teach those... men... something about the art of playing cards!”

Oh, here we go, Arvo thought quietly.

”Captain, I...”, he started again.

Majewski affected a furious stare at the young officer.

”Do I need to make it an order, lieutenant?”, he asked, raising his voice for effect.

Next to him, the veterinarian, Rantanen, rolled his eyes.

Arvo Vaara threw up his hands.

”All right, all right. Let's go and give our neighbours a lesson, then.”

Majewski grabbed the younger man and patted his back.

”Good man. I knew I can count on you.”

Arvo Vaara had planned to turn in early. The next morning the war games would start out in earnest. But Arnold Majewski was a very difficult man to say no to. And, to be perfectly honest, Arvo was interested to see if his luck had really changed. The railway accident had cut his game with the meaty-faced sergeant short, after all, right when things had started to look up.

The three men walked across the woods, with Majewski detailing to the two others his exploits during the ride over from Lappeenranta earlier during the day.

”...So I say to him: move this smoke-spewing tin can of yours away from the path of my troopers, or I'll take out my bloody can opener and split your little tank in half. After that, the man he made haste!”, the man told his companions in his accented Finnish and laughed heartily.

It did not take long for the trio to find people to play cards with in the artillery unit's camp. In fact, as luck would have it, before even walking the whole way the three men practically stumbled into a small card game between a few officers and NCOs, next to a small copse of trees out of earshot of the camp proper.

To his surprise, Arvo Vaara noticed that Sergeant Meat-Head was among them. He looked at the man, who was appeared equally surprised. The man nodded to him.

”Ah, lieutenant”, the artilleryman said and smiled a crooked smile, ”How's this for a twist in the story? We have played some poker before with this man", he told his unit-mates, "I thought you lost enough the last time, eh?”

The man had obviously already taken a couple of drinks. Grinding his teeth a little, Arvo Vaara sat down on a tree stump. Then Rantanen poured them all drinks out of one of the bottles Majewski had brought along with him.

Taking a sip, Arvo Vaara had to agree that it was very good brandy.

As the south Karelian August evening darkened, a poker game got underway in the light of an oil-fueled lantern. The game itself was fueled with brandy, and Majewski dominated the proceedings with his sheer presence. Arvo was off to a rocky start, but then after a few hands he found his groove. And after that, it seemed that he could not lose. Captain Majewski himself was not really winning or losing, but he proved once again a very useful foil – he distracted the opponents with his stories and expansive personality, and being more used to the captain than the artillery men were, Arvo could leverage this state of affairs to his advantage. Arvo also managed to control his drinking, whereas Sergeant Meat-Head across the makeshift table from him kept getting more drunk all the while. The other artillerymen were not much better.

In the end, it was a slaughter. Unsteadily swaying back to their camp some hours later, when the night had already turned towards a creeping summer morning, all the three cavalrymen had more money on them than they had in their pockets on the way over. Majewski had won some, Rantanen had won more. Lieutenant Arvo Vaara, he had made a real killing. He had won back all that he had lost to the artillery sergeant in the train, and then more. In fact he had totally fleeced the poor bugger.

Arvo didn't feel sorry for the man, though. In fact he found the sergeant wholly unpleasant as a person.

Serves him right.

Having one last drink with Captain Majewski who drunkenly congratulated him, and then making his way to his spartan field lodgings, Arvo Vaara felt a sense of honest victory – never mind if in the next morning a hangover of sorts would surely follow.


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Notes:

[1] A breed developed out of the common Finnhorse (or Finnish Universal), the Finnish warmblood was bred since 1926 specifically for equestrian sports and military use. It was built lighter than the ordinary Finnhorse, for speed and agility.

[2] The Finnish cavalry rank was ratsumestari (ryttmästare), which corresponds to the traditional German rank of rittmeister.


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To Be Continued