Chapter 303: The Execution Ground
For the Soviet soldiers fighting in Finland, military setbacks were not the greatest threat.
Far more dangerous were political pressure, enforced silence, and the knowledge that speaking the truth could be more fatal than facing Finnish bullets.
On the forward positions of the Karelian Isthmus, machine gun fire rattled continuously above the trenches. Bullets skimmed across the parapets and disappeared into the rain-soaked earth.
The weather showed the Soviet forces no mercy.
Rain had fallen for several days without pause. The difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures was severe, and the trenches had become long channels of freezing mud.
Colds spread rapidly among the exhausted soldiers.
Then came something worse.
Corpses that could not be recovered from the battlefield began to decay in the damp conditions. Disease flourished. Influenza spread through the positions with alarming speed, striking men who were already weakened by poor food, lack of sleep, and constant exposure.
Terel was one of them.
At that moment, he sat crouched against the wall of a trench, both hands wrapped around his canteen as he drifted in and out of sleep.
Every joint in his body ached as though someone had beaten him with a wooden club. His head burned with fever, yet his hands were cold.
Holding a rifle was difficult.
Walking was worse.
"Comrade Terel?"
A sharp voice dragged him from his haze.
"You should be holding your rifle, not sleeping here."
The political supervisor had immediately noticed the short soldier slumped against the trench wall.
Terel did not respond quickly enough.
The supervisor stepped forward, seized him by the collar, and pulled him upright.
"Get up!"
His voice carried over the rain.
"I will not repeat myself."
The squad leader nearby could no longer remain silent.
"Comrade, I approved his rest."
He lowered his voice instinctively.
"Terel is seriously ill. The medicine still hasn't arrived."
The supervisor turned toward him.
"Are you blaming our comrades in logistics?"
"No, I…"
"Then blame yourselves."
The supervisor pushed Terel back against the trench wall.
"Yesterday, your unit was ordered to capture that village."
He pointed toward the mist-covered battlefield.
"And yet you are still here."
"Squatting in trenches. Complaining. Groaning about illness."
His expression hardened.
"Since when did the fighting spirit of Soviet soldiers become as weak as that of White bandits?"
The moment the argument was elevated from military reality to political loyalty, the squad leader knew it was over.
Any further protest could be interpreted as defeatism.
Or worse.
He swallowed the words in his throat and turned toward two soldiers.
"Prepare to attack again."
He pointed toward Terel.
"Take him with you. Move around from the left while the tanks draw their attention."
The two soldiers stared at Terel.
The man could barely stand.
His face was flushed by fever, and even through the rain they could see his body trembling.
Neither wanted to take him.
But then they noticed the political supervisor watching them.
Their hesitation disappeared.
"Yes, Comrade Squad Leader."
They helped Terel to his feet and led him away.
Scenes like this were unfolding everywhere along the Soviet front.
At a regimental command post several kilometers behind the line, Regiment Commander Ivan Ralph stared at the latest logistics report until his hands began to shake.
Then he slammed it onto the table.
"Did the logistics department dump our ammunition into the sea?"
No one answered.
"What does this mean?"
Ivan jabbed a finger against the paper.
"Our ammunition reserves can support two more days of offensive operations?"
He turned another page.
"And food. The food was supposed to arrive two days ago."
His voice grew louder with every sentence.
"My soldiers are still eating soaked bread. Half of it is practically mud."
"And now even that damned bread is running out!"
Several officers lowered their heads.
"If these supplies do not arrive soon, we will have no choice but to halt offensive operations and reorganize here."
The words had barely left his mouth when the atmosphere changed.
Halting an offensive had become dangerous language.
The political commissar entered just in time to hear him.
"No halt is permitted."
Ivan slowly turned.
The commissar placed a document on the table.
"Division Headquarters has issued its latest combat order."
"We are to break through Kali Village before nightfall."
Ivan stared at him in disbelief.
"How in hell are we supposed to do that?"
"Kali Village is directly connected to the Mannerheim Line. Attacking those fortifications with our current firepower would be suicide."
The political commissar remained unmoved.
"The order stands."
Something inside Ivan finally broke.
For days, he had watched sick men pushed back into the trenches, watched ammunition disappear faster than it could be replaced, and watched political officers interfere with tactical decisions while speaking endlessly of revolutionary spirit.
Now he forgot all caution.
"I opposed this offensive from the beginning!"
The command post fell silent.
"Supplies prepared for more than a month were consumed in less than seven days."
"We have no medicine. We have barely enough ammunition. Half the men are sick."
He struck the table with his fist.
"And the idiots at Division Headquarters sit behind maps pretending none of it exists!"
"They are nothing but a pack of sycophants."
Ivan pointed toward the front.
"Let them come down here."
"Let them walk through the trenches and count how many soldiers are lying on sickbeds."
The political commissar's expression turned glacial.
"Even if we must pay for Kali Village with lives, we will take it."
"Even the sick will fight."
Ivan stared at him.
There was nothing more to say.
That night, three Soviet regiments launched another assault against Kali Village.
Ivan's Third Infantry Regiment, assigned as the principal attacking force, resisted the order as much as it dared. By delaying and limiting its commitment, it preserved a significant portion of its strength.
The other two regiments were not as fortunate.
They attacked directly.
By the time they withdrew, thousands of bodies had been left behind in the mud.
The Finns immediately exploited the chaos.
Snipers infiltrated the Soviet rear areas, using forests and broken terrain to ambush transport columns. Finnish raiding parties planted mines along important roads and disappeared before Soviet patrols could respond.
The failure was obvious.
So was its cause.
But under political pressure, strategic mistakes could not be acknowledged.
Someone had to be blamed.
That someone became Ivan.
Early the next morning, a special commissioner arrived from Division Headquarters.
Ivan was removed from command on the spot.
Two officers attempted to speak in his defense.
They were arrested alongside him.
Both were executed nearby.
Barely a week and a half had passed since the beginning of the campaign.
The Soviet forces had already lost more than forty thousand men.
They had not even reached Finland's main defensive line.
Only around twenty thousand of those losses had occurred in direct combat.
The other twenty thousand came from disease, exposure, accidents, logistical collapse, executions, and other noncombat causes.
Of those noncombat deaths, nearly two-thirds were attributed to executions carried out under Cheka authority.
Under such conditions, truth itself became contraband.
A commander who reported ammunition shortages was accused of lacking revolutionary spirit.
An officer who requested time to reorganize could be branded a coward.
A soldier who admitted fear became politically unreliable.
Sound military advice became a death sentence.
Division-level commanders quickly learned to simplify their reports.
They refused to admit that logistics had failed.
They refused to acknowledge disease.
They refused to admit that the offensive timetable itself might have been unrealistic.
Instead, responsibility was pushed downward.
The problem, the reports claimed, was war-weariness among ordinary soldiers.
Yenov seized upon these claims.
He used the failures in Finland as justification for expanding the purge.
The reports sent to Stalin contained almost no serious discussion of military problems.
Instead, page after page emphasized ideological contamination.
Remnants of bourgeois thinking were supposedly widespread within the Army.
German and other Western influence allegedly remained deeply rooted among officers and soldiers.
Counterrevolutionary tendencies had supposedly weakened morale.
Stalin did not completely believe the reports.
But neither did he ignore them.
The failure of the Helsinki operation already lingered in his mind. Now, with the military struggling far more than expected, another question gradually emerged.
Had the previous purges truly gone far enough?
Yenov received authority for a second wave of arrests and investigations.
At the same time, Stalin kept the security apparatus under watch.
He did not intend to let uncontrolled purges completely destroy the Army.
More importantly, he issued a direct order to the front.
Within one month, there must be visible progress.
He also began recalling Boris, the general who had originally argued for a prolonged campaign, back into the central command structure.
But before Boris could significantly influence operations, Yenov had already seized overwhelming political control of the offensive.
For the soldiers at the front, the most agonizing month of the campaign had begun.
Two days later, the attack on Kali Village resumed.
This time, more than two full divisions participated.
Nearly thirty thousand Soviet soldiers were committed against barely two thousand Finnish defenders.
Fog blanketed the battlefield.
Visibility was so poor that Soviet pilots could barely distinguish the ground below, effectively removing air support from the battle.
Heavy artillery had been distributed too widely along the front.
Armored formations were similarly scattered.
The Soviet numerical advantage was enormous, yet its firepower could not be concentrated effectively.
And so the offensive became brutally simple.
Men were sent forward.
Again.
And again.
Every meter of ground was purchased with Soviet blood.
The scale of the assault shocked even the Finnish defenders.
At Kali Village, Mongol stared through the narrow firing slit of a bunker.
The hillsides ahead were covered with advancing figures.
Thousands upon thousands.
The Finns had spent the previous night laying traps and obstacles across the approaches. They had expected Soviet engineers to stop and dismantle them, buying the defenders valuable time.
Instead, Soviet commanders sent men through them.
A squad entered.
Explosions followed.
Another squad immediately replaced it.
Then another.
The wounded screamed in the rain.
Some called for medics.
Others simply lay where they fell as the next wave stepped around them.
Mongol could smell blood even from inside the bunker.
He stared for several seconds before muttering,
"They truly are lunatics."
Then he pulled back the charging handle of the heavy machine gun.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
The weapon roared.
A stream of bullets swept across the slope.
Men collapsed in groups.
The armored vehicles advancing behind them were struck repeatedly, their hulls covered with fresh scars and bullet marks.
Two Soviet tanks pushed forward through the smoke.
Infantry rode on their hulls, firing wildly toward the bunker's embrasure.
Mongol ducked away from the firing slit.
A moment later, one tank rolled directly over a mine.
Boom!
The explosion lifted part of the vehicle into the air.
Men were thrown from its hull like broken dolls.
But those few seconds were enough.
While Mongol had been avoiding the tanks' fire, Soviet infantry had reached the immediate approaches to the bunker.
Too close.
He knew the position was finished.
Mongol grabbed his rifle, abandoned the machine gun, and prepared to withdraw through the rear passage.
Before leaving, however, he looked through the firing slit one final time.
Outside, the drizzle continued to fall.
Bodies covered the ground.
Some lay face down in the mud. Others rested against shattered trees, weapons still clutched in frozen hands.
Rainwater ran between them, mixing with blood until thin crimson streams formed across the battlefield.
They flowed downhill.
Past the ruined trenches.
Past the shattered road.
Farther and farther away.
....
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