I have no idea what I'm going to do with "Prospero America"...Some of it will depend on the "host country"
My Idea of American Prospero will be a little different...
The Land of Sad Songs – Stories From Protect and Survive Finland
- Thread starter DrakonFin
- Start date
My Idea of American Prospero will be a little different...
The police drives a blue car, uaa, a blue car
The police has sirens on the roof, uaa, sirens on the roof
The police hits you with a rubber baton, uaa, a rubber baton
The police threatens people with jail, uaa, threatens with jail
...
Eppu Normaali: Poliisi pamputtaa taas (1978)
XIV. Driving a Blue Car
Interview nr. 198, 27.01.2010. TBF.
Subject: Man, 54 (M152)
Occupation in 1984: Police officer
Location: Kokkola, Western PPO
[This man is a high-ranking member of the Ostrobothnian police force. He wears a Swedish-issue camouflage uniform with a blue armband. He is bald, with a scar running across his temple.]
[First of all, thank you for agreeing to talk to us. Due to your wartime position, we think you might be able to offer an interesting viewpoint to the war of 1984.]
What ever you say. For the record, I want to point out that I am not a volunteer: I was ordered to attend this interview by my superior. I'll try to help you in your work nevertheless.
[This is noted. We believe you were a policeman during the war?]
That is right. I was a senior constable in the Vaasa Province Traffic Police[1]. We were tasked with keeping the roads safe and orderly, as well as providing mobile support to local police departments. Since late 1983 our tasks also included keeping the roads open for military traffic and helping with the evacuations. During the escalation of the crisis the powers that be saw fit to scale up police numbers, and so January saw an influx of auxiliary officers, driving appropriated civilian vehicles with hastily-painted police markings on them. Keeping them in line was challenge for us real cops. [Manages a wry smile.]
[What happened to you on the day of the nuclear attacks?]
We had just been escorting evacuees arriving from the capital region to the rural parishes around Kokkola over the weekend, and on Monday we got word that there would be an important joint operation with the Seinäjoki police department on Tuesday. So, when the General Alarm was raised in the evening of the 21st, we were on the Seinäjoki railway station, waiting for a train.
[What was this train? A military transport?]
No, this was the beginning of MILK TRAIN, or so the Security Police called it. The evacuation of the parliament from the capital. Seinäjoki, you see, had been chosen as the place where the legislature would stay ”for the duration”. Originally, the choice was a smaller place more north but this was changed at the last minute, to throw the Russians off the scent I believe. We could have done without the hassle, to be sure.
I remember standing there on the platform. The lights flashing on our cruisers and the emergency siren wailing on the station wall. We were in what protective gear had been available, with gas masks at least. With the heavy winter clothing I felt like the Michelin man. A military truck arrived at speed, and just when it turned to the platform, there was the flash...
[An explosion?]
The nuclear blast in Kauhava, some 40 km away, aimed at the military airfield. Everyone just froze to place and then ducked to the ground, behind any obstacle they could find. The truck driver, apparently startled, verved and drove his vehicle down to the tracks. And then the train arrived. Thankfully it had already slowed down, so in the end when it hit the truck, the crash wasn't as horrible as one might expect.
It was scene of perfect confusion. As we and a few of the railway people started trying to help the soldiers in the truck, some of them in the back able to clamber off the overturned vehicle, even if bloody, the politicians started pouring out of the train carriages, following the Security Police agents. Some were apparently hurt by the impact. The first one out of the train was the former athlete, can't remember the name, the pole vaulter. It soon turned into a panicked stampede to reach the waiting vehicles that would take the politicians to safety. A couple of the agents had pulled their weapons – I remember wondering what they thought they would do to a nuclear missile with a 9 mm pistol. I saw four male parliamentarians trampling one of the younger women coming down from a carriage. They didn't look back as they ran for the buses in the parking lot. One of our guys and a conductor grabbed the woman and took her to a cruiser – she had a broken leg and her face was all bloody.
As one of the minibuses took off early, we had to take the last few of the people's representatives to the police cars to take them to the shelter ourselves. We had Lipponen [2] in our car, believe that?
[Do you mean the one in the PPO's...?]
[Interrupts] The very same. I remember it because he introduced himself, as if we were arresting him or something. He had a cut on his cheek, and kept nursing it the whole way to the shelter. Only when he left the car I remembered that I could have offered him a paper tissue or a band aid.
Thankfully the shelter had been readied for the VIPs. Not everyone in Seinäjoki got to a shelter that night, mind you, and after spending the next hours helping the local department in the evacuation we were lucky we could use the shelter in the police department, even though it was cramped...
[What about the following morning?]
For the while we stayed in the shelter, after we received news of radiation in the outside. There was constant chatter in the police radio though, as dispatch was still working and some units saw it as their duty to keep helping people even during the initial fallout. It was heartbreaking to listen to the radio, but our lives were on the line, or so we thought. And the local chief told us that he wouldn't send anyone out that night who didn't volunteer for it. He had actually read the official manuals I had merely skimmed and was truly thoughful about the dangers of fallout.
Kauhava was a small place, though, and there was little actual damage outside the airfield and the center of the municipality, nothing like around Tampere or in Vaasa. They would have evacuated parts of Lapua, Lappajärvi and Evijärvi anyway, just to be sure, if all available civil protection and medical units hadn't been ordered to the Vaasa area. That was a whole another can of worms...
In the end, of our guys who stayed out all night and of those in the CPUs only some had radiation poisoning in the following days. Later it became a serious problem, of course. I was sick too. And my hair just came off one day, and never grew back. It should have, they say, but it didn't. I think it wasn't the radiation that did it for me, but rather my broken heart. I lost my wife and son in Vaasa...[Strokes his head absentmindedly.] As to the later fallout, we really had it easy here, compared to the rest of Finland.
[I am sorry for your loss.][3]
It's all right, there was nothing to be done about it. And I am sure they didn't have to suffer.
But you should have heard the talk in the shelter that night – policemen and other officials talking about murdering the members of the Politbyro with their bare hands... Couldn't disagree with them, I'm afraid. Of course we later found out that it would have probably been redundant at that point. But in these parts, people were traditionally hostile to the Soviets and anything to do with Communism. It was considered obvious that it was the Soviets that nuked us. Why would the Americans do such a thing?
There was the rumor about the American air crew, though...
[What do you mean?]
Some days after the bombs I heard that a Border Guard unit had captured a group of foreigners, claiming to be airmen, somewhere around Kalajoki or Raahe. They said there was some wreckage, too, from something big, like a bomber. And that a high-ranking officer would have been sent to interrogate them. But after a few weeks the story disappeared, so I have no idea whether it was true or not. There were a lot of rumours going around at that time. That the Soviets had captured the president, that Åland had been taken over by the Swedish, that NATO helicopters would arrive any day now to bring massive amounts of food and medicine... Most of it was just fantasy, of course.
The iffy communications didnt' help the situation, either.
[What were your duties in the following weeks?]
In southern Finland, the surviving Traffic Police was after the attacks often used as a mobile recon force, mapping out damages in different areas as well as usable roadways, and so forth. This is understandable, as they had cars with radios and a good knowledge of local conditions, but it also led to high levels of attrition amont the officers. That is to say they died like flies. In these areas the chains of command might have broken down and the line between the police and the military blurred, and I think it wasn't uncommon to see mixed units with a Traffic Police cruiser and a small squad of military police, or any guys in uniform, really, in a jeep used for emergencies.
There was less damage here, and the organisations stayed closer to the pre-war system. I guess it sounds strange, given a nuclear war and all, but for us the work was mainly what I would have done anyway, traffic policing. We had our hands full with the evacuation of the wounded - there was a lot of traffic between the central hospital in Seinäjoki and the field hospitals set up around Vaasa - and the civil defence and military traffic, the constant effort of road maintenance crews, refugees on both official transports and civilian vehicles, and so on.
I can tell you one thing, though – some of the people didn't much care about tickets or citations, those days. [Again with the wry smile.] I had to draw my weapon several times to get the message across. In some places public order broke down completely, and I'm not surprised. There were only so many policemen, and often even the military was mostly used in the rescue operations and transport duties. The distances are big and people are thin on the ground in Finland.
Much thinner after the bombs, too.
Notes
[1] Liikkuva poliisi or rörliga polisen. Translates literally to mobile police.
[2] Apparently refers to Paavo Lipponen (1941-2004), the Social Democratic politician with a later career in the FNA and PPO administrations.
[3] Addressing the personal losses of the interviewees was a significant challenge to many Minne 1984 researchers. Some people would be glad their loss was acknowledged, but as many were liable to take issue with the interviewer's attempts to console them. A lot depended on the researcher's ability to ”read” the subject's feelings and adjust his/her behaviour accordingly; sometimes the failure to do so might endanger the success of the entire interview.
(filler)
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It is a long story, and I'd rather not explain it fully just yet. There will be hints and bits of info scattered along the posts, certainly, and I intend to come clean about it at some point.
Jukra said:
I am pretty partial to it, myself. It is good for including all kinds of random (or seemingly so) stuff without explaining things to death.
Interviews are not often used in TLs, and I guess it would be difficult to write one using only them.
"I am pretty partial to it, myself. It is good for including all kinds of random (or seemingly so) stuff without explaining things to death.
I like this format, and I like the idea that we're not going to go extinct, and the music from this timeline is filling up my ipod
The four walls' corners draw one wind
The grass shakes on both sides of the road
The journey will, the journey will be long
The gramophone needle goes round again
They don't breathe the same air anymore
They won't breathe ever again
The four directions will tell tales of the winds
It'll take time to clear the oil from your wings
The nighttime will end, but not in a morning
The record waits for someone to turn the side
They don't breathe the same air anymore
They won't breathe ever again
They don't breathe the same air anymore
They won't breathe ever again, ever again
Viikate: He eivät hengitä (2005)
XV. Ice Cold
On the morning of March 4th 1984 the pilot of a Saab JA 37 interceptor, one of the first aircraft the Swedish Air Force had been able to sent out to patrol the sky over the Bothnian Bay after the nuclear exchange, detected two large ships approaching the Swedish coast from the southeast, just north of the Åland islands, pushing slowly through the packed ice. After an initial attack scare, the armed icebreaker Thule was sent to investigate. The approaching ships were identified by the crew as the Urho, one of the two most modern and powerful icebreakers operated by the Finnish state, and the MS Rosella, a Viking Line cruiseferry ordinarily servicing the route between Turku, Mariehamn and Stockholm. The latter, listing to starboard, was being towed. As the Thule hailed the ships, the Urho answered it was conducting a rescue mission and asked to be escorted to a Swedish port per the provisions of the international SAR convention. Puzzled, the Swedish authorities complied, but nevertheless organised an armed welcome at the port of Gävle.
After the ships were manouvred along the docks by a port tug and gangways were lowered, suspicious military and coast guard personnel looked at the wretched-looking Finnish soldiers and civilians disembarking from the ships. A few navy ambulance units were waiting, as medical assistance had been requested for the civilian refugees aboard the Rosella. These units were in fact the best the Swedish authorities could do under the circumstances; most available civilian and military medical assets in the Gävle area were tied up helping the survivors of the Stockholm blast.
The treatment of the Finnish Navy personnel was a strange mixture of a naval visit and actual internment, partly because nobody present really knew where Sweden and Finland stood in diplomatic terms. Not even the small group of dark-suited men clambering off the icebreaker with the Finnish soldiers, despite the fact that they carried valid diplomatic credentials. Both groups were taken the most comfortable quarters the local military authorities could come up with and allowed some time to eat and rest before telling their story. The tired, crumpled men were happy to accept these terms. Some of them, though not all, exhibited clear signs of radiation sickness. The military captain of the Urho was reported as suffering a nervous breakdown. As a security measure, he was relieved of his sidearm by military police.
Through the ensuing discussions, a picture was formed of what had happened to the two ships. In November, the Urho had been docked in the Turku shipyard for repairs, but after the de facto mobilization it had soon been re-floated, now complete with a winter camouflage paint and a collection of AA weapons on its decks. During the next three months, the icebreaker together with its Finnish and Swedish sister ships Sisu, Atle and Frej escorted convoys of mostly cargo ships from the Swedish coast to Turku via the Archipelago Sea.[1] In early February, the convoy operations were halted. After hostilities broke out, the icebreaker was sent into hiding among the Turku archipelago. But on the morning of the 20th, the ship suddenly received new orders. In Turku, an entourage of diplomats waited for the ship, which took a circuitous course towards Stockholm.
Then the sky fell. The Soviets had used nuclear weapons against Finland. The last frantic communication from the navy told the captains[2] to abort the mission and go again into hiding among the myriad islands between the old Finnish capital and Mariehamn. The ship made port near a forested island and was covered with camouflage netting. All unnecessary heat sources were eliminated as the ship settled down to hibernate. During the clear evening of the 21st, bright flashes were observed in the direction of Turku and Mariehamn. And then mushroom clouds crept into the sky as the night fell. All communications with military and civilian authorities were lost.
The Urho waited.
And waited. Rising radiation on the outside was reported, and the crew hid from it the best they could within the bowels of the ship. Five days passed without any contacts with the mainland, despite constant efforts in the radio room. No movement was registered by the ship's radar. The crew started to be on edge. Finally contact was made with a coastal fortress on the mainland – its commanding officer was, if possible, even more confused and isolated than the officers of the icebreaker.
After two more days, the two captains conferred with the leader of the diplomatic mission. An agreement was reached, the powerful Wärtsilä-Pielstick diesel engines rumbled to life and the ship took a course towards Turku. What they found out was depressing. The town of Turku or the naval station in Pansio were simply not there. Even the shape of the coast seemed wrong, said a Finnish Navy lieutenant when questioned by the Swedish authorities. Just a tangle of blackened ship skeletons marked where the port used to be. No sign of life could be seen, in Turku or neighbouring Naantali, where the oil refinery was still burning. The sea ice was covered by fine black dust for miles. A radiation hotspot was registered by the ships instruments and the Urho was quickly turned towards west.
A course was laid for Mariehamn, where a similar scene awaited the ship's demoralized crew. While the ship was stopped outside the burned husk of what once was the capital of the autonomous province, unassuming even in life, a distress signal was received over the radio. It came from a Viking Line ferry caught in the ice just outside the small port of Berghamn. The Rosella, stranded in Eckerö after the convoys were halted, now full of refugees trying to flee the dying islands. Desperately, the ship's captain had attempted to force the ice to open a lane towards Kapellskär, not knowing the Stockholm area was even worse off than Åland. Just a few miles out the ice had proven too strong to be broken by the Rosella, despite its high ice class. The ship was trapped: not only was the packed ice slowly crushing it, its rudder had also been disabled when the ice forced it against a skerry.
In a growing snowstorm in the dark winter night, the Urho's exhausted crew was briefly brought back to the Land of the Living as they mounted a feverish rescue operation to save the over 1200 people aboard the stricken cruiseferry. The men struggled for hours in the heavy wind and very low visibility brought on by a winter storm. Three crew members, two civilians and a Navy sergeant were lost to the icy sea as they fell from the deck during an attempt to connect the ships with tow lines.
Finally, as the sun rose over the subdued, ashen grey morning, the two ships were joined together. After their recent experiences with Turku and Mariehamn, not knowing if help would be found in Sweden or if they had been fighting through the night in vain, the Urho's captains decided that Stockholm was too much of an gamble. The ships moved northwest along the Swedish coast, in hope of of reaching the port of Gävle or, failing that, Söderhamn. Even at this stage, further complications had arisen after the chief engineer reported trouble with two of the main diesels – ones that would have been replaced in November had it not been for the hurry to outfit the icebreaker as an armed convoy escort instead. Slowly, the ships made their way towards their eventual rendezvous with the Thule. According to the crew interviews, to describe the mood prevalent on Urho's high-tech bridge, ”gloomy” would have definitely been too upbeat.
The experiences related by the Urho's crew would prove very important for the Swedish policies towards Finland in the near future. Firstly, these stories were taken as proof that Finland had been much worse hit than Sweden and that most, if not all major population centres should be considered as entirely lost. Second, it seemed clear that the Finnish state and military apparatus had ceased to exist, at least in the southwestern part of the country.
In the following week, the few available aircraft were sent on reconnaissance flights over the Finnish southwest and Lapland. What the pilots reported corroborated the Finnish sailors' stories. Turku was at best a smouldering ruin, and signs of life were hard to find in the surroundings. Finnish Lapland seemed entirely devoid of life. No Finnish (or indeed Soviet) interceptor approached to challenge the Swedish incursion into Finnish airspace, and more meaningfully, no contact could be made with Finnish air traffic control, military or civilian. After the pilots reported high radiation in lower altitudes and a lot of ash in the air, the aircraft were called back and no new missions into the Finnish airspace were ordered for the time being.
Together, these considerations led to the conclusion, fair or not, that the parts of Finland that Sweden could assist, with reasonable ease, ie. the southwestern coast and the capital area, were in fact beyond help. It wouldn't be, now, merely a question of providing food, medicine and manpower to surviving Finnish authorities but in fact of rebuilding society from scratch in a situation where no earthly authority existed.
The Urho remained at the port of Gävle, ostensibly for repairs. Members of the crew advocating an expedition to the Finnish coast to help survivors were officially rebuffed on the grounds of the weak condition of both the ship and the crew. In fact the authorities had selfish reasons for holding on to the ship: given that two modern Swedish icebreakers had been lost during the war, the prospect of resuming foreign trade during the winter rested on maximising the use of available icebreaking assets.[3]
And the Finnish diplomatic delegation aboard the Urho? As it transpired, it had been sent by President Koivisto and Prime Minister Sorsa from Helsinki on the day Finland declared war on the Soviet Union. Its titular head was the veteran ambassador Max Jakobson, who had been called back from semi-retirement as the international crisis unfolded. Jakobson - who was hospitalized for radiation-related ailments and apparent cardiac dysrhythmia within days of reaching Sweden - carried in his briefcase a number of diplomatic notes and despatches from his superiors to Palme's government, official papers that had been important enough to be delivered by hand in wartime conditions and the senders of which were never seen alive again.
Virtually all papers in Jakobson's possession then have since been declared confidential by the Swedish government, and even Minne 1984 researchers have seen just choice snippets from these last official communiques from the Finnish wartime leadership. What seems to be clear is that the papers contain diplomatic overtures that, if accepted, would have caused major changes in Finno-Swedish relations. They were, after all, sent by a government facing an imminent invasion by superior forces and total defeat in the hands of a brutal superpower. There are some indications that these papers formed much of the groundwork for later relations with the Finnish National Authority and the major point of contention between Gothenburg and Mikkeli, the ambivalent position of the Osthrobothnian territories.
The Swedish policy on Finland in the following months could be described as ”wait and see”. The Swedish authorities, reeling as they were themselves after the nuclear attacks on the nation and just starting to pick up the pieces, decided to concentrate their efforts in containing the damages at home, surviving the winter of 1984 and starting to rebuild where possible. If a group emerged in Finland that could speak for the government or a local entity, the Swedish might enter in dialogue with it, but at least initially would not promise any concrete help. The Finns surviving the nuclear apocalypse were, for now, well and truly on their own. In the words of Acting Prime Minister...
Notes:
[1] All four are of the same class, built in the Wärtsilä shipyard in Helsinki in 1974-77. The fifth ship of the class, Ymer, operated in the central Baltic.
[2] The ship had its original civilian captain and a Navy officer in charge of military decisions.
[3] That the Swedish authorities were actually thinking of ”resuming foreign trade” under the circumstances offers ample evidence of the fact that the nation was one of the least damaged areas of World War Three.
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Wow! Words can not describe the sadness I feel for Finland. Your update was very human yet official at the same time.
I noticed that the story seems to be evolving to be less of what the Finnish experience during the '84 war was, and more of the Swedish rebuilding operation. Is this intentional or purely happenstance?
Seeing how Finland is completely lacking of command and control, is the Finnish National Authority you mention a government-in-exile started by the Swedes?
Also we do see a point of reference from a Soviet's perspective earlier in the TL. Will the remains of the Soviet forces be a help or a hindrance to the Swedish efforts?
Keep up the good work!
-Gen_Patton
I noticed that the story seems to be evolving to be less of what the Finnish experience during the '84 war was, and more of the Swedish rebuilding operation. Is this intentional or purely happenstance?
Seeing how Finland is completely lacking of command and control, is the Finnish National Authority you mention a government-in-exile started by the Swedes?
Also we do see a point of reference from a Soviet's perspective earlier in the TL. Will the remains of the Soviet forces be a help or a hindrance to the Swedish efforts?
Keep up the good work!
-Gen_Patton
This update is using the Swedish POV of the semi-official preliminary report for the Minne 1984 project, and as such, it is addressed to the Swedish first and then to the international audience. I will use this format for the general outlines, and yes, also for describing the Swedish rebuilding effort. It mostly provides background for the future developments in Finland. The next few updates will again be archival fragments or recollections by Finns, describing more closely what is happening east of the Archipelago Sea.
The lack of command and control is bit of an illusion, as you will see in the future, due to the southwest being hit harder than Ostrobothnia and central-eastern Finland. The FNA is a local Finnish power centre surviving (even if just barely) through the winter of 1984. There is real continuity with the pre-war government, even though that is sometimes contested.
The surviving Soviet forces will be a hindrance. How bad a hindrance, we shall see.
Thank you for keeping up with the story. I'll try to update more often in the coming months than in December.
Falkenburg
Monthly Donor
Good to see stirrings of life amongst the smouldering rubble.
Perfectly natural that news may be slow in getting out after the Exchange. As and when you can Update there'll be an appreciative audience awaiting.
Falkenburg
Perfectly natural that news may be slow in getting out after the Exchange. As and when you can Update there'll be an appreciative audience awaiting.
Falkenburg
Ah, so in Wilsonian terms we will see an effort to "Make the world (or at least the close surroundings) safe for (social) Democracy!"
It's dd.mm.yyyy.
While I am sceptical about the P&S-verse having a real demand for cruise ships for some decades, in Finland the shipyards of Uusikaupunki and Rauma would be intact after the exchange. As for actually building new ships, there might be some problems in finding the qualified workers and engineers to run them. I have a feeling restarting them will have a Swedish hand in it.
Falkenburg
Monthly Donor
I'm sorry, I must have misread that.
Cruising? Less than 30 years after a Global Thermonuclear War?
You have an incredibly optimistic view of the Post Exchange World, Red. Not one I share.
Falkenburg
Cruising? Less than 30 years after a Global Thermonuclear War?
You have an incredibly optimistic view of the Post Exchange World, Red. Not one I share.
Falkenburg