The PDF didn’t describe a retreat eastward, toward the interior forests, as every soldier learned. It described a retreat west —toward the coast. Toward the archipelago. And then, bizarrely, it described a phased evacuation not of civilians, but of entire military units into pre-prepared hibernation shelters beneath the Turku and Naantali shipyards.
Kun et näe tähtiä, käänny vasemmalle ja juokse. – “When you cannot see the stars, turn left and run.”
Corporal Lahti was on his third cup of the tar-black, gut-rotting brew they called kahvi . His head throbbed from a weekend pass that had involved too much salmiakki koskenkorva and too little sleep. His lieutenant, a fresh-faced, eager NCO named Virtanen who had read too many tactical manuals, slammed a brown cardboard box onto the wooden table.