alternatehistory.com


Icebound



The man had many letters to write. Sitting at the small table, he completed line after line of text in a meticulous, neat hand. In a previous life, he had been a journalist and writing was his bread and butter. That the letters he now wrote in the occasionally flickering electric light were diplomatic correspondence did not change that matter a whit.

All was quiet around the man, apart from the creaks of the metallic structures around him, the occasional footsteps in the corridor outside and of course the heavy, rhytmic sounds of the 6900 HP steam engines down in the engine room. From time to time, the man looked up from his work and listened if there were any sounds coming from the next cabin where his wife and two of his daughters were sleeping. So far, it had been all quiet and he dearly hoped the women were fast asleep.

He himself knew this was a night he would not sleep.

Kaarel Eenpalu, the (Acting) President of the Republic of Estonia had come to hate sea voyages as of late.

He had been under serious mental and physical strain for months now, and that might also be a factor for his sleeplessness. Since the summer of 1939 when the Soviet government started demanding various diplomatic concessions from Estonia in the guise of protecting its security and interests in the Baltic Sea area, Eenpalu's days had been filled with negotiations, meetings, long nights at the office at Toompea Hill and continuous stress.

In some ways then, when in November 1939 the Estonian leadership had agreed with Finland to reject any further Soviet demands and, in Moscow, Selter and Paasikivi had together signalled their refusal to sign any Soviet treaties imposed on them, for a while the situation had almost been a relief to him. After the diplomatic route had been severed, there was only one option.

Eenpalu reached for another sheet of paper, and thought for a moment what he would write to Mr. Churchill. The letters he was writing were in equal measure thank yous and pleas for help, and the one to the British Prime Minister would be both. A thank you for accepting to host the Estonian Government in Exile in London, and a plea for help for the government as well as for Estonian refugees. And a plea for help for Finland as well, Eenpalu reflected as he dipped his pen to the inkwell.

The evacuation was kicked off when the news reached the capital that Tartu had fallen. It was the last chance to escape the advancing Red Army, Eenpalu had tried to convince President Päts in the government bomb shelter while a part of the city's medieval centre was still ablaze with the fires started by the evening's aerial bomb attack. While firemen and volunteers died on the streets of Tallinn to put out the fires and reports came in of a further air attacks to be expected in twenty minutes, Päts still refused.

” - I am not leaving my capital with my tail between my legs like a scared dog”, the man had said, his jaw set, ”and neither are you!”

The fact that he had been badly wounded in the next Soviet attack had changed his mind pretty quickly.

The beginning of the evacuation felt like true chaos. In the light of the burning city, a convoy of navy and civilian ships slowly left the harbour, led by the icebreaker Suur Tõll, bound for the icy Gulf of Finland. There was a plan to the chaos, though. The evacuation had been planned with the Finns in advance, and as the convoy under Navy Commander Santpank pulled out from Tallinn, Finnish Air Force Blenheim bombers attacked the advancing Soviet formations outside Tartu and there was even some limited Finnish fighter cover over the naval approaches to Tallinn.

It was obvious there would be losses as well. When Eenpalu later discussed this with the Finnish Navy liaison officer, a young lieutenant by the name of Pirhonen, the man only nodded and pointed out that it was war. A few bombers and number of Fokker fighters, along with their crews, were an acceptable loss for allowing the Estonian government to escape.

The very same Pirhonen was now on the bridge of the ship Eenpalu was travelling in, choosing to stay behind as a volunteer like many of his countrymen even if the Finns were no longer officially allies to the Estonian government, not after they had made peace with the Soviets themselves. They had been apologetic about it, of course, but Eenpalu could see why they did it. Had he been in their stead, he would have taken the same deal.

But he wasn't in their stead. Like the Soviet Foreign Minister, Molotov, said, there is no Estonian government in Saaremaa, just small-time pirates on the coast. That was what they had been reduced to, Eenpalu thought, after the Soviets set up their own Estonian People's Government in the ruins of Tallinn.

As the government convoy closed Paldiski and the Hanko Peninsula, it was joined by the Finnish icebreaker Tarmo to help the Estonians to avoid the Finnish defensive minefields and the Suur Tõll to battle the heavy ice that was stopping most naval activity on the Gulf in this January 1940. Eenpalu knew that also the Finnish coastal ships Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen had ostensibly sortied east along the Finnish coast, to support the Finnish operations there. That information was of course false – it had been only ”leaked” to pull Soviet bomber assets away from the Estonian convoy to hunt the coastal ships the Soviets considered quite valuable targets.

Soviet bombers still attacked the convoy three times before it reached its destination the next day. It was only the poor training and tactics of the Soviet airmen that made the bombs they dropped miss the over two thousand Estonian civilians, politicians and soldiers carried to Kuressaare in this desperate operation.

Along the way, miraculously, only nine people died. President Päts was one of them. Eenpalu thought that it was the combination of his wounds from the bomb attack as much it was the shock of the whole situation on his weakened system. He was an old man, after all. He would be buried in Kuressaare the next day. It was a depressing beginning for the government's existence in the new capital, the new president thought when he was sworn in at the town hall in the afternoon.

The next few months would be a purgatory for Eenpalu and his little island domain. While the mainland was being taken over by the Soviets, refugees were now arriving to the Estonian islands across the perilous ice, bringing along them stories of atrocities and purges. Slowly, the population of the islands grew, and soon everything was running out. The Finns tried to help, but there was precious little they could do, in the middle of their own fight. The provisional government (or the Saaremaa Government), like it was now called in the West, sent out pleas of help to any and all. The British and the French answered – they could help Estonia as a part of their future assistance to the Finns. That plan was never realized. The Swedes.. They sent help, blankets, food, fuel, from across the Baltic. A few volunteer ambulance units. Even some weapons arrived on those ships, AA machine guns and three 40 mm Bofors guns General Laidoner would build his precious Medium Battery around.

Laidoner was constantly busy, training his diminished troops, planning the defence of Saaremaa, leading the efforts to harass the Soviet bombers that would arrive to lay waste to Kuressaare almost daily by the few navy ships' obsolete guns and the few AA batteries he had on land. One day, Eenpalu looked at the general that had lost his army, and realized that he was just keeping himself busy to not have to face the issue. He was playing war to forget he had already lost it.

In March the Finns made their peace. A Finnish Aero Ju-52 arrived, to bring a Finnish diplomat who told the Estonian provisional government officially that the Finns had thrown in the towel. As the man made to leave, he turned back to Eenpalu to tell him that his aircraft still had seven free seats in it, in a pinch nine, and it could take the government's leaders along if they wanted.

The president refused. He shook the hand of the diplomat and thanked him for all the support the Finns had given Estonia, and then watched the passenger aircraft take off into the lead-grey sky to trace a westernly route home over the Ålands to avoid Soviet aircraft all the while attacking the Estonian islands.

And yet, the man now at the table thought, here we are again. Ever escaping. The Suur Tõll had left the port of Kuressaare in the dead of night this April 17th, a part of yet another convoy, this time towards Sweden. Word had come down from the mainland that a Soviet amphibious attack was imminent, and this time there was no escaping the fact that it was all over.

There was no Estonia anymore.

Eenpalu was slowly getting ready to become a president in exile. Writing all these letters was his confession. He had failed as the leader of his nation, and now he would become a vagrant, a homeless man relying on the goodwill of others.

He was now no longer thinking these things, though. As sure as he had been that he could not sleep this night, he had been wrong. Mercifully, he had fallen asleep in the middle of a letter addressed to the government of the United States of America, and was now snoring lightly, his head on the table, his cheek smudged by ink from the letter he would have to redo.




In the dark of the night, another man wanted to sleep as well. But in his job, right now, it was impossible.

The captain of the M-96 looked through the periscope to see the dim outline of the ships of the modest convoy in front of him. A slight smile passed his lips.

” - Comrade Senior Lieutenant, Weapons reports tubes 1 through 4 are ready”, a crewman told him matter-of-factly as the submarine creeped closer to the ships in front of them.

The captain of the submarine looked again into the periscope.

” - Weapons, Captain, fire tubes one and two!”

” - Captain, Weapons, firing!”




On the bridge of the Suur Tõll, the Finnish Navy Lieutenant scanned the dark waters of the Baltic Sea in front of the ships. Suddenly something caught his practiced eye.

” - Commander”, he said to the ship's Estonian captain urgently, ”a submarine periscope in bearing 100, 300 meters!”

Suddenly, the bridge was a scene of bustling activity. A ship-wide alert was sounded, and the captain ordered the helm to turn the ship hard to starboard. The few ships in the fleet armed with depth charges were contacted by signal lights to order them to fight against the submarine threat.

For the Suur Tõll, though, it was all too late. The two torpedos closed in right and true and succesfully exploded when they hit the icebreaker amidships.




Postscript

On April 24, 1940, a Finnish coastal artillery sergeant on the fortress island of Örö found a lifering bobbing in the water next to the island's boat quay. The find was dutifully recorded in the diaries of the fortress, and the lifering promptly stored and forgotten among other items of secondary importance in the storage rooms of the super-heavy 12-inch battery's casemate. The island received many Estonian refugees in small boats in 1940, and the soldiers here gave them food and water and then sent them on their way towards Sweden, often with a compass or a blanket or two to help them, and so a single lifering was nothing to write home about.

In 2007, after the fortress was decommissioned as a part of the Finnish military's reorganization effort, the Finnish Coastal Forces Museum sent a group of researchers and assistants to catalogue old military materials on Örö for potential future use. In the storage rooms, just behind a crate of ruined wartime propaganda leaflets, they found the lifering with the legend SUUR TÕLL still visible on it.

In 2010, the lifering was handed over to the Estonian Navy Museum in Tallinn in a solemn ceremony at the city harbor, in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the sinking of the Estonian state icebreaker Suur Tõll by the Soviet submarine M-96 commanded by Senior Lieutenant Alexander Marinesco, a later Hero of the Soviet Union. The lifering was placed at the museum to be a part of an exhibit about the fate of the 264 Estonian refugees, 20 crew members and 54 Estonian and Finnish soldiers who died on the Suur Tõll along with Kaarel Eenpalu, the last president of the First Estonian Republic.

[filler]
Top