War Photographer's Notebook

Chapter 99 Moving Snow
"Company commander, why are you here?" Mika asked curiously.

"It was Old Ino who pulled me back," Captain Korpi explained. "He's been helping deliver ammunition supplies almost all night."

"Father Ino, you didn't rest?" Mika couldn't help but increase his voice, "Your."

"To shut up"

The hunter Ino couldn't help but press back what Mika had said, "When the Soviets are beaten away, there will be plenty of time to rest."

Just as Mika was about to say something, Wei Ran lightly touched his elbow, and before the other party could speak, he changed the subject and asked, "Commander Korpi, can you tell us more about the situation on the battlefield?"

"The torn encirclement is near the lake on the south side"

Captain Korpi explained loudly, "We thought they were going to join Suomusalmi's troops, but at that moment a few cars rushed out of Suomusalmi and ran due east. Yes, and the two vehicles in the encirclement that we are responsible for."

"Should we block the torn encirclement or chase those cars?" asked the old hunter Ino.

"You three, go chase the car!" Company Commander Korpi reminded, "The flag of the 163rd Division in the encirclement is missing, maybe their division commander has escaped."

"no problem!"

Ino responded, shook the reins vigorously, and accelerated the speed of the sled a little. After sending the Finnish soldiers behind him to the battlefield, the three of them bid farewell to Captain Korpi and walked along the snow field. The tire marks caught up.

"Victor, do you have that kerosene lamp with you?" Ino asked as soon as the sled car passed through the battlefield, it slowed down.

"Yes, yes!" Wei Ran immediately gave an affirmative answer.

"Put it on"

Unexpectedly, the old hunter Ino stopped the sleigh completely, "Mika, you are responsible for keeping an eye on the left to see if there are any footprints that appeared suddenly, Victor, you are in charge of keeping an eye on the right."

"Would it be too risky to do this?" Although Wei Ran said so, he took out the kerosene lamp and lit it under the cover of the backpack, and hung it on the handrail of the sleigh under the command of the former.

The dazzling ice-blue light immediately clearly printed the ruts they were following, but at the same time, it also exposed the three people sitting in the sleigh.

Before the reindeer started running, the old hunter Ino explained slowly, "If the Soviets want to escape from Finland alive, at most they will hijack our sleigh, and there is a high probability that they will not shoot us."

Wei Ran and Mika glanced at each other, and they both gripped the submachine guns hidden in the wolf fur blanket tightly.

The sled car ran forward for nearly five kilometers on the ice. On the way, they not only encountered Finnish soldiers chasing them on skis, but even a GAZ M1 car stuck on the ice.

But when they were about to reach the encirclement where the 163nd Regiment of the 662rd Division of the Soviet Union was located, the ruts they had chased all the way diverged without warning. The two headed for true north and true south respectively.

"Which way are you going?" Mika asked the old hunter Ino who was in charge of the car.

"North"

The old hunter Ino thought for a moment and then shook the rein vigorously, "There are our people in the east, and the Soviets going in that direction will definitely not be able to escape. Although there are only civil guards in the south, if they go south, they will only get farther and farther away from the Soviet Union. .So we head north, and only in this direction can we return to the Soviet Union at the fastest speed!"

Wei Ran opened his mouth, but he didn't say anything after all. If he was sure that Commander Zelentsov of the 163rd Division had really gone south, he wouldn't have to risk his life to return to this war.

In the howling cold wind blowing head-on, the sleigh cart pulled by two reindeer ran faster and faster, and the icy blue light emitted by the kerosene lamp hanging on the sleigh also echoed the green aurora overhead in this dark night. conspicuous.

In the tense guard of the three, the two reindeer ran stop and go for an hour, and finally an unreal shadow appeared in front of the field of vision.

"Attention," Yinuo reminded in a low voice, pulled out the Luger P08 pistol on his waist and hid it in his wide sleeve, then shook the reins to speed up a little.

Hearing this, Wei Ran immediately raised his submachine gun, ready to take a shot at any enemy that might appear.

As the distance got closer, they finally saw clearly that this black shadow was indeed a car, a GAZ M1 car produced in the Soviet Union!

Looking sideways at the string of scattered footprints leading to the forest on the shore, the old hunter Ino said in a low voice, "Mika, use your skis to go around on the right. Victor and I continue walking along the lakeshore. , Find a way to lure them out and catch them alive."

Mika jumped off the sleigh without hesitation, tied up the skis, and rushed into the forest following the footprints.

"Victor, go and put bells on them." While speaking, the old hunter Ino reached out and took out two copper bells the size of pears from a small box on the edge of the sleigh.

When Wei Ran took the bell, the former took off the white camouflage suit and said, "Hide yourself with a wolf fur blanket later."

"Is this possible?" Wei Ran asked while avoiding the reindeer heads that were constantly sticking out of his arms, helping them put on the copper bells.

"Who would shoot at Santa's sleigh?" Eno teased with a smile, "Don't worry, as long as they want to escape to the Soviet Union alive, they won't kill us."

"I hope so."

Wei Ran pulled out his mittens from the mouth of a reindeer, and lay obediently on the sleigh, covering his whole body with a thick wolf fur blanket.

Amidst the jingling bells, the sleigh car, which deliberately slowed down under the control of Ino, ran for more than [-] meters towards the center of the lake, and kept moving slowly in a direction parallel to the shore.

When the cold wind carried the crisp sound of bells into the forest, Mika, who was carrying a submachine gun, also sped up his speed a little, and followed the undisguised footprints on the ground to catch up.

Not long after, a voice of conversation that he couldn't understand at all came from the front. Mika immediately squatted down when he heard the voice, and under the cover of the surrounding cedar, he used ski poles to narrow the distance between the two sides little by little.

When he walked around the two pine trees growing side by side, he immediately saw the edge of the forest not far away. There was a Soviet soldier holding up his binoculars and looking at the slow-moving sleigh on the lake. Beside him, five people were lying side by side. A trembling Soviet Red Army soldier holding a gun.

It wasn't over yet, behind the six of them, a Soviet soldier dressed in a blue hat was wading through the snow, tremblingly searching around and pulling the branches he could find.Trying to light a bonfire with matches.

With the faint light of the match every time before it went out, Mika, who was hiding not far from him, could clearly see that his thighs had been completely frozen, and his trouser legs were covered with thick ice. snow and fallen leaves.

If there is no accident, this unlucky guy must have accidentally fell into the water when the car was stuck in the ice. If you don't take off your pants and start a fire to warm yourself at this time, it will only take an hour at most, even if you don't freeze to death , His two legs were also disabled.

Not in a hurry to shoot, Mika waited patiently for three of the opponent's soldiers to run out of the forest and rush up to the lake with their weapons in hand. Then he carefully untied the skis tied to his shoes, lay down on them slowly, and then pulled out the other With the Finnish hunting knife and the Nagant revolver at his waist, he lightly kicked the pine tree that was originally used for hiding, and slid silently to the flagpole like a mass of moving snow. Lit blue hat from tree branches.

　I won’t add more today, I really can’t write it out, forgive me
　　
　
(End of this chapter)