March 5, 1940, 04:00 AM.
The night sky over Vyborg Bay was shattered, torn to pieces by countless orange-red arcs. The Soviet artillery bombardment had raged for a full night without respite.
Walter huddled in a foxhole that had been half-obliterated by a shell. His white camouflage cloak was now tattered and blackened, caked with a grim mixture of earth, gunpowder, and dried blood. He struggled to lift his right hand, only to find his index finger, the one that had squeezed the trigger relentlessly all day, twitching with involuntary spasms. The dull ache of extreme muscular fatigue left him barely able to maintain a steady grip on his M39 Mosin-Nagant rifle.
"Drink some water, Lieutenant."
A soldier, his face blackened by soot, handed over a field canteen. Walter took it mechanically. The water inside had already begun to turn to slush; as it slid down his throat, it felt like the serrated edge of a blade. He didn't know who the soldier was. Of the dozens of familiar faces who had held this sector yesterday, fewer than ten remained.
Through the gaps in the swirling smoke, Walter saw a sight that spelled despair for the Finnish defenders. Several key islands in Vyborg Bay, Ravansaari and Uuras, were now completely engulfed in a sea of fire. The roar of the coastal batteries there had long since fallen silent, replaced by the dense, rhythmic Ura! chants of the Red Army.
The Soviets had seized these islands and converted them into forward bases. Now, Soviet heavy artillery sat perched upon the very rocks of those isles. Shells that once had to traverse the open sea were now being fired from point-blank range.
Boom—Boom—Boom!
Every dull thud signaled a shell launched from the flank. The Soviets were using the islands to subject this fragmented line on the western shore to devastating crossfire.
…
06:00 AM.
Faint morning light pierced through the thick fog, illuminating the ice, a surface that had been painted and repainted in blood. Walter snapped his eyes open. He caught the sound that made every Finnish soldier tremble: the roar of hundreds of tank engines revving simultaneously. Amplified by the resonance of the ice, it sounded like muffled thunder rising from the bowels of the earth.
"They're coming... they're coming for real now," Simo's voice drifted from nearby.
Walter looked up. At the edge of the horizon, the lead elements of the Soviet 86th Rifle Division and 173rd Rifle Division appeared. They had deployed into a massive phalanx spanning several kilometers in width.
Ahead of the infantry were several rows of tanks painted in white winter camouflage. The tankers floored their accelerators like madmen; the steel teeth of the tracks bit savagely into the ice, kicking up sprays of crystals taller than a man.
This time, the ice did not break.
Due to the unrelenting extreme cold of the past few days, combined with the efforts of Soviet engineers who had continuously laid planks and rubble over the fissures, the ice gap that had once swallowed countless tanks had been transformed into a wide, solid bridge of frost.
"Open fire! Stop them from landing!"
Colonel Martola's voice echoed across the line, but his usually resonant tone now held the tragic weight of a hero at his wit's end.
Bang!
The lead T-26 tank had charged to within two hundred meters of the shore. A bullet struck the edge of the driver's vision slit, sending up a shower of sparks. But the tank did not slow down; it crashed arrogantly through a massive granite anti-tank bollard. The once-sturdy stone defenses had been loosened by the bombardment and could no longer halt the momentum of these steel monsters.
The tracks of the first tank ground heavily into the scorched earth of the western shore. Then came the second, and the third...
"Ura—!!"
Amidst that mountain-toppling, sea-splitting roar, tens of thousands of Soviet infantrymen in khaki greatcoats and iconic budenovkas followed closely behind the tanks, officially setting foot on the mainland of Vyborg Bay's western shore.
It meant the barrier of the sea had vanished. The back door to the Vyborg line had been pried open by the Soviets with a lever made of countless corpses.
The piercing screech of tank tracks grinding over frozen soil marked the total collapse of the final geographical barrier. As Colonel Martola watched the endless khaki tide surge onto the beachhead, he knew that conventional trench warfare was over. What remained was the most primitive and desperate form of combat known to the Finns: white-blade combat.
"Send in all the reserves!" Martola's voice rasped and shook in the freezing wind. "That's the last of our hand! We can't let them get a foothold in the woods! Drive them back into the sea!"
With a sharp blast of a whistle, a muffled but resolute roar erupted from the dense forests of the western shore. This was the final Finnish reserve, a motley crew of veterans returning from the hospital and Civil Guard members over the age of fifty. They burst from the shadows of the woods, clad in yellowed white cloaks, their bayonets gleaming.
Click!
With a crisp metallic snap, Walter locked his twenty-centimeter bayonet onto the muzzle of his M39.
"Stay close to me," Simo's voice remained unnervingly calm.
When the two forces collided at the edge of the forest, the world was instantly filled with the clang of metal and the dull squelch of flesh being torn. Walter's close-quarters combat wasn't flashy, but it was eerily fluid. His mastery of balance and explosive muscle power was ingrained in his very marrow. In this battlefield of stumps and craters, he moved like a lethal, slippery eel, his feet finding purchase in the snow with every step.
Facing a screaming Soviet soldier lunging at him, Walter didn't meet the heavy overhead strike head-on. Instead, he used his momentum to roll forward and to the side. The moment he cleared the strike, he swung his rifle upward in a fluid arc.
Prip!
The thick bayonet of the M39 tore precisely through a gap in the soldier's greatcoat, sinking into the soft abdomen. Without a second's hesitation, Walter yanked his right hand back, wrenching the blade out. Scalding blood sprayed across his palm, turning viscous and cold instantly in the -40°C air. Walter gasped in the midst of the slaughter, his every parry and thrust surrendered entirely to the instinct of survival.
Beside him, however, Simo displayed a different realm of killing.
If Walter was fighting for his life, Simo was performing executions. Simo Häyhä was not a tall man, but in the chaotic scramble of the woods, his small stature became an advantage. His bloodied bayonet was handled with brutal steadiness; every strike was devoid of wasted motion.
A Soviet lieutenant roared, waving a Nagant M1895 revolver to aim at him. Simo jerked aside just as the bullet shattered the bark of a nearby tree. He kicked off the snow with the tip of his boot, and his bayonet traced a straight, cold line through the air, piercing the lieutenant's throat with absolute precision.
Simo's blade was not just fierce; it was terrifyingly stable. When the steel hit bone, his wrist didn't even tremble. He twisted the blade as he withdrew it, always taking a large spray of gore with it. A three-meter vacuum zone formed around him; any khaki-clad figure that stepped within it lost their life in the shortest possible time.
The once-tranquil forest had become a massive, creaking mill of flesh and bone. Seeing these two lieutenants butchering their way through the front as if in a wasteland, the remaining Finnish soldiers felt a surge of morale.
"Push them back!"
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