Birthday Surprise
The four Brewster B239 fighters took off from the Malmi airfield and assumed a holding pattern at 1000 meters above Helsinki's main airport. Of the four pilots, one had already made himseld an ace flying the Brewster for the Finnish Air Force. Lieutenant Hans ”Hasse” Wind looked out from the cockpit at the rainy Finnish capital below. The weather was worse then he would have liked. It was both rainy and foggy, and visibility was very bad.
Not a very good birthday weather, in other words. It looked more like the autumn than early June.
After about ten minutes, Wind could see the German aircraft emerge from the clouds to the south. A Focke-Wulf Condor, not a very common sight in the Finnish airspace, accompanied with four Messerschmitt fighters. Here, now, was the time for the Finnish fighters to relieve the German fighter escort. The Messerschmitts would land at Malmi to refuel, while the four Brewsters would accompany the big Focke-Wulf rest of the way to its final destination.
The Finnish fighters joined the German plane and, together, the formation turned east.
…
The young soldier sat on a wooden bench in a small room, holding his head between his hands. The ticking clock on the wall was the only sound to be heard. Apart, that is, from the little sobs made by the boy, who seemed to be crying.
Despite being clad in military grey, this was a boy of 16, and he appeared to be in some distress.
From the other side of the room, another young figure looked at him.
”Come on, Eino”, the young man said, ”get a hold of yourself.”
His eyes puffy and red, the boy called Eino turned his head towards the his older comrade.
”It was me who fired the gun, Jaska”, he said, his voice breaking.
”It was me and nobody else.”
”You had your orders, buddy. And orders are orders”, Jaska said.
…
The pilot of the Focke-Wulf Condor, SS-Oberführer Hans Baur, was shaken. The terrible weather would have been enough – he was flying low, virtually blind, relying on instrument data alone. Of the Finnish escort fighters, three had given up and landed at Vesivehmaa on the way, only one of them doggedly stayed along with the Focke-Wulf now.
And then some damn fool had opened fire against the plane with an AA battery on the ground. Everyone aboard the big plane had been lucky not one of the shells had actually hit close enough to do any significant damage. Baur was sure there were at least some holes in the left wing. But right now, it seemed nothing vital had been hit.
Back in the passenger area, Adolf Hitler was livid with rage. The brunt of his ire was being, at the moment, absorbed by Field Marshal Keitel and the Finnish liaison, General Talvela.
”What damned fools, what shit-for-brains idiots are charge of your anti-aircraft defence?”, he shouted at Talvela, flecks of spittle flying from his mouth and landing on the Finnish general's golden rank tabs.
Talvela just stood there, his face violently red.
”Keitel, this was a mistake. I never should have embarked on this journey. When we finally land and see Mannerheim, I will really give him a piece of my mind!”
In the cockpit, despite his headphones and the drone of the Condor's four powerful engines, Hans Baur heard the Führer's words as well as if he would if he had been standing next to the supreme leader of the Third Reich.
Being Hitler's personal pilot was not a picnic on the best of days. Right now, Baur was under tremendous stress. Peering into the fog ahead, with his forehead slick with sweat, Baur made another check of his instruments and decided to take the plane 100 meters lower still to get a sense of the terrain below.
…
Corporal Mäkinen was not happy with his posting in the field kitchen. He felt like he was made for bigger things than boiling soup and cutting bread for the crews of the AA battery. The poor weather was further bringing down his mood.
Today was Mannerheim's 75th birthday, and all the men would be receiving extraordinary alcohol rations to celebrate it. It was a great benefit, on the face of it. But then, someone had to haul all those crates of alcohol bottles. Mäkinen felt that too much of the burden of it all fell on him and his boys.
He also knew that Mannerheim was in the vicinity himself, it had been rumoured for several days that the old man would come and visit the area. You had to be careful when a visit of that calibre happened – what if the Soviets had also found out about it? There was no telling what they might do to hurt Finland and its Commander-in-Chief...
…
Out on the railyard of the Kaukopää paper plant, four men sat in the personal railway carriage of the Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Armed Forces. All around them, aides and staff in civilian and military attires bustled about. The aristocratic-looking older man in a cavalry uniform put down the receiver and let his aide-de-camp, Colonel Bäckman, to take away the telephone.
”They didn't hit the plane, thank God”, Gustaf Mannerheim told the other three men, who seemed to let out a collective sigh of relief.
His 75th birthday would have been a hassle to begin with, even if Hitler had not decided to attend it in person.
”Who the hell gave the order to fire?”, President Risto Ryti, smart in his summer suit, asked the old marshal. The man had a peaked look about him.
It was not Mannerheim who answered, but his right hand man, General Airo.
”A lieutenant at the local air defence centre. They misidentified the Condor for a Soviet bomber. We will have a full investigation, and I fully expect that the lieutenant in question will receive due punishment.”
Mannerheim cocked his head and looked at his loyal general.
”Hitler will want him sent to Germany.”
That created an uncomfortable bit of silence.
”If it truly was a honest mistake”, the old soldier continued, ”we are not handing him over. We know full well that he would receive no justice in that case.”
….
”Jump! Everybody jump! Off the plane!”, Hans Baur shouted from the top of his lungs.
The red-brick smokestack had emerged suddenly, violently from the thick fog in front of the German Führer's personal airplane.
There was nothing to be done.
Helplessly, Lieutenant Hans Wind looked out from the cockpit of his Brewster fighter as the four-engined German transport plane collided head-on with the high smokestack of the Kaukopää paper plant, bringing down the red-brick structure and breaking apart itself in the process.
There was fire.
...
The sound of the explosion caused Corporal Mäkinen and his two assistants to stop their work.
”What the hell was that?”
They had also heard the drone of aircraft engines, and now something had hit the paper plant some ways away to the east. Even with the fog, you could see that the great smokestack was not there anymore.
”It must be the Ruskies!”, said Private Virtanen.
Mäkinen agreed. It was just how he imagined – Stalin's Bolsheviks had learned where Mannerheim was on his birthday, and had decided to launch a sabotage attack against the old Marshal of Finland.
It was the logical thing to do.
”Get your rifles, boys.”
…
The railyard was a scene of perfect confusion. Men were either running around, or standing still, stunned. In the distance, you could hear the sound of sirens, firefighters arriving to the scene. From his table by the window, Gustaf Mannerheim saw the German commander of the troops in Lapland, Generaloberst Eduard Dietl, striding towards the carriage, looking determined in his mountain uniform, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross swinging on his neck.
Mannerheim held out a cigar and let his personal valet, the everpresent Einar From, light it up.
…
Adolf Hitler stumbled through the woods alone. Dazed, hurt and bloody, the leader of the mighty Third Reich did not know how lucky he was to be alive, after falling from a plane at some 40 meters above the ground, without even a parachute to help him.
Hitler's left hand was broken, and he was bruised all around. His jaw was painfully dislocated. He also suffered from a deep cut to his head, and blood kept pouring into his eyes.
His foot caught on a tree root and he almost fell to the ground. He would have cursed aloud if the mere effort would not have hurt his mouth so much.
Someone would pay for this. Someone would pay for this dearly.
….
Suddenly, Corporal Mäkinen could see a lone figure among the trees to his right. He motioned his two comrades to stop and indicated the direction of the figure.
It was a man in an obviously foreign uniform. His head was covered in blood, obscuring his features.
”It's a damn Russian saboteur, a desant!”, Virtanen said, excited.
”Stoi, rukii verh!”, Mäkinen shouted to the figure, employing his best approximation of the Russian language.
The figure did not stop, however, but just kept on coming. It shouted (or, more to the point, croaked) something unintelligible. It even picked up its pace and raised its hand. There was something in it.
Better not risk it, Corporal Mäkinen thought. He raised his Italian Carcano M91/38 rifle and shot three well-aimed shots at the figure's centre of mass, just like he had been trained to do.
With a grunt, the Russian fell to the ground and lay still.
…
In Mannerheim's personal railway carriage, everything was oddly, perversely still. The news about what had happened to Hitler had caused this magical silence to descend among the high-ranking men, Finnish and German, present.
The Marshal of Finland looked out to the railyard, puffing on yet another cigar.
This... This was not the way he had expected his 75th birthday to play out.
"From", he said, breaking the silence at long last.
"I think we all need brandy. Bring two bottles, if you can be so kind, and have a drink yourself."
Outside, the weather was suddenly improving. The fog had cleared and bright light emerged out from between the clouds. From high above, a benevolent sun shone down on the smouldering ruins of the Kaukopää paper plant's once-imposing smokestack commingled with the remains of Adolf Hitler's personal Focke-Wulf Condor.
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