John Farson
Banned
All along I've said that Sweden is at least as heavily hit as Finland (and Norway) in the P&S-verse. And your note on the fallout is a good point.
The Land of Sad Songs – Stories From Protect and Survive Finland
- Thread starter DrakonFin
- Start date
All along I've said that Sweden is at least as heavily hit as Finland (and Norway) in the P&S-verse. And your note on the fallout is a good point.
John Farson
Banned
The Soviets wouldn't see neutrals, they'd only see enemies, potential enemies and potential enemies that are small enough and far enough away that they wouldn't really matter (but who would still merit a nuke just to be sure).
Three of us making the same point here, but all of the same opinion that Scandanavian neutrality is no good as a missile shield
A single device against both Malmo and Copenhagen is worth consideration though
Last edited:
In all honesty even the US would hit some neutrals like Iran.So far no one has tackled the Middle East but its pretty much certain a country like Iran would have received hits from the US with or without formal participation.Also North Korea even without launching strikes on the south would still be hit as a precaution.Copenhagen probably took multiple hits as far as i know in this timeline it was under siege once the nukes started flying tactical strikes on danish forces in an around the city would have been used.Maybe around 10 would have been used to take out any and all forces in the Copenhagen area.Of course in a supreme irony NATO nukes would probably take out any soviet forces in Denmark.Whatever opinion the danish government had about this no one knows.Denmark comes out worst of all the nordic countries literally nothing remains except for small communities in isolated regions I doubt a single danish town or city with a population above 10000 survived.
John Farson said:
If I started writing this thing from cratch, I would have to agree with you guys and plan accordingly. But I wouldn't have done that, most likely, so for the purposes of this TL the point is moot.
Macragge1 has established at an early point that Sweden is comparatively very lightly hit. And for me this means that barring a major rewrite of P&S itself, something like 10-15 nukes for Sweden is pretty much the maximum limit.
I think about 5-10 nuclear explosions would strike a balance that avoids ASB-level luck on the side of the Swedish people while staying close to established canon, one I could live with.
I am thinking no more than two or three divisions along the southern coast and smaller formations near the border in South and North Karelia. The operation in the south was a hastily cobbled-together affair; all the Soviet forces committed south of the Oulu-Kajaani-line together numbered less than the units taking part of the Soviet attack into Lapland, not to mention being of a lower standard and being more poorly equipped. And a part of them was lost due to the Lappeenranta blast, having advanced faster in this area than expected.
While the surviving Soviets in Lapland are being wiped out in the weeks following the exchange, what with the damage from the nukes, fallout and extreme cold in conditions with almost no shelter available, the troops in the south will hang on until spring when the situation comes to a head, so to speak. It will be a subject of an upcoming update or two.
As the Sun was going down
The last Sunray
Was left behind
As the dark crept over the land
The Sunray, golden wing
Was just about to take flight
When she saw a small Goblin on the road
He had just come up from his cave
You see, a Goblin before sundown
Can never live above the ground
They looked at each other
The Goblin in his heart
Felt the strangest flame
Said: "You burn my eyes
But never in my life
Have I seen such beauty!
I does not matter if your light makes me blind-
It's easy to walk in the dark
Stay with me and to my cave
I'll show you the way-
And take you there as my love!"
Said the Sunray: "My dear Goblin,
The dark will be the death of me,
And I don't wish to die
I must leave right now,
For unless I fly to the light,
I can't live a moment more."
So left the pretty Sunray,
But even still,
As the Goblin walks his way alone,
He wonders why one here is a child of the light
And another just loves the night.
Tapio Rautavaara: Päivänsäde ja menninkäinen (1949)
The Soviet-made UAZ jeep was widely used by the Finnish Defence Forces in the early 80s. FNA archives.
XXI. The Dark and the Light
Fragment 29.
17.11.2009.
HJK
[This fragment is held at the FNA archives in [REDACTED]. It is an audio tape (C-cassette). No additional information was available.]
A UAZ can accommodate five men easily. But when they are wearing heavy winter clothing, raincoats, rubber boots and gas masks, it becomes somewhat crowded. Helps for warmth, though, I was thinking when we were making our way towards the military police roadblock, speeding along the auxiliary runway.
”- Goddammit, Nyman. Slow down, this isn't the Jyväskylä Rally. We'll crash into the planes and die. Worse, we might break one of the fighters.”
That was Somppi, now temporarily the commanding officer of our voluntary patrol, sitting beside the driver.
”- Yes, Lieutenant, Sir!”, said the driver with mock enthusiasm. But actually did as ordered.
The sky was overcast and there was some snow falling. The aircraft sat lined up along the side of the highway, now covered with heaps of snow as well as the camouflage nets and tarps. Only one of them had been left haphazardly partly on the highway, uncovered. It was the last Hawk to land after the nuclear alarm. Now there was a group of our guys clearing snow around it before towing it closer to the other aircraft.
It was dark, even for a winter day. There was a distinct cover of ash almost everywhere, from almost nonexistent to nearly black in places. It again made me shudder to think what it was. Evading the two tanker trucks parked at the end of the runway, we passed the checkpoint and the MPs waved us through. A waiting Sisu truck fell in behind us and our small convoy was ready take off.
It had been twenty days after the bombs fell. According to MÖRKÖ, the levels of radiation had been coming down so much for it to be safe to start sending out patrols again, strictly in protective gear though, and with definite time limits. When the Captain asked for volunteers, more than half of the men in the company raised their hands. We' were getting sick of being cooped up in the shelters, never mind the radiation and God knows what we'd find when we walked out the door.
Still no contact with KALAKUKKO or the Military Province HQ. MÖRKÖ had reached Mikkeli and Kajaani though, among some other places, so it seems that at least some parts of the country have been spared. But without KALAKUKKO, we were fumbling in the dark. Even the Air Force HQ stayed doggedly silent. Only one of our planes was being prepared for recon flights – on the base command's initiative. So far all of our serviceable aircraft had been grounded per pre-exchange orders.
Most of us had nothing to do in the base. But trying to make contact with our own radios and scanning the radio waves for any public broadcasters. Someone claimed to have found a station broadcasting in Swedish, but couldn't repeat the feat when more of us came to listen. To do something worthwhile and to get outside, Somppi got together a group and reported to the Captain that we would go out to recon or liaise, if needed. We knew he had just been talking with MÖRKÖ, so we weren't surprised when he immediately found us something to do.
So here we were, off to check out the situation at the nearby municipality. MÖRKÖ had alredy sent some guys to liaise with the local human habitation, that was Tervo, and the AA people and the Dogs were scouting the roads towards Kuopio. Checking up Karttula itself was thus left to our merry crew.
We made a pretty lopsided taskforce. Somppi a second lieutenant, me and Mäkelä first sergeants, Kallio a corporal and Nyman, the driver, the only private. But it was like this in the Air Technical Company, these guys were part of command post personnel and aircraft ground crews. Specialists with some time spent in the reserve. Not much stock was put into technical rank, among this crowd. I saw that it confused the military police and infantry grunts sometimes. They were often younger conscripts anyway with a more stringent understanding of military hierarchy and discipline.
After the runway, the open road wasn't so open anymore. Nobody had cleared the snow for three weeks and it was starting to pile up. It was good we hadn't taken the Lada, we would have got stuck on the first kilometre. It was very quiet. The wreckage of the DC-3 transport that had crashlanded a few hours before the exhange sat quietly near the edge of the forest, still visible but being covered by snow.
For a good five minutes we sat there in silence staring at the road ahead. Then Somppi begun to fiddle with the radio the guys at the motor pool had jury-rigged to the dash. Out of habit, he started scanning the static like we had done religiously since the nuclear blasts. The headlights on the jeep and the trailing truck swept the grey fields and forests lining the road. The farms we passed were dark, but in a few I thought I saw the flicker of flames, like candles being burned.
The driver slowed down: there was something like a roadblock ahead. We could see two men holding weapons standing behind it. A hand-painted sign said STAY OUT! in big black letters. We drove slowly closer and saw the men pointing their guns at us. The UAZ stopped, we opened the doors and fanned out, holding our assault rifles but not aiming at the men. Yet.
”- The Defence Forces! Put down those weapons and clear the road”, shouted Somppi sternly to the men with his officer-voice. ”- We come from the Air Force road base and I got ten armed men in the truck behind me.”
The two old men looked at each other. They were dressed as hunters, perhaps, and held a hunting rifle and a shotgun.
”- Which air force is that?”, shouted back the bigger of the two, nervously. He had a thick Savonian drawl.
”- What do you think, you old coot? Do we look like Russians? Would you like me to recite some Tales of Ensign Stål to you? Sing the March of the Pori Brigade? Put the damn gun down NOW.”
The old farmer looked embarrassed. He muttered to himself and lowered the shotgun.
”- I was in the war, you know”, the man said sullenly as we walked closer to help them move the barricades. He looked at Somppi's sleeve tabs. ”- There's no need for scorn, Second Lieutenant.”
As Somppi and the WWII veteran discussed the situation, I looked at the road ahead. It had been cleared some time ago. In fact, there was a tractor standing nearby with a snowplough: I assumed it was what the two men had used to get there. They would have been members of a road co-operative: in the following months men like these would also be clearing public roads in areas where the authorities didn't have enough resources for the work.
After we left the men with their tractor and moved along the road, Somppi told us what they knew. The local board was in control, in some ways at least, and was running the show in its shelter in the municipal centre. There was very little damage in Karttula itself, save a few broken windows more east, but the still missing power was a great concern and as there were only a few generators available, it had prompted the relocation of the local hospital into wood-warmed buildings. There were refugees coming from the Kuopio area, and as we already knew temporary camps and field hospitals had cropped up around the roads out of Kuopio, the closest at the Rytky camp site and the village of Pihkainmäki. This was also where were some vestiges of Kuopio authorities and emergency services were still working, supported by the Karttula board when possible.
In a couple of minutes we reached the intersection that marked the municipal centre itself. As we turned left, the truck behind us continued ahead on the road leading to the destroyed provincial centre. Somppi raised his hand to the driver as he passed. The squad was part of MÖRKÖ's effort to establish the base's authority along the nearby area and the refugee camps – in the next weeks, a perimeter would be built around the Kuopio disaster area in a joint effort with the surrounding municipalities. And as it became clear that in the absense of Rissala and the Military Province HQ our humble base command had become the foremost functional military authority in the area, MÖRKÖ also took control of the few reserve infantry units that had been formed for local defence.
The Karttula centre was a gas station, the municipal complex, a couple of bars and a few commercial properties, including the obligatory K- and S-chain markets, built around a single main street. There were just a few people around, some of them looking miserable in the telltale way that would become so sadly common that winter. Around the gas station a few men in winter clothing, covered with raincoats, with the civil defence armband and also with rifles slung on their back. There was a big handpainted sign on one of the pumps, saying ”CLOSED PER ORDERS OF MUNICIPAL BOARD”.
Nyman stopped the jeep near the small group, and as I stepped out to ask for directions, I realized I was interrupting a heated argument between the forces of local authority and a middle-aged man holding a jerry can. The civilian took a look at me and the jeep and apparently deciding we had just won his opponent's argument, stalked off looking crestfallen. The raincoated men looked at me and one of them smiled.
” - I gather you guys are from the road base? God knows we have been expecting you to show up. You'll find our intrepid municipal board in the basement of yonder box of a building”, he said stepping closer and pointing his finger across the street. Sure enough, the red brick building had the words ”Municipal Hall” and the local coat of arms on it, above the signs for a florist and a bar. Both establishments below had padlocks on their doors.
” - Just remember to knock on the door before going in lest you give the mayor a heart attack with them uniforms. And leave your shooters with the girl in front, she'll give you a receipt. Get yourself drinks from the bar. The band'll start at nine.”
Slackjawed at the man's Savonian antics I stepped back in the car and we parked by the Hall. A strange people, the locals. Apparently it would take more than a nuclear war to put them down. I thought it best to take this as proof of the indomitable human spirit.
Stepping in, a part of the entrance had been turned into a kind of decontamination area. We were met with a civil defence guy in a mask rather than the promised cloakroom girl. He sprayed our top layer of clothing with liquid and scrubbed us down before allowing us in.
Strictly speaking, the local board's organization wasn't entirely in the basement anymore. They had blocked and insulated the windows and most doors of the ground floor too, in an effort to fight both the radiation and the cold. There were more people there than I had expected. There was electrical light and walkie-talkies being recharged on a table. There was a serious man wearing a cardigan and a mustache.
” - Welcome, men. I have been expected you since the Major sent word you are coming. Pohjola is the name, I am the head of civil defence for the municipality. I am in charge here now that the mayor is... indisposed.”
He sat us down and treated us to hot chocolate and biscuits – it seemed that there was no starvation as of yet. We were given a long lecture on the state of the municipality, the surrounding area and the fate of Kuopio especially. People getting more sick, hungry and tired all the time and the stocks of food, petrol and medical supplies dwindling, with no way to replace them until the foreseeable future. The damages in the blast area and the surroundings. He spoke optimistically about the province and the state getting their act together and coming to the help, but underneath his cool exterior one could see the despair, boiling.
Pohjola introduced us to an older man and a dark-haired woman a bit over twenty, a doctor working as the local chief of medical services and one of his nurses. Both had seen their responsibilities grow staggeringly, first since the beginning of the mobilization and then after the exchange. They had just returned from a tour of one of the refugee camps; the woman looked like she had could start crying any time while the doctor had barely concealed panic in his eyes.
Together, Pohjola and the doctor asked us, and especially Somppi – who was scribbling furiously into his notepad all the while – to take the word to the base commander of everything the municipality and the refugees would need to go on through the winter. I knew there was little in that list MÖRKÖ could do about. But I didn't say anything. We were one of the few harbingers of hope these people had seen for days and I didn't want to ruin that.
While Somppi still talked with the two older men, I asked the nurse about her work. And immediately realized it was a mistake. She told me about the evacuees and refugees, of the people blinded by the flash, of those with second or third-degree burns, of those dying of radiation. She told me how she hadn't seen her two young boys since the exchange, having been in a shelter at the hospital or working around the clock.
She rested her hand on her stomach.
” - And here is my third child. I am three months pregnant. With the radiation...”
She stopped talking, tears in her eyes, and I though I should hug her. But I lost my nerve, excused myself and fled out of the shelter.
My comrades were already leaving. As we were climbing aboard the jeep we suddenly heard a familiar roar in the air. As I looked up, there it was, tearing across the sky towards the east. A MIG-21bis, flying so low we could see the blue-white roundel on the fuselage and the black crouching lynx in the tail.[1] We cheered the pilot along his way to scout the Kuopio blast area.
On the way back the jeep was silent. The sight of the fighter couldn't quite stop me thinking about the people in Karttula and the survivors they were trying to keep alive. I knew the others felt about the same. Somppi fell back into the routine of fiddling with the radio.
At first it was again static.
But then, suddenly, music. The signal was weak but clear. The voice of Tapio Rautavaara from three decades ago. Nyman stopped the jeep and we listened to the song in silence.
And then there were news. The cabinet was again working, in Mikkeli, and it was starting the rebuilding effort. There were snippets of a speech by Minister Leppänen, who seemed to be acting as a cabinet spokesman. He vowed to do his very best to help the Finnish people. He said the communications would be restored and that the people would get food and medical help. The newscaster rattled off the list of towns considered lost to nuclear weapons, continuing with the list of locations the cabinet was in communication with. There were warnings about areas to be avoided due to radiation and blast damages. There was a bloody weather report.
And then the news broadcast ended. Juha Vainio's ”Yleisessä saunassa” filled the jeep. Nyman started the car again and we drove back to the base, the dark and the light competing for space in our thoughts.
Notes:
[1] The traditional insignia of the 31st Fighter Squadron, Karelian Air Command.
The last Sunray
Was left behind
As the dark crept over the land
The Sunray, golden wing
Was just about to take flight
When she saw a small Goblin on the road
He had just come up from his cave
You see, a Goblin before sundown
Can never live above the ground
They looked at each other
The Goblin in his heart
Felt the strangest flame
Said: "You burn my eyes
But never in my life
Have I seen such beauty!
I does not matter if your light makes me blind-
It's easy to walk in the dark
Stay with me and to my cave
I'll show you the way-
And take you there as my love!"
Said the Sunray: "My dear Goblin,
The dark will be the death of me,
And I don't wish to die
I must leave right now,
For unless I fly to the light,
I can't live a moment more."
So left the pretty Sunray,
But even still,
As the Goblin walks his way alone,
He wonders why one here is a child of the light
And another just loves the night.
Tapio Rautavaara: Päivänsäde ja menninkäinen (1949)
The Soviet-made UAZ jeep was widely used by the Finnish Defence Forces in the early 80s. FNA archives.
XXI. The Dark and the Light
Fragment 29.
17.11.2009.
HJK
[This fragment is held at the FNA archives in [REDACTED]. It is an audio tape (C-cassette). No additional information was available.]
A UAZ can accommodate five men easily. But when they are wearing heavy winter clothing, raincoats, rubber boots and gas masks, it becomes somewhat crowded. Helps for warmth, though, I was thinking when we were making our way towards the military police roadblock, speeding along the auxiliary runway.
”- Goddammit, Nyman. Slow down, this isn't the Jyväskylä Rally. We'll crash into the planes and die. Worse, we might break one of the fighters.”
That was Somppi, now temporarily the commanding officer of our voluntary patrol, sitting beside the driver.
”- Yes, Lieutenant, Sir!”, said the driver with mock enthusiasm. But actually did as ordered.
The sky was overcast and there was some snow falling. The aircraft sat lined up along the side of the highway, now covered with heaps of snow as well as the camouflage nets and tarps. Only one of them had been left haphazardly partly on the highway, uncovered. It was the last Hawk to land after the nuclear alarm. Now there was a group of our guys clearing snow around it before towing it closer to the other aircraft.
It was dark, even for a winter day. There was a distinct cover of ash almost everywhere, from almost nonexistent to nearly black in places. It again made me shudder to think what it was. Evading the two tanker trucks parked at the end of the runway, we passed the checkpoint and the MPs waved us through. A waiting Sisu truck fell in behind us and our small convoy was ready take off.
It had been twenty days after the bombs fell. According to MÖRKÖ, the levels of radiation had been coming down so much for it to be safe to start sending out patrols again, strictly in protective gear though, and with definite time limits. When the Captain asked for volunteers, more than half of the men in the company raised their hands. We' were getting sick of being cooped up in the shelters, never mind the radiation and God knows what we'd find when we walked out the door.
Still no contact with KALAKUKKO or the Military Province HQ. MÖRKÖ had reached Mikkeli and Kajaani though, among some other places, so it seems that at least some parts of the country have been spared. But without KALAKUKKO, we were fumbling in the dark. Even the Air Force HQ stayed doggedly silent. Only one of our planes was being prepared for recon flights – on the base command's initiative. So far all of our serviceable aircraft had been grounded per pre-exchange orders.
Most of us had nothing to do in the base. But trying to make contact with our own radios and scanning the radio waves for any public broadcasters. Someone claimed to have found a station broadcasting in Swedish, but couldn't repeat the feat when more of us came to listen. To do something worthwhile and to get outside, Somppi got together a group and reported to the Captain that we would go out to recon or liaise, if needed. We knew he had just been talking with MÖRKÖ, so we weren't surprised when he immediately found us something to do.
So here we were, off to check out the situation at the nearby municipality. MÖRKÖ had alredy sent some guys to liaise with the local human habitation, that was Tervo, and the AA people and the Dogs were scouting the roads towards Kuopio. Checking up Karttula itself was thus left to our merry crew.
We made a pretty lopsided taskforce. Somppi a second lieutenant, me and Mäkelä first sergeants, Kallio a corporal and Nyman, the driver, the only private. But it was like this in the Air Technical Company, these guys were part of command post personnel and aircraft ground crews. Specialists with some time spent in the reserve. Not much stock was put into technical rank, among this crowd. I saw that it confused the military police and infantry grunts sometimes. They were often younger conscripts anyway with a more stringent understanding of military hierarchy and discipline.
After the runway, the open road wasn't so open anymore. Nobody had cleared the snow for three weeks and it was starting to pile up. It was good we hadn't taken the Lada, we would have got stuck on the first kilometre. It was very quiet. The wreckage of the DC-3 transport that had crashlanded a few hours before the exhange sat quietly near the edge of the forest, still visible but being covered by snow.
For a good five minutes we sat there in silence staring at the road ahead. Then Somppi begun to fiddle with the radio the guys at the motor pool had jury-rigged to the dash. Out of habit, he started scanning the static like we had done religiously since the nuclear blasts. The headlights on the jeep and the trailing truck swept the grey fields and forests lining the road. The farms we passed were dark, but in a few I thought I saw the flicker of flames, like candles being burned.
The driver slowed down: there was something like a roadblock ahead. We could see two men holding weapons standing behind it. A hand-painted sign said STAY OUT! in big black letters. We drove slowly closer and saw the men pointing their guns at us. The UAZ stopped, we opened the doors and fanned out, holding our assault rifles but not aiming at the men. Yet.
”- The Defence Forces! Put down those weapons and clear the road”, shouted Somppi sternly to the men with his officer-voice. ”- We come from the Air Force road base and I got ten armed men in the truck behind me.”
The two old men looked at each other. They were dressed as hunters, perhaps, and held a hunting rifle and a shotgun.
”- Which air force is that?”, shouted back the bigger of the two, nervously. He had a thick Savonian drawl.
”- What do you think, you old coot? Do we look like Russians? Would you like me to recite some Tales of Ensign Stål to you? Sing the March of the Pori Brigade? Put the damn gun down NOW.”
The old farmer looked embarrassed. He muttered to himself and lowered the shotgun.
”- I was in the war, you know”, the man said sullenly as we walked closer to help them move the barricades. He looked at Somppi's sleeve tabs. ”- There's no need for scorn, Second Lieutenant.”
As Somppi and the WWII veteran discussed the situation, I looked at the road ahead. It had been cleared some time ago. In fact, there was a tractor standing nearby with a snowplough: I assumed it was what the two men had used to get there. They would have been members of a road co-operative: in the following months men like these would also be clearing public roads in areas where the authorities didn't have enough resources for the work.
After we left the men with their tractor and moved along the road, Somppi told us what they knew. The local board was in control, in some ways at least, and was running the show in its shelter in the municipal centre. There was very little damage in Karttula itself, save a few broken windows more east, but the still missing power was a great concern and as there were only a few generators available, it had prompted the relocation of the local hospital into wood-warmed buildings. There were refugees coming from the Kuopio area, and as we already knew temporary camps and field hospitals had cropped up around the roads out of Kuopio, the closest at the Rytky camp site and the village of Pihkainmäki. This was also where were some vestiges of Kuopio authorities and emergency services were still working, supported by the Karttula board when possible.
In a couple of minutes we reached the intersection that marked the municipal centre itself. As we turned left, the truck behind us continued ahead on the road leading to the destroyed provincial centre. Somppi raised his hand to the driver as he passed. The squad was part of MÖRKÖ's effort to establish the base's authority along the nearby area and the refugee camps – in the next weeks, a perimeter would be built around the Kuopio disaster area in a joint effort with the surrounding municipalities. And as it became clear that in the absense of Rissala and the Military Province HQ our humble base command had become the foremost functional military authority in the area, MÖRKÖ also took control of the few reserve infantry units that had been formed for local defence.
The Karttula centre was a gas station, the municipal complex, a couple of bars and a few commercial properties, including the obligatory K- and S-chain markets, built around a single main street. There were just a few people around, some of them looking miserable in the telltale way that would become so sadly common that winter. Around the gas station a few men in winter clothing, covered with raincoats, with the civil defence armband and also with rifles slung on their back. There was a big handpainted sign on one of the pumps, saying ”CLOSED PER ORDERS OF MUNICIPAL BOARD”.
Nyman stopped the jeep near the small group, and as I stepped out to ask for directions, I realized I was interrupting a heated argument between the forces of local authority and a middle-aged man holding a jerry can. The civilian took a look at me and the jeep and apparently deciding we had just won his opponent's argument, stalked off looking crestfallen. The raincoated men looked at me and one of them smiled.
” - I gather you guys are from the road base? God knows we have been expecting you to show up. You'll find our intrepid municipal board in the basement of yonder box of a building”, he said stepping closer and pointing his finger across the street. Sure enough, the red brick building had the words ”Municipal Hall” and the local coat of arms on it, above the signs for a florist and a bar. Both establishments below had padlocks on their doors.
” - Just remember to knock on the door before going in lest you give the mayor a heart attack with them uniforms. And leave your shooters with the girl in front, she'll give you a receipt. Get yourself drinks from the bar. The band'll start at nine.”
Slackjawed at the man's Savonian antics I stepped back in the car and we parked by the Hall. A strange people, the locals. Apparently it would take more than a nuclear war to put them down. I thought it best to take this as proof of the indomitable human spirit.
Stepping in, a part of the entrance had been turned into a kind of decontamination area. We were met with a civil defence guy in a mask rather than the promised cloakroom girl. He sprayed our top layer of clothing with liquid and scrubbed us down before allowing us in.
Strictly speaking, the local board's organization wasn't entirely in the basement anymore. They had blocked and insulated the windows and most doors of the ground floor too, in an effort to fight both the radiation and the cold. There were more people there than I had expected. There was electrical light and walkie-talkies being recharged on a table. There was a serious man wearing a cardigan and a mustache.
” - Welcome, men. I have been expected you since the Major sent word you are coming. Pohjola is the name, I am the head of civil defence for the municipality. I am in charge here now that the mayor is... indisposed.”
He sat us down and treated us to hot chocolate and biscuits – it seemed that there was no starvation as of yet. We were given a long lecture on the state of the municipality, the surrounding area and the fate of Kuopio especially. People getting more sick, hungry and tired all the time and the stocks of food, petrol and medical supplies dwindling, with no way to replace them until the foreseeable future. The damages in the blast area and the surroundings. He spoke optimistically about the province and the state getting their act together and coming to the help, but underneath his cool exterior one could see the despair, boiling.
Pohjola introduced us to an older man and a dark-haired woman a bit over twenty, a doctor working as the local chief of medical services and one of his nurses. Both had seen their responsibilities grow staggeringly, first since the beginning of the mobilization and then after the exchange. They had just returned from a tour of one of the refugee camps; the woman looked like she had could start crying any time while the doctor had barely concealed panic in his eyes.
Together, Pohjola and the doctor asked us, and especially Somppi – who was scribbling furiously into his notepad all the while – to take the word to the base commander of everything the municipality and the refugees would need to go on through the winter. I knew there was little in that list MÖRKÖ could do about. But I didn't say anything. We were one of the few harbingers of hope these people had seen for days and I didn't want to ruin that.
While Somppi still talked with the two older men, I asked the nurse about her work. And immediately realized it was a mistake. She told me about the evacuees and refugees, of the people blinded by the flash, of those with second or third-degree burns, of those dying of radiation. She told me how she hadn't seen her two young boys since the exchange, having been in a shelter at the hospital or working around the clock.
She rested her hand on her stomach.
” - And here is my third child. I am three months pregnant. With the radiation...”
She stopped talking, tears in her eyes, and I though I should hug her. But I lost my nerve, excused myself and fled out of the shelter.
My comrades were already leaving. As we were climbing aboard the jeep we suddenly heard a familiar roar in the air. As I looked up, there it was, tearing across the sky towards the east. A MIG-21bis, flying so low we could see the blue-white roundel on the fuselage and the black crouching lynx in the tail.[1] We cheered the pilot along his way to scout the Kuopio blast area.
On the way back the jeep was silent. The sight of the fighter couldn't quite stop me thinking about the people in Karttula and the survivors they were trying to keep alive. I knew the others felt about the same. Somppi fell back into the routine of fiddling with the radio.
At first it was again static.
But then, suddenly, music. The signal was weak but clear. The voice of Tapio Rautavaara from three decades ago. Nyman stopped the jeep and we listened to the song in silence.
And then there were news. The cabinet was again working, in Mikkeli, and it was starting the rebuilding effort. There were snippets of a speech by Minister Leppänen, who seemed to be acting as a cabinet spokesman. He vowed to do his very best to help the Finnish people. He said the communications would be restored and that the people would get food and medical help. The newscaster rattled off the list of towns considered lost to nuclear weapons, continuing with the list of locations the cabinet was in communication with. There were warnings about areas to be avoided due to radiation and blast damages. There was a bloody weather report.
And then the news broadcast ended. Juha Vainio's ”Yleisessä saunassa” filled the jeep. Nyman started the car again and we drove back to the base, the dark and the light competing for space in our thoughts.
Notes:
[1] The traditional insignia of the 31st Fighter Squadron, Karelian Air Command.
Last edited:
That last update makes it seem to be a bit of a Cosy Catastrophe in TVTropes terms. They come out of their bunkers and find a functioning town, complete with a bar.
Of course, then some starving, heavily-armed Soviet soldiers might show up...
Of course, then some starving, heavily-armed Soviet soldiers might show up...
While Karttula is only about 45 kilometers from the Kuopio/Rissala ground zero, it is still a town far away from the warzone. It is, IMO, perfectly plausible to the area being this orderly three weeks after the exchange - here it is the next months with the fallout and the cold that will create the conditions for a possible breakdown in order and any services that are still functioning.
Oh, and the civil defence guy's bit about the bar and the band is what they call Savonian humor.
A functioning town, to a certain degree (no power, in the middle of the winter, dwindling food and medical resources, badly hurt refugees pouring in).
Smaller "towns" in Finland aren't that big - most of them are like described here: a couple paved roads lined with few municipal and commercial buildings, maybe a few apartment buildings (3-4 stories high at most), row houses and single-family houses. A couple of thousand inhabitants at most (and many of these actually living on the wider countryside surrounding the small municipal center).
I seriously doubt that bar was serving any drinks
...
Far away,
Happiness is gone, far away
I lost my peace of mind,
But I guess I'll get it back
Only one,
Might be a place without persecution,
The wilderness,
Share it with me...
(Chorus)
Kuusamo,
Now Kuusamo calls for me
I see a strong forest
And a blue fell
Kuusamo,
Now Kuusamo calls for me
Only there
I can find my peace
Danny: Kuusamo (1976)
XXII. On the Way to the North
Fragment 35
Logged 02.09.2008
BER
[This fragment is a hand-written notebook found, apparently, by a FNA recon and recov team. No further information is available.]
The evacuees had been abandoned on the roadside campsite. The evacuation itself, from the areas surrounding Tampere had been chaotic and incomplete. And after the trucks had been emptied here, they had just rolled away with the military reservists and the VSS men, never to return. The people now inhabiting the log cabins and the round military-issue tents had been waiting for a week to get word when and where to they would be moved next. The campsite's main building was packed with people, because there still was wood to warm it – and would be, as the men had cut down several trees in the nearby forest to keep the supply up. One wall of the big hall was covered by huge a drying woodpile.
Food, however, was running out. The campsite caretaker's calls to the municipal authorities had been in vain. The evacuees were divided on why this was so, maybe there really wasn't food or maybe the board had decided to disregard the evacuees entirely. Or maybe the local authorities were really not functioning at all. Be it as it was, all the traffic on the road was ”military” vehicles or refugees; just a few of the former from time to time, ones that never really stopped and lot more of the latter, who were told off by the people in the campsite: there really was no further room here for the unfortunate ones on the move. The only positive side to this all was that very few of the people were sick or injured, those few were now in the ”hospital cabin” presided over by girl who had been studying to become a nurse when the war broke out.
The caretaker, a sixtyish man with silver hair, was also the civil defence supervisor for the campsite. He and the few employees here were doing the best they could for the evacuees, but clearly they were outmatched and exhausted. These days, the man just sat in his office, staring at the wall. I knew he hadn't slept all week.
That day I was sitting with Raili on the long bench by the roadside windows in the hall, it had been for hours because I knew we'd lose the spot on the bench if we left even for a moment. From time to time she would cry and ask where we were and why or she complain about her hunger. There was nothing I could do about that, unfortunately.
Suddenly I saw headlights on the road. It was afternoon and the shadows were again falling. I don't know why, but I grabbed Raili and walked out with her, to see who was coming. Some others followed us out, too, but most stayed put, having resigned to the fact that the passing vehicles would not stop here, not even if someone tried standing in their way – one man had been nearly ran over when he tried to stop a military truck.
Two large vehicles arrived and actually this time pulled over by the campsite, a red civilian-issue Sisu truck and a green bus following it. As the truck stopped, a group of soldiers with raincoats over their winter overcoats clambered off the open back and fanned out around the truck. A man wearing an German-style coal-scuttle helmet and dangling a gas mask around his neck appeared to be their leader. After exchanging some words with one of his men he made a beeline for the main building, three soldiers in tow.
The bus had the matte-green ”military” paint on it, but it had been hastily applied and one could still see the text ”Pohjolan Liikenne” beneath. The panel up front said ”Pikavuoro Helsinki-Kajaani”. There were also people coming off the bus. Most of them were not military. Some had scarfs wrapped around their faces. They were stretching their limbs and some of them were smoking. There was even some laughter; it made them seem much like tourists.
As couple of the men who came out with us approached the soldiers, I started to sidle up to the bus, holding Raili by the hand and pulling her along. Because there were only a few of us as of yet, the people did not seem to mind our presence. As I had crept close enough, I sought to make eye contact with a blonde woman little to the side of the group. She was smoking, and I asked her for a cigarette. I was encouraged by the fact that she actually offered the pack to me and looked pityingly at Raili. Smokes had been at a premium at the campsite, so I took all of this as a good sign. While attempting to make conversation with her I slowly made my way closer to the center of the group. A couple of the men looked at me a bit funny, but didn't say anything. One of them, with a very familiar face, winked at me.
After a moment the four soldiers stormed out of the building, one of them carrying bags and several evacuees following at their heels. The men from the campsite were cursing and shouting at the soldiers. It looked like the officer had ”confiscated” a lot of the food still left at the camp, at gunpoint. Two of the troopers with him kept their rifles fixed at the men following them. Some of the were waving pieces of firewood. As the officer barked orders, the soldiers formed a line raising their weapons against the evacuees and some of them started pushing the people by the bus to get inside. The blonde woman, looking from side to side, took me by my other hand and led me aboard the bus among the confusion. I pulled Raili along.
Outside, more people poured out of the building as the soldiers started to climb aboard the truck. One of them raised his rifle and shot a burst into the air. As the truck started to move, the last soldiers were still climbing aboard and kicking at the evacuees trying to grab them. The officer pulled out his pistol and shot at one of them, who dropped to the ground. The truck and the bus turned to the road and as I looked back, the men were throwing firewood after the leaving vehicles.
The inside of the bus was warm and the air was very stuffy. There were some people sleeping in the front part as we settled into the back. The woman sat us down and gave me a blanket, which I wrapped around Raili; she was shivering. The woman looked so familiar, and it kept bugging me, so after sitting there quietly for a time, while the people around tried to pretend we didn't exist, I asked her quietly if I knew her from somewhere.
She smiled, confusedly.
” - I am pretty sure you know me, or at least of me. My name is Armi.”
I looked at her for a moment and then it hit me. Of course. She was Armi. And the man sleeping in the seat behind her was Danny.
After that I looked around the the bus and understood why I had though the man who winked at me was familiar. He was, because there were a lot of different people in the bus I knew from the TV or from magazines... from before. There was a young woman that was obviously Mona Carita. And Katri Helena sat across from her. When I turned around and looked two seats behind me, I caught the eye of a man with stubbled cheeks, wearing what looked like a disarrayed infantry reservist's uniform but with the rank patches of a Colonel. He looked almost exactly like in those patriotic TV spots on YLE 1 in December.
Vesa-Matti Loiri looked at me and rolled his eyes.
” - Armi, you really should stop bringing in your stray refugees. I mean it. Sooner or later the Lieutenant finds out what you have done, again, and you know what that means.”
Armi Aavikko looked back at the actor-singer. There was fire in her eyes.
” - I couldn't leave them out there. Don't you have any heart? We should try to help the people any way we can!”
” - Really, help the people?”, Loiri said in a mocking voice.
” - If you haven't noticed, the society is collapsing around us and you'd help any evacuee and refugee out there? Please. Just look at us. We can barely help ourselves. We are running blindly across the country to find a safe place with functional authorities and, preferably, no radioactivity – which I doubt even exists. And we are at the mercy of a crazed Lieutenant commanding a military band gone rogue and raiding the countryside left and right. I mean that's what they were doing back there. Robbing the people of the last food they had. Saatanan perkele!”
He launched into a tirade against the war, how his last film had been cancelled by the state and how parts of it had been used for propaganda. How he had been given the choice to go on a state-run entertainment tour or being sent to the front. How he had ended up on this demented odyssey across the dark post-nuclear forests of the Finnish Lakeland.
Finally he ended his speech, which I think the rest of the people in the bus had already heard before and looked ahead despondently, sighing.
From the back, a clearly inebriated Juice Leskinen stepped up and handed him a bottle of Koskenkorva. It was almost full.
”- Really, another full bottle?”, Loiri asked incredulously, even if with a hint of a smile. Took a swig off the bottle.
Leskinen winked and retrieved the container.
” - You know I have my means.”
Raili had miraculously fallen asleep despite Loiri's rant, and I put the blanket more tightly around her. It was already dark outside as we rolled on through seemingly endless forests. No lights could be seen on either side of the road. The musicians, singers and actors around me continued their banter. From time to time, someone started to sing something and some of the others joined in. Those who had partaken in destroying Leskinen's prodigious stash of liquer were the most loud. When it got quiet, especially after Frederik passed out on his seat, a nearly bald, bearded man would launch into a joke or a story, those becoming increasingly macabre and apocalyptic as the night wore on. Since then, I always had a huge respect for Spede Pasanen as a man of words and humor. I can't remember, though, if I ever saw him again after that.
After Mikko Jokela – and some others from Kaseva, I believe - had sung ”Strip-tease tanssija” and ”Vanha mies”, the now really drunken Loiri repeated his tirade from before, now including an even more absurd amount of swearing. And some of the others joined him in cursing the world's political leaders and soldiers to the lowest of Hells existing in any reality.
But then an older man with glasses and a mustache spoke from the back seat. His voice was unhurried and fatherly. It had a Kotka twang.
” - Vesku, please, and all the rest of you. Don't you realize the war is the best thing to happen to you. As artists, i mean. Just imagine the books you might write, thesongs you might create, the films you could make after living through this all. If this is not inspiration, then what is?”
He smiled sardonically.
Beside him, Juice Leskinen nodded sagely.
” - You kids listen to the man. Junnu is absolutely right. It is a great time to be an artist. It is really the only time to be an artist and a storyteller.”
He adjusted his glasses and reached for his bottle but, deciding otherwise, withdrew his hand.
” - But there is more. We are now needed more then ever before. After we reach where ever we are going, we will have to work more than we did in our previous lives. Sing, write, play. We do that, and maybe, just maybe, we can stop the country and ourselves from going mad.”
It was quiet for a long time after that. Some of the people nodded. Others just sat there wordlessly. Nobody really raised an objection, but then most were very tired. After a few minutes the bus was silent, save snoring. And the inane ramblings of Frederik, who seemed to be talking in his sleep.
In the morning I woke up to find the bus stopped. But the light of the new day wasn't what woke me up. It was a soldier, who shook my shoulder and gestured towards the door with his hand. Outside, the officer in the German helmet was having an argument with another officer, one I had seen in the bus wearing an old-fashioned parade uniform under his winter coat. As the soldier shook me again, I grabbed Raili and followed him out of the bus. Most people around me were still sleeping.
” - ...And I am the superior officer! You can't just overrule me the way you...”
The officer from the bus was talking, and the other man looked at him seriously. And then interrupted him.
” - I am sorry, Music Captain, but it is I who is the real soldier around here. If we were writing a concerto, maybe, or staging a recital, I'd leave it to you. But we have to get these people into safety. And that means we are going to do it like I say. Got it, Sir?”
The Captain opened his mouth to object, but before he got to say anything the Lieutenant struck him with his pistol. The Captain dropped to the ground, then spat blood on the snow.
” - Now, Captain, get back into the bus with your beloved entertainers. We'll be leaving shortly.”
Cursing under his breath, the Captain rose and stumbled towards the bus. I looked at him, and he looked away as he met my gaze. In the back of the truck, the members of the military band were carefully trying to look at nothing at all.
” - And you, then”, the Lieutenant said looking to me and Raili.
” - We are not here to evacuate ordinary civilians. Ours is a mission to save an important part of Finnish culture, such as it is”, he said.
He looked disgusted.
” - You two can bugger off. Try to get back on the bus and I'll fucking shoot you.”
With that, he waved his hand to the soldier driving the bus and climbed in the truck's cab. The truck and the bus took off, leaving us standing at an abandoned gas station with boarded doors. As I looked at the receding tail lights, Raili tugged at my sleeve.
” - Mother, when are we home? I am so hungry!”
She looked miserable.
” - Raili,” I said, frustrated at the situation, " am not your mother. I am your daughter and my name is Anne. Remember?”
My mother, at the ripe age of 57, had become a child again. She looked at me and shook her head.
” - Home. I want to go home.”
Far away,
Happiness is gone, far away
I lost my peace of mind,
But I guess I'll get it back
Only one,
Might be a place without persecution,
The wilderness,
Share it with me...
(Chorus)
Kuusamo,
Now Kuusamo calls for me
I see a strong forest
And a blue fell
Kuusamo,
Now Kuusamo calls for me
Only there
I can find my peace
Danny: Kuusamo (1976)
XXII. On the Way to the North
Fragment 35
Logged 02.09.2008
BER
[This fragment is a hand-written notebook found, apparently, by a FNA recon and recov team. No further information is available.]
The evacuees had been abandoned on the roadside campsite. The evacuation itself, from the areas surrounding Tampere had been chaotic and incomplete. And after the trucks had been emptied here, they had just rolled away with the military reservists and the VSS men, never to return. The people now inhabiting the log cabins and the round military-issue tents had been waiting for a week to get word when and where to they would be moved next. The campsite's main building was packed with people, because there still was wood to warm it – and would be, as the men had cut down several trees in the nearby forest to keep the supply up. One wall of the big hall was covered by huge a drying woodpile.
Food, however, was running out. The campsite caretaker's calls to the municipal authorities had been in vain. The evacuees were divided on why this was so, maybe there really wasn't food or maybe the board had decided to disregard the evacuees entirely. Or maybe the local authorities were really not functioning at all. Be it as it was, all the traffic on the road was ”military” vehicles or refugees; just a few of the former from time to time, ones that never really stopped and lot more of the latter, who were told off by the people in the campsite: there really was no further room here for the unfortunate ones on the move. The only positive side to this all was that very few of the people were sick or injured, those few were now in the ”hospital cabin” presided over by girl who had been studying to become a nurse when the war broke out.
The caretaker, a sixtyish man with silver hair, was also the civil defence supervisor for the campsite. He and the few employees here were doing the best they could for the evacuees, but clearly they were outmatched and exhausted. These days, the man just sat in his office, staring at the wall. I knew he hadn't slept all week.
That day I was sitting with Raili on the long bench by the roadside windows in the hall, it had been for hours because I knew we'd lose the spot on the bench if we left even for a moment. From time to time she would cry and ask where we were and why or she complain about her hunger. There was nothing I could do about that, unfortunately.
Suddenly I saw headlights on the road. It was afternoon and the shadows were again falling. I don't know why, but I grabbed Raili and walked out with her, to see who was coming. Some others followed us out, too, but most stayed put, having resigned to the fact that the passing vehicles would not stop here, not even if someone tried standing in their way – one man had been nearly ran over when he tried to stop a military truck.
Two large vehicles arrived and actually this time pulled over by the campsite, a red civilian-issue Sisu truck and a green bus following it. As the truck stopped, a group of soldiers with raincoats over their winter overcoats clambered off the open back and fanned out around the truck. A man wearing an German-style coal-scuttle helmet and dangling a gas mask around his neck appeared to be their leader. After exchanging some words with one of his men he made a beeline for the main building, three soldiers in tow.
The bus had the matte-green ”military” paint on it, but it had been hastily applied and one could still see the text ”Pohjolan Liikenne” beneath. The panel up front said ”Pikavuoro Helsinki-Kajaani”. There were also people coming off the bus. Most of them were not military. Some had scarfs wrapped around their faces. They were stretching their limbs and some of them were smoking. There was even some laughter; it made them seem much like tourists.
As couple of the men who came out with us approached the soldiers, I started to sidle up to the bus, holding Raili by the hand and pulling her along. Because there were only a few of us as of yet, the people did not seem to mind our presence. As I had crept close enough, I sought to make eye contact with a blonde woman little to the side of the group. She was smoking, and I asked her for a cigarette. I was encouraged by the fact that she actually offered the pack to me and looked pityingly at Raili. Smokes had been at a premium at the campsite, so I took all of this as a good sign. While attempting to make conversation with her I slowly made my way closer to the center of the group. A couple of the men looked at me a bit funny, but didn't say anything. One of them, with a very familiar face, winked at me.
After a moment the four soldiers stormed out of the building, one of them carrying bags and several evacuees following at their heels. The men from the campsite were cursing and shouting at the soldiers. It looked like the officer had ”confiscated” a lot of the food still left at the camp, at gunpoint. Two of the troopers with him kept their rifles fixed at the men following them. Some of the were waving pieces of firewood. As the officer barked orders, the soldiers formed a line raising their weapons against the evacuees and some of them started pushing the people by the bus to get inside. The blonde woman, looking from side to side, took me by my other hand and led me aboard the bus among the confusion. I pulled Raili along.
Outside, more people poured out of the building as the soldiers started to climb aboard the truck. One of them raised his rifle and shot a burst into the air. As the truck started to move, the last soldiers were still climbing aboard and kicking at the evacuees trying to grab them. The officer pulled out his pistol and shot at one of them, who dropped to the ground. The truck and the bus turned to the road and as I looked back, the men were throwing firewood after the leaving vehicles.
The inside of the bus was warm and the air was very stuffy. There were some people sleeping in the front part as we settled into the back. The woman sat us down and gave me a blanket, which I wrapped around Raili; she was shivering. The woman looked so familiar, and it kept bugging me, so after sitting there quietly for a time, while the people around tried to pretend we didn't exist, I asked her quietly if I knew her from somewhere.
She smiled, confusedly.
” - I am pretty sure you know me, or at least of me. My name is Armi.”
I looked at her for a moment and then it hit me. Of course. She was Armi. And the man sleeping in the seat behind her was Danny.
After that I looked around the the bus and understood why I had though the man who winked at me was familiar. He was, because there were a lot of different people in the bus I knew from the TV or from magazines... from before. There was a young woman that was obviously Mona Carita. And Katri Helena sat across from her. When I turned around and looked two seats behind me, I caught the eye of a man with stubbled cheeks, wearing what looked like a disarrayed infantry reservist's uniform but with the rank patches of a Colonel. He looked almost exactly like in those patriotic TV spots on YLE 1 in December.
Vesa-Matti Loiri looked at me and rolled his eyes.
” - Armi, you really should stop bringing in your stray refugees. I mean it. Sooner or later the Lieutenant finds out what you have done, again, and you know what that means.”
Armi Aavikko looked back at the actor-singer. There was fire in her eyes.
” - I couldn't leave them out there. Don't you have any heart? We should try to help the people any way we can!”
” - Really, help the people?”, Loiri said in a mocking voice.
” - If you haven't noticed, the society is collapsing around us and you'd help any evacuee and refugee out there? Please. Just look at us. We can barely help ourselves. We are running blindly across the country to find a safe place with functional authorities and, preferably, no radioactivity – which I doubt even exists. And we are at the mercy of a crazed Lieutenant commanding a military band gone rogue and raiding the countryside left and right. I mean that's what they were doing back there. Robbing the people of the last food they had. Saatanan perkele!”
He launched into a tirade against the war, how his last film had been cancelled by the state and how parts of it had been used for propaganda. How he had been given the choice to go on a state-run entertainment tour or being sent to the front. How he had ended up on this demented odyssey across the dark post-nuclear forests of the Finnish Lakeland.
Finally he ended his speech, which I think the rest of the people in the bus had already heard before and looked ahead despondently, sighing.
From the back, a clearly inebriated Juice Leskinen stepped up and handed him a bottle of Koskenkorva. It was almost full.
”- Really, another full bottle?”, Loiri asked incredulously, even if with a hint of a smile. Took a swig off the bottle.
Leskinen winked and retrieved the container.
” - You know I have my means.”
Raili had miraculously fallen asleep despite Loiri's rant, and I put the blanket more tightly around her. It was already dark outside as we rolled on through seemingly endless forests. No lights could be seen on either side of the road. The musicians, singers and actors around me continued their banter. From time to time, someone started to sing something and some of the others joined in. Those who had partaken in destroying Leskinen's prodigious stash of liquer were the most loud. When it got quiet, especially after Frederik passed out on his seat, a nearly bald, bearded man would launch into a joke or a story, those becoming increasingly macabre and apocalyptic as the night wore on. Since then, I always had a huge respect for Spede Pasanen as a man of words and humor. I can't remember, though, if I ever saw him again after that.
After Mikko Jokela – and some others from Kaseva, I believe - had sung ”Strip-tease tanssija” and ”Vanha mies”, the now really drunken Loiri repeated his tirade from before, now including an even more absurd amount of swearing. And some of the others joined him in cursing the world's political leaders and soldiers to the lowest of Hells existing in any reality.
But then an older man with glasses and a mustache spoke from the back seat. His voice was unhurried and fatherly. It had a Kotka twang.
” - Vesku, please, and all the rest of you. Don't you realize the war is the best thing to happen to you. As artists, i mean. Just imagine the books you might write, thesongs you might create, the films you could make after living through this all. If this is not inspiration, then what is?”
He smiled sardonically.
Beside him, Juice Leskinen nodded sagely.
” - You kids listen to the man. Junnu is absolutely right. It is a great time to be an artist. It is really the only time to be an artist and a storyteller.”
He adjusted his glasses and reached for his bottle but, deciding otherwise, withdrew his hand.
” - But there is more. We are now needed more then ever before. After we reach where ever we are going, we will have to work more than we did in our previous lives. Sing, write, play. We do that, and maybe, just maybe, we can stop the country and ourselves from going mad.”
It was quiet for a long time after that. Some of the people nodded. Others just sat there wordlessly. Nobody really raised an objection, but then most were very tired. After a few minutes the bus was silent, save snoring. And the inane ramblings of Frederik, who seemed to be talking in his sleep.
In the morning I woke up to find the bus stopped. But the light of the new day wasn't what woke me up. It was a soldier, who shook my shoulder and gestured towards the door with his hand. Outside, the officer in the German helmet was having an argument with another officer, one I had seen in the bus wearing an old-fashioned parade uniform under his winter coat. As the soldier shook me again, I grabbed Raili and followed him out of the bus. Most people around me were still sleeping.
” - ...And I am the superior officer! You can't just overrule me the way you...”
The officer from the bus was talking, and the other man looked at him seriously. And then interrupted him.
” - I am sorry, Music Captain, but it is I who is the real soldier around here. If we were writing a concerto, maybe, or staging a recital, I'd leave it to you. But we have to get these people into safety. And that means we are going to do it like I say. Got it, Sir?”
The Captain opened his mouth to object, but before he got to say anything the Lieutenant struck him with his pistol. The Captain dropped to the ground, then spat blood on the snow.
” - Now, Captain, get back into the bus with your beloved entertainers. We'll be leaving shortly.”
Cursing under his breath, the Captain rose and stumbled towards the bus. I looked at him, and he looked away as he met my gaze. In the back of the truck, the members of the military band were carefully trying to look at nothing at all.
” - And you, then”, the Lieutenant said looking to me and Raili.
” - We are not here to evacuate ordinary civilians. Ours is a mission to save an important part of Finnish culture, such as it is”, he said.
He looked disgusted.
” - You two can bugger off. Try to get back on the bus and I'll fucking shoot you.”
With that, he waved his hand to the soldier driving the bus and climbed in the truck's cab. The truck and the bus took off, leaving us standing at an abandoned gas station with boarded doors. As I looked at the receding tail lights, Raili tugged at my sleeve.
” - Mother, when are we home? I am so hungry!”
She looked miserable.
” - Raili,” I said, frustrated at the situation, " am not your mother. I am your daughter and my name is Anne. Remember?”
My mother, at the ripe age of 57, had become a child again. She looked at me and shook her head.
” - Home. I want to go home.”
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"But without KALAKUKKO, we were fumbling in the dark."
It's too bad if this warlord ends up executing his cargo when their food supplies run out, since situation in what used to be Finland is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. "Wish winter would come and kill the poor", as the old Finnish proverb goes.
It's too bad if this warlord ends up executing his cargo when their food supplies run out, since situation in what used to be Finland is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. "Wish winter would come and kill the poor", as the old Finnish proverb goes.
Absolutely brilliant, as is the original timeline - which pushed me to register to these forums.
I've been working on a short story set in the same timeline (but some years after the nukular exchange). Given it's set in Finland, would you, DrakonFin, mind if I posted it here? No need to treat it as "canon" or anything, of course.
I've been working on a short story set in the same timeline (but some years after the nukular exchange). Given it's set in Finland, would you, DrakonFin, mind if I posted it here? No need to treat it as "canon" or anything, of course.
Thank you and welcome aboard!
I say go ahead. But could you please first send the story to me as a private message so I can look it over. Let's work together to make it canon.
Oh, and as for myself I promise to put up a new update first thing next week.
...
(Chorus)
And every soldier wants to defend his life
He kills when it is needed even if not willingly
If life to you is a value in itself,
Then you'll have to admit
Every soldier is a destroyer of values and the enemy
Every soldier is, every soldier is,
Every soldier is the enemy.
Jarkko Martikainen: Jokainen sotilas on vihollinen (2009)
XXIII. Godforsaken
Interview nr. 242, 03.03.2010. ABB.
Subject: Woman, 42 (F154)
Occupation in 1984: N/A
Location: [REDACTED], Northern FNA.
[The subject is a gaunt woman in her forties. She has fair, short hair in the style prevalent in the FNA. She wears a denim overall with a wool jersey and glasses with only the left lense.]
[Thank you for agreeing to the interview. My name is [REDACTED] and I would like to ask you some questions about the aftermath of the events in 1984. Do you feel you are up to it?]
Sure, go ahead. [Looks to me with an expression of amusement and defiance] If you are sure you can handle it, that is.
[I think I can. All right, I understand you were living in northern Finland when the war broke out? What was it like?]
I lived on a farm in a small village with my parents and my two little sisters. We had some cows and a few fields. In January, I think, my father was called to the army. I remember when he left, in his winter clothes and with his backpack. He hugged me and whispered to me to look after my mother and my sisters. He said he was counting on me. When he climbed aboard the truck waiting to take him to Suomussalmi my mother cried. I didn't. I don't know why, I guess I understood he had to go. I never saw my father again.
Our village was not evacuated. I guess we were both too south and west for that. But we had to accommodate some evacuees ourselves. Some empty farms and the village hall were taken over for that. And people had to give over rooms in their houses too. We got an old couple from Lapland. They were kind of nice, even if the woman, Paula, was very sad all the time. My mother said she missed the reindeer she was forced to leave behind.
There were really no soldiers in our village, only some guys driving the evacuation trucks. The local Civil Defence chief, who was also a policeman, went around to make sure everyone had provisions and a had built a shelter of sorts. I could see he was very stressed, but managed to joke about it when he visited us, driving his old Volvo. The soldiers going north and then coming back south used the big road some ten kilometers to the west. The village's boys went there on their bikes or on skis to see the convoys, and then returned to tell us about weapons and to run around playing war. I thought it was stupid. Even the boy I liked, in my school, was very foolish. [Smiles a little.]
[And what happened when the bombs fell?]
We hid in the basement, of course. It was very cramped with the old couple, but we managed. We stayed there for what seemed like months, but was probably only a couple of weeks. My mother went out to take care of the cows once in a while: we had sheltered them in the cowshed the best we could. We had the food and the water we needed, but it was very cold. The old woman became sick and my sisters kept crying all the time, the little brats. But I can't fault them, I guess.
[How was it when you came out?]
Confusing. We still couldn't go out, and on the radio we could not hear anything – only sometimes something in Swedish we could not understand. And when Reijo finally came around – he was the policeman – to say it was safe to go out for a bit every day and that he was starting to organise the food distribution in the village centre – that's when it all started to go wrong.
[Shakes her head]
[What do you mean? It seems like your situation was pretty good, in comparison to many others.]
That's what you might think. But the thing is that our village was going to Hell in a hand basket, and it was all due to the evacuees. Before the war, it was an OK place. With Reijo policing it and putting the occasional drunken farmer to rights and Mister Mäkikangas, the village Pastor to look after our spiritual needs.
But in December the kindly old Pastor had died. We all went to the funeral and my father, who was the chairman of the local church board, gave a beautiful speech. I knew the Pastor from sunday school and he was a very nice man, if a bit strict and silly. My confirmation would have been the next summer. There was talk of a new Pastor, but somehow with the war coming he never arrived.
Some of the people that were evacuated to our village were very religious. Jehovahs, my father told them. Many of them were men, and they didn't go to the army. My father said they didn't believe in war and many of them had gone to the prison to avoid military service. Even in a time of war those were considered unreliable and were not called to the army. So when my father and all the other grown men from the village left, the only men around, really, were those Jehovahs. And despite that Reijo didn't like it, they had managed to gain a permit to use the chapel for their meetings.
All through February the Jehovahs would visit the houses in the village, to preach God's wrath and punishment to the earthly authorities and their soldiers, the servants of Satan like they said. They predicted the end of the world. They put up posters everywhere to proclaim the end of days. I know Reijo would go to their meetings to chastise them, but it didnt't seem to do any good.
There was one man who seemed to be the leader of the Jehovahs. Liekki, they called him. A tall, dark man in late thirties. He had been to prison for his beliefs. He was handsome too, in a rogue sort of way. He was their firebrand, a born preacher. He smiled, he spoke earnestly and he was very confident. When he went from house to house, he managed to bring the people to their meetings. The women, especially, with their men gone Lord knows where.
And so the seed had been planted. After the nuclear explosions, with contacts lost everywhere, the people flocked to the chapel, to the Jehovahs and Liekki. When my father had been home, my mother too had looked to the Jehovahs with contempt. But now, after a visit from the preacher, she made me go to the meetings with her. Before I knew it, Liekki took to my mother and started visiting us with various pretexts. I didn't like the way he looked at me.
All the while Reijo was organising for our survival, with many villagers helping him. Mostly those who hadn't fallen to Liekki's spell. Cows and other livestock were confiscated and slaughtered to provide people with food. Other food drives were organised. The policeman had frequent arguments with Liekki's followers, I understood, and Liekki started to call him an agent of Babylon, a collaborator of Satan. I really liked Reijo, he was a friend of my fathers's and I didn't like Liekki's speeches a bit.
One night Liekki was visiting us, and my mother had to go look after our remaining four cows. Liekki spoke to me of the end of the world and how we should prepare for it. He looked wolfish. As I gathered dishes from the table, he came to me and... He grabbed me and tore my dress and then he...
[Are you all right? Should we take a break? Here, take some water.]
No, [shaking her head] it is OK. I want to tell this to you. The preacher, he raped me. I shouted and tried to hit him but he was too strong. After he was done, he threatened me and said he'll call me a liar if I told anyone and that everyone will believe him and hate me. And I guess he was right. He held the village on the palm of his hand. And I couldn't tell even my mother, it would have been so cruel for her. That night I was sick and cried myself to sleep.
In the morning I decided there would be one man who would believe me and who despised Liekki. Reijo. I put on my winter clothes and walked several kilometers to his house. He looked even more tired now, but he listened to me attentively, even asked some questions. And he assured me that Liekki would be punished. ”I am still the law in these parts”, he said looking me in to the eye.
As I was starting to leave, Mika burst in, out of breath. He was the bulky boy of sixteen who acted now as a sort of junior deputy to Reijo. As I stood there by the door, Mika told us that a group of soldiers, probably Russians, had been seen on the road, coming towards the village. Two older men with hunting rifles were waiting in the yard. With their horses they looked like some cavalry of old. Reijo grabbed his pistol and the three men and a boy left to meet the threat to the village.
I wasn't there to see what happened then, but Mika told me about it the next day, tears in his eyes. Going up the road under the iron-grey sky, they came upon the five Russian soldiers. They had looked miserable, he said. Sick, starving, barely alive. But they still had their rifles with them. Reijo had attempted to parley with the Russians, with some success it seemed until Heikki, the older of the two men accidentally discharged his weapon, hitting one of the Russians in his foot. The Russians opened fire, then, and so did Reijo and the other farmer. In the end, most men on the road were dead or dying. Only the Russian who was hit first was still breathing, and Mika had miraculously been saved from getting hit. Reijo, the law in those parts, died there on the road.
And the law died with him. There was know nobody left to stand up to Liekki and his toadies. That night, Reijo and the two farmers were buried in the cemetary next to the chapel, with a simple ceremony. Liekki used the occasion to call for declining all contact to any authorities and the rest of the world. ”Every soldier is the enemy”, he said. The surviving Russian was locked up in a shed. I managed to persuade Mika to sneak some food and bandages to him: even if I hated him for what he had done, it was no reason to leave him to die.
That night I made my decision. In the morning I feigned sickness and managed to convince my mother that I should stay in bed. As she left for the meeting at the chapel, with my little sisters, I got clothed, packed my backpack with some necessary items and some food. And left the house. I walked carefully past the chapel, heard the people singing hymns. As I continued along the road, I left behind my family and the place I had called home. Left a village that had decided to abandon society and embrace the end of the world. I remember thinking I had betrayed my father's trust.
In a few days, I would turn sixteen.
(Chorus)
And every soldier wants to defend his life
He kills when it is needed even if not willingly
If life to you is a value in itself,
Then you'll have to admit
Every soldier is a destroyer of values and the enemy
Every soldier is, every soldier is,
Every soldier is the enemy.
Jarkko Martikainen: Jokainen sotilas on vihollinen (2009)
XXIII. Godforsaken
Interview nr. 242, 03.03.2010. ABB.
Subject: Woman, 42 (F154)
Occupation in 1984: N/A
Location: [REDACTED], Northern FNA.
[The subject is a gaunt woman in her forties. She has fair, short hair in the style prevalent in the FNA. She wears a denim overall with a wool jersey and glasses with only the left lense.]
[Thank you for agreeing to the interview. My name is [REDACTED] and I would like to ask you some questions about the aftermath of the events in 1984. Do you feel you are up to it?]
Sure, go ahead. [Looks to me with an expression of amusement and defiance] If you are sure you can handle it, that is.
[I think I can. All right, I understand you were living in northern Finland when the war broke out? What was it like?]
I lived on a farm in a small village with my parents and my two little sisters. We had some cows and a few fields. In January, I think, my father was called to the army. I remember when he left, in his winter clothes and with his backpack. He hugged me and whispered to me to look after my mother and my sisters. He said he was counting on me. When he climbed aboard the truck waiting to take him to Suomussalmi my mother cried. I didn't. I don't know why, I guess I understood he had to go. I never saw my father again.
Our village was not evacuated. I guess we were both too south and west for that. But we had to accommodate some evacuees ourselves. Some empty farms and the village hall were taken over for that. And people had to give over rooms in their houses too. We got an old couple from Lapland. They were kind of nice, even if the woman, Paula, was very sad all the time. My mother said she missed the reindeer she was forced to leave behind.
There were really no soldiers in our village, only some guys driving the evacuation trucks. The local Civil Defence chief, who was also a policeman, went around to make sure everyone had provisions and a had built a shelter of sorts. I could see he was very stressed, but managed to joke about it when he visited us, driving his old Volvo. The soldiers going north and then coming back south used the big road some ten kilometers to the west. The village's boys went there on their bikes or on skis to see the convoys, and then returned to tell us about weapons and to run around playing war. I thought it was stupid. Even the boy I liked, in my school, was very foolish. [Smiles a little.]
[And what happened when the bombs fell?]
We hid in the basement, of course. It was very cramped with the old couple, but we managed. We stayed there for what seemed like months, but was probably only a couple of weeks. My mother went out to take care of the cows once in a while: we had sheltered them in the cowshed the best we could. We had the food and the water we needed, but it was very cold. The old woman became sick and my sisters kept crying all the time, the little brats. But I can't fault them, I guess.
[How was it when you came out?]
Confusing. We still couldn't go out, and on the radio we could not hear anything – only sometimes something in Swedish we could not understand. And when Reijo finally came around – he was the policeman – to say it was safe to go out for a bit every day and that he was starting to organise the food distribution in the village centre – that's when it all started to go wrong.
[Shakes her head]
[What do you mean? It seems like your situation was pretty good, in comparison to many others.]
That's what you might think. But the thing is that our village was going to Hell in a hand basket, and it was all due to the evacuees. Before the war, it was an OK place. With Reijo policing it and putting the occasional drunken farmer to rights and Mister Mäkikangas, the village Pastor to look after our spiritual needs.
But in December the kindly old Pastor had died. We all went to the funeral and my father, who was the chairman of the local church board, gave a beautiful speech. I knew the Pastor from sunday school and he was a very nice man, if a bit strict and silly. My confirmation would have been the next summer. There was talk of a new Pastor, but somehow with the war coming he never arrived.
Some of the people that were evacuated to our village were very religious. Jehovahs, my father told them. Many of them were men, and they didn't go to the army. My father said they didn't believe in war and many of them had gone to the prison to avoid military service. Even in a time of war those were considered unreliable and were not called to the army. So when my father and all the other grown men from the village left, the only men around, really, were those Jehovahs. And despite that Reijo didn't like it, they had managed to gain a permit to use the chapel for their meetings.
All through February the Jehovahs would visit the houses in the village, to preach God's wrath and punishment to the earthly authorities and their soldiers, the servants of Satan like they said. They predicted the end of the world. They put up posters everywhere to proclaim the end of days. I know Reijo would go to their meetings to chastise them, but it didnt't seem to do any good.
There was one man who seemed to be the leader of the Jehovahs. Liekki, they called him. A tall, dark man in late thirties. He had been to prison for his beliefs. He was handsome too, in a rogue sort of way. He was their firebrand, a born preacher. He smiled, he spoke earnestly and he was very confident. When he went from house to house, he managed to bring the people to their meetings. The women, especially, with their men gone Lord knows where.
And so the seed had been planted. After the nuclear explosions, with contacts lost everywhere, the people flocked to the chapel, to the Jehovahs and Liekki. When my father had been home, my mother too had looked to the Jehovahs with contempt. But now, after a visit from the preacher, she made me go to the meetings with her. Before I knew it, Liekki took to my mother and started visiting us with various pretexts. I didn't like the way he looked at me.
All the while Reijo was organising for our survival, with many villagers helping him. Mostly those who hadn't fallen to Liekki's spell. Cows and other livestock were confiscated and slaughtered to provide people with food. Other food drives were organised. The policeman had frequent arguments with Liekki's followers, I understood, and Liekki started to call him an agent of Babylon, a collaborator of Satan. I really liked Reijo, he was a friend of my fathers's and I didn't like Liekki's speeches a bit.
One night Liekki was visiting us, and my mother had to go look after our remaining four cows. Liekki spoke to me of the end of the world and how we should prepare for it. He looked wolfish. As I gathered dishes from the table, he came to me and... He grabbed me and tore my dress and then he...
[Are you all right? Should we take a break? Here, take some water.]
No, [shaking her head] it is OK. I want to tell this to you. The preacher, he raped me. I shouted and tried to hit him but he was too strong. After he was done, he threatened me and said he'll call me a liar if I told anyone and that everyone will believe him and hate me. And I guess he was right. He held the village on the palm of his hand. And I couldn't tell even my mother, it would have been so cruel for her. That night I was sick and cried myself to sleep.
In the morning I decided there would be one man who would believe me and who despised Liekki. Reijo. I put on my winter clothes and walked several kilometers to his house. He looked even more tired now, but he listened to me attentively, even asked some questions. And he assured me that Liekki would be punished. ”I am still the law in these parts”, he said looking me in to the eye.
As I was starting to leave, Mika burst in, out of breath. He was the bulky boy of sixteen who acted now as a sort of junior deputy to Reijo. As I stood there by the door, Mika told us that a group of soldiers, probably Russians, had been seen on the road, coming towards the village. Two older men with hunting rifles were waiting in the yard. With their horses they looked like some cavalry of old. Reijo grabbed his pistol and the three men and a boy left to meet the threat to the village.
I wasn't there to see what happened then, but Mika told me about it the next day, tears in his eyes. Going up the road under the iron-grey sky, they came upon the five Russian soldiers. They had looked miserable, he said. Sick, starving, barely alive. But they still had their rifles with them. Reijo had attempted to parley with the Russians, with some success it seemed until Heikki, the older of the two men accidentally discharged his weapon, hitting one of the Russians in his foot. The Russians opened fire, then, and so did Reijo and the other farmer. In the end, most men on the road were dead or dying. Only the Russian who was hit first was still breathing, and Mika had miraculously been saved from getting hit. Reijo, the law in those parts, died there on the road.
And the law died with him. There was know nobody left to stand up to Liekki and his toadies. That night, Reijo and the two farmers were buried in the cemetary next to the chapel, with a simple ceremony. Liekki used the occasion to call for declining all contact to any authorities and the rest of the world. ”Every soldier is the enemy”, he said. The surviving Russian was locked up in a shed. I managed to persuade Mika to sneak some food and bandages to him: even if I hated him for what he had done, it was no reason to leave him to die.
That night I made my decision. In the morning I feigned sickness and managed to convince my mother that I should stay in bed. As she left for the meeting at the chapel, with my little sisters, I got clothed, packed my backpack with some necessary items and some food. And left the house. I walked carefully past the chapel, heard the people singing hymns. As I continued along the road, I left behind my family and the place I had called home. Left a village that had decided to abandon society and embrace the end of the world. I remember thinking I had betrayed my father's trust.
In a few days, I would turn sixteen.
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