Vyborg in March was a place where the snow was no longer a pristine white; instead, it had been churned into a tattered gray slush by cordite smoke, soot, and gore.
During the several-kilometer retreat toward the industrial zone, Walter Ilves witnessed firsthand the brutal evolution of Soviet tactics. The Red Army was no longer satisfied with traditional infantry charges; they had transformed the entire siege into an act of violent demolition.
Crouched behind a pile of rubble, Walter watched as a massive B-4 203mm howitzer was hauled by multiple tractors directly in front of a water tower held by Finnish defenders. The barrel was leveled horizontally, point-blank direct fire.
With a deafening roar that felt like it shattered eardrums, the entire water tower disintegrated in an instant like a dry biscuit crushed by a giant hand. The Finnish soldiers inside were reduced to literal dust.
"They aren't interested in playing hide-and-seek with us anymore," Walter whispered to Simo.
The Soviets had also organized specialized assault groups. Each squad was spearheaded by a T-26 tank, followed closely by combat engineers lugging satchel charges and flamethrower teams. They no longer traversed the mine-strewn streets; instead, they used tanks to ram through walls or explosives to blast holes in perimeters. Infantry would then weave from room to room through the internal breaches, a "wall-breaking" march that rendered the Finnish advantage in urban ambushes completely obsolete.
Even the marauding KV-1 heavy tanks had changed roles. They no longer fired at random but acted as mobile steel bulwarks. Infantry pressed tight against the rear of the tanks, utilizing armor that was nearly impossible to penetrate to shield themselves from all incoming fire. Meanwhile, on the flanking freight tracks, the Soviets had brought in flatcars fitted with armored shields as mobile fire platforms, tearing through the Finnish defenses inch by inch along the rails.
…
The Vyborg Industrial Zone was a labyrinth of towering blast furnaces in steel mills, sprawling assembly lines in tractor plants, and a web of gas pipelines in chemical warehouses. Walter, leading his eight surviving soldiers, plunged into this maze shrouded in black smoke.
The air here was heavier than at the beachheads, a thick cocktail of rust, coal ash, and a pungent, acidic tang. Due to the hasty evacuation, most of the workshops remained in the chaotic state they were in at the moment production ceased: uncooled slag, steel beams dangling mid-air, and crates of industrial raw materials that had never been shipped out.
Walter first entered the steel plant. Less than five hundred meters into the core facility, he encountered a unit stationed there. They weren't regulars, but the Vyborg Industrial Civil Guard, formed hastily from factory workers and stay-behind technicians.
"Halt! Who goes there!"
A raspy, deep voice emanated from the shadows of a smelting furnace. Immediately, dozens of figures emerged from behind steel girders, cooling towers, and scrap heaps. They lacked uniform attire, mostly wearing oil-stained overalls or heavy asbestos coats. Their weaponry was a motley collection: ancient Mosin-Nagants, notched axes, and even industrial wrenches with extended handles.
The leader was an old master craftsman named Tano. With hair as white as frost and a thick leather apron cinched around his waist, he gripped a Mosin-Nagant with a fixed bayonet. His eyes held the distinct, stubborn pride of a veteran laborer.
Tano's pupils suddenly contracted. He stared at Walter's face, then looked at the short Second Lieutenant beside him, the one silent as ice, cradling a cloth-wrapped Mosin-Nagant. Tano's tense shoulders shuddered violently as his voice cracked with emotion.
"Are you Second Lieutenant Walter, the one who captured the Russian divisional commander? Then this is... the White Death, Second Lieutenant Simo?"
The surrounding workers let out low, sharp gasps of awe. In this desperate hour, with Vyborg on the verge of falling and their retreat cut off, two living legends from the newspapers and myths had suddenly descended into their battered workshop.
"It's me," Walter said curtly. "But there are no heroes here today. Only Finns who aren't dead yet."
Tano wiped a smear of soot from his face and straightened his hunched back. The look of resignation in his eyes was instantly incinerated by a newfound fighting spirit. He turned to the workers and roared, "Did you hear that! The Marshal has sent his knights to save Vyborg! Boys, our backbone has arrived!"
"Lieutenant, give us your orders!" Tano turned back, slapping his leather apron roughly. "These fifty-three sets of old bones are yours. Even if we have to be stripped down for parts, we'll be the stepping stones you need!"
"Do you have a map of this place?"
Tano quickly retrieved a map and handed it to Walter. Walter strode to a dust-covered wooden table and spread out the tattered industrial layout.
In his first few minutes entering this industrial sector, Walter's mind had flickered with flashes of "genius" improvisation. He had imagined dousing KV-1s in molten iron from the furnaces, turning flour mills into pillars of fire through dust explosions, or even using industrial tar to glue the Russians to the floor.
But as he stood in the actual factory, smelling the faint scent of cordite, he realized how ridiculous those thoughts were. Those were the tactical fantasies of a child, the clumsy play of someone from a peaceful era trying to mimic the logic of war.
Against Soviet artillery, any trap relying on electricity, precision equipment, or delicate balance was futile.
Walter turned his gaze to the workers guarding the cold machinery.
"I saw it clearly on the way here. The Soviets have changed their hand; they intend to turn this entire industrial zone into a flat plain." Walter pointed toward the soaring exhaust stacks and red-brick warehouses outside. "The Russian tactic now can be summarized in one word: erasure."
"They are firing heavy shells directly at us. Even the thickest walls of this steel mill are no better than cardboard. If we stay hunched behind windows taking potshots, we won't get a firefight, we'll get a building collapse."
The workers looked at one another. Tano's hand trembled slightly on his rifle, but the fire in his eyes did not dim.
"The Russians have formed specialized teams: tanks for pathfinding, engineers for demolition. They don't use the streets or gates we've fortified. They ram through walls or use satchel charges to blow through partitions. They will weave through the inside of the buildings, clearing room by room."
Walter looked up, scanning the grease-stained faces of the men. His pupils flashed with a manic intensity.
"They aren't here to occupy this place; they are here to destroy it!"
Walter grabbed the tattered blueprint and ripped it to shreds, tossing the pieces into a cold slag pit at his feet.
"There are no more tactics now. No more retreat." He looked at the soot-covered workers. "When the Russian cannons fire, this workshop will collapse in seconds. If we want to survive, the only place left is down."
He pointed to a heavy cast-iron cover on the floor, the entrance to the factory's underground piping network.
"When the heavy shelling begins, everyone gets into the cable trenches and drainage pipes. Wait for their barrage to shift deeper, wait for their tanks to ram the doors, and wait for their infantry to think there's nothing here but ruins. Then we crawl out from the cracks in the earth."
"Don't worry about the KV-1 tanks; that's for us regulars to handle. Your targets are the infantry behind the tanks, the engineers with the satchel charges."
"You will use the ruins and the tunnels. At every corner, in every dark culvert, you fight them with bayonets, with wrenches, with Molotov cocktails. You make them fight for their lives."
"We will make the Soviets pay a price of blood for every single meter they advance."
———————
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over here ——— pa-tre-on.c-om/AlexandrusTL [remove the hyphen for normal access]