The Winter Warriers by Olivier Norek – blog tour

Translated from the French by Nick Caistor

I don’t read much war fiction, and tend to shy away in general from more modern military stuff (unless it’s part of a spy novel etc.). But there was something about Olivier Norek’s new novel that caught my attention. Having read more Nordic fiction including quite a few Finnish authors over recent years, the setting appealed, but more than that, I knew so little about ‘The Winter War’ between the USSR and Finland – when the USSR invaded Finland on November 30, 1939 – shortly after the outbreak of WWII. The Soviets expected a walkover, but the Finns fought back in true David versus Goliath style. The Winter War ended three and a half months later in March by treaty which did cede some Finnish land to the Soviets. 130,000 Soviet soldiers had died: the Finns also lost many thousands of men, but many times fewer than their opponents.

Norek’s novel fictionalises the lives of a group of young conscripts, assigned to a company whose aim was to prevent the Soviets from pushing through the ‘Kollaa Front’ in Karelia – one of the two main southern land-bridges into the full of lakes country of Finland. One of the young soldiers was Simo Häyhä, who had learned how to hunt and shoot from his father and had won the Finnish Civic Guard Rifle Championship – his skill was legendary before the war, but during the fighting he earned himself the nickname of ‘Bélaya smert’ – ‘The White Death’ – as a sniper with over 500 kills credited to him in his white snow suit. His story proved irresistible to Norek once discovered, and he gives The Winter Warriors a literary war thriller treatment which, while celebrating the great guerilla tactics employed by the Finns, doesn’t shy away from the deaths, the tragedies and the futility of war.

As the novel begins, we meet seventeen-year-old Simo in the forest hunting, and sparing a pregnant deer.

It would be wrong to see this as compassion. He had not spared the animals, just postponed their meeting for a while. Being able to do something and having to do it are not the same.
To be able to shoot or to have to shoot. To be able to kill or to have to kill.

In the next scene, it’s the rifle championship, and we meet Simo’s best friends, Onni who is engaged to be married, and Toivo. The three will sign up together in coming days after the Soviets start the war, by bombing themselves and claiming the Finns did it – a tactic attributed to Molotov – who would go on to be immortalised by the Finns in one of their favourite guerilla weapons – the Molotov Cocktail.

The three friends find themselves on the Kollaa front, under the command of Lieutenant Juutilainen, who also gained a nickname, ‘The Terror of Morroco’ from his time in the French Foreign Legion where those around him had a habit of dying. Juutilainen has a reputation as a rather too gung-ho commander and gets through an amazing amount of booze, but he realises that Simo is special with his sniper’s skills and gives him more protection from the bitter chill.

What comes through most keenly in this novel is the punishing cold of the winter. It often goes down to -35C, but this winter was even harder sometimes reaching -50C. The Finns are used to it, having tactics to prevent themselves being frozen to death: the Russian soldiers are not and many are the bodies found frozen to death by the Finnish patrols. The Finns also have the advantage of white uniforms, giving them the perfect camouflage to hunt their prey in the snowy forest. Such is Simo’s skill at knowing his weapon, bullet parabola, as well as keeping it from freezing, but it is also his sniper’s art – how not to give himself away that fascinates. He will put a snowball in his mouth before rising to shoot, so warm vapour on his exhaled breath doesn’t give his position away.

We continue to follow the fortunes of Onni, Toivo and other friends too, as well as one of the lotta (nurses), that Toivo falls for. It is, perhaps, a foregone conclusion that not all of them will return home after the war. The novel is tinged with tragedy as I said.

The David v Goliath nature of the Finn’s resistance against the Soviet onslaught through dangerous guerilla tactics make for a taut thriller indeed. And indeed, it echoes what is happening in Ukraine today which make the losses sustained back then all the more poignant.

It is the characters and their relationships we ultimately care about. Norek’s Simo is young, but complex. Onni and Toivo are the best friends a man could have, and Leena, the nurse whom Toivo falls for will prove an essential carer. Even Juutilainen has his moments! However, there are times when compassion is shown for their opponents – think back to the animals Simo spares.

Norek’s writing brings the winter to life, his research is incorporated seamlessly into the narrative, and an appendix at the end has photos of most of the main people featured, including the Simo photo I found above, plus ones of Toivo and Juutilainen amongst them. These are accompanied by notes, a bibliography and extensive acknowledgments. I very much enjoyed this novel and recommend it to anyone wanting to know more about this event in history.

Source: Review copy – thank you! Open Borders Press (an imprint of Orenda Books) hardback, 352 pages. BUY at Blackwell’s via my affiliate link.