Murmansk.

Groups of American GIs were standing next to a long line of troops. On the orders of the Upper Peak, they will enter Finland to fight the Russian devils, and the main task is to capture a small city called Vyborg.

For most American soldiers, they don't know the way, they don't care, they haven't heard of Vyborg, they just stupidly follow the orders of their superiors, like a bunch of marionettes.

By this time they had been waiting for more than two hours in the cold wind, and the cold had already made the cowboys shiver. For the GIs, the low temperatures and bitter cold near the Polar Circle were something they had never been taught.

To keep warm, many GIs ran and jumped along the railroad tracks, joking with each other and stomping their feet on the spot, while others took advantage of the time to take out their papers and start writing letters. For example, Mike, a Miami-born Southerner, wraps himself in a cotton bale, hot Miami and bitterly cold Murmansk are two extremes, Mike has never seen snow before arriving in Russia, and his fingers are frozen and he can't hold a pen.

Mike had no choice but to stop writing and put on the time to express his parting feelings to his beloved Lucy. Boredom observes the scene on the station to pass the time. Trains laden with war materiel kept passing through the station, turning it into a congested field with carriages of all kinds stretching for nearly a kilometre.

Everything was disorganized, and the station management was probably stupid by the cold. Constantly making some hilarious low-level mistakes. A train approached, and the soldiers stood up to make way for the way, only to turn around a few minutes later.

And the train next to Mike seems to have stopped here forever. If this train doesn't go. Mike's days at the station will be better. Because it can somewhat shelter some of the cold winds. It's a pity, though. The dispatcher didn't hear Mike's thoughts, and after the snow fell, he resolutely moved the train.

Mike had been waiting at the station all afternoon, and as the sky grew darker, the temperature became colder and colder. Feeling a little overwhelmed, he pulled down his hat over his ears, cocked his collar, and walked around to warm himself up.

Another full four hours passed. When the sky was dark, Mike felt completely frozen from top to bottom, but the train that was carrying them didn't show up. However, the platoon commander was sure that the time for the troops to board the train and set off was coming soon, because they would not be allowed to spend the night on the platform. And a few of the company's slightly clever guys obviously didn't believe the platoon commander's words, they took out sleeping bags and put them directly on the platform, and a few people even slept in the middle of the tracks where the train was parked.

This scene made Mike stunned, minus fifteen degrees, the thin sleeping bag was completely unable to withstand the severe cold, he felt that these comrades were simply crazy!

At this time. What was once a little snow has turned into goose feather snow. The sergeant major was busy building a makeshift haven for himself with the luggage on the station. When he covered his camping shed with a tarp, he didn't have to worry about the weather at all – this cunning old thing!

And Mike had to find a place for himself to rest. However, the best camping spots on the station have been occupied. The only place Mike could go was the railroad tracks beneath the train cars next to him. He had also thought of sleeping in the compartments of this wagon, but all the carriages were locked up in thick chains, and the damned dispatcher always liked to be troublesome!

Mike grumbled and crawled to lie down between the tracks under the carriage. The cold wind like ice blades blew in from both sides, and after only ten minutes of lying down, Mike found that under the caress of the cold wind, I am afraid that only the dead can sleep!

He shuddered and thought wildly, but he couldn't close his eyelids for more than five minutes. In his exhaustion, Mike felt the axle above his head turning, as if the train was about to start. This causes him to suddenly wake up completely, only to find that nothing has happened, and then he goes back to sleeping, waiting for the next time he is awakened by the same cause.

At dawn, Mike left the makeshift camp, his comrades sore and numb, looking like a bunch of freshly dug zombies.

At 8 o'clock in the morning, Mike and his comrades gathered to get ready to board the car. At that time, none of them knew what life was like in the army during the war. No one could have predicted that they were going to have a night many times worse than last night.

After boarding the bus, Mike's luck did not show any signs of improving. First of all, the carriages were open-top flatbed cars, which were bad enough for the weather, and the moving trains and unsheltered carriages undoubtedly exacerbated the already unbearable cold. Secondly, the sergeant major assigned them an unfortunate task - to monitor suspicious elements approaching the train.

However, after only an hour, Mike found the work boring and cold, and at his suggestion, his comrades decided to take shelter under the canvas covering the cannon. The huddle also warmed up a little for Mike.

The train rumbled forward, and Mike and the others sat together under the canvas, smirking from time to time for no apparent reason. They had no idea what was going on outside the tunnel, except for the occasional howl of wild beasts in the forest.

Suddenly, the canvas was slammed open. The sergeant major with an angry face looked at Mike and his friends.

He shouted "Stand upright", but the twitching of the train made everyone's movements less accurate. The next scene smacks of a bit of a burlesque. Everyone was pushed to the back and forth by the shaking of the carriage. And Mike's coat hangs on the high and low planes of the cannon, making it impossible for him to stand up straight.

The sergeant major snarled at Mike, "What are you doing hiding under the canvas?" Where do you think it is? Forgot what your mission is? ”

The blunt Mike interrupted the sergeant major, saying that it was too cold outside for anyone to be around, and that there was nothing to observe around. But Mike's words angered the sergeant major, and the big man grabbed him by the collar like an enraged gorilla and shook him back and forth vigorously.

"You idiots! When you get to the next station, I will send you to the Judge Advocate General's Office, and there is no greater mistake than abandoning your post. You bastards should be shot...... What if the Red Bandits attack us? Do you want to kill us! ”

Somewhat unconvinced, Mike asked the sergeant major, "How is that possible?" Even wolves don't want to come out in this kind of ghost weather. How much more about people? ”

The sergeant major angrily interrupted him: "Shut up. You idiot. Red bandits are not people. It's the devil! They are more cunning than foxes and more ferocious than wolves. Your task is to stop these demons from attacking us. Now pick up the helmet and go to the front of the carriage, or I'll kick you all off the car!" ”

Without waiting for the sergeant major to repeat his order, Mike stood in his place in the cold wind that pierced like a blade, and after glaring at them fiercely, the sergeant major returned to his cabin, where he could still bake the fire.

Mike: None of them like a commanding sergeant major. The big man was always fond of ordering them to do that, while he himself rested with the stove in his pockets. What's even more infuriating is that this guy will be revenged, once he is unhappy, it means that the soldiers of the whole platoon will be unlucky!

The train was passing through a low, snow-covered pine forest, and Mike had plenty of time to think about how to get the sergeant major to give up on sending them to the Judge Advocate General's Office—a pack of cigarettes wasn't enough to impress the bastard, and he was afraid of a bottle of vodka, or two?

The northern part of Finland is very sparsely populated, and so far they have only passed through a few small towns and villages. Suddenly, a man running along the railway line appeared in front of the train. Mike subconsciously and quickly took aim at this would-be saboteur.

The train is moving very slowly at this time. If there is going to be a bomb attack, it will be a perfect moment. A minute later. Mike's carriage traveled parallel to the man. Mike didn't see anything suspicious about this man, he was probably a local lumberjack, and out of curiosity he wanted to see Mike and his group of exotic soldiers.

Mike had a bit of a struggle, he had been ready to shoot, but now there was no reason to do so. And just then, the sergeant major in the back carriage laughed, and then there was a gunshot, and the poor fellow fell like a felled log. Until the poor creature disappeared from Mike's field of vision, and Mike didn't see him get back up, and at that moment Mike felt something chilling him more than the biting cold wind.

For hours, Mike couldn't forget the man who died in vain, and he felt an indescribable guilt in his heart, a feeling that constantly tormented him, making him almost collapse.

Just as Mike was in a daze, the train suddenly began to slow down, the brakes made a sharp grinding sound against the wheels, and the body shook violently. The train began to slowly rub forward like a snail.

After about 5 minutes at this turtle speed, the train came to a complete stop. Two officers jumped out of the front of the train, and the sergeant major, who had no sense of murder guilt, grinned and reluctantly walked out of the warm carriage with several other non-command personnel, and several people chatted for a while, each looking extremely impatient.

At the orders of the officers, the entire train nervously raised their rifles and looked around, as the forests on both sides of the railroad seemed to be ideal hiding places for the saboteurs. But after looking around for nearly ten minutes, the only living creature was a curious squirrel.

Just as Mike and the others were bored, he heard the sound of a train moving in the distance.

Suddenly, the whistle sounded, and the sergeant major gestured to Mike and they were immediately back to their posts. A train appears in the distance of the tracks where the Mikes have just left. The train looked a little eerie, and what Mike saw next completely frightened him.

At first, the train was normal, with heavily armed Finnish soldiers sitting on the carriages and a Maxim mounted on them. The rest of the train is made up of open-top flatbed cars, but those cars carry some very different cargo.

Passing Mike the first open-top flatbed in front of him, which appeared to contain vague and indistinguishable objects, Mike slowly recognized them as human corpses. Behind the pile of corpses were a number of people standing or crouching in a tight crowd. Each open-top car was packed with people, and it had reached its maximum capacity.

It was too dark for Mike to see who these people were, and it looked like they were wearing Russian military uniforms, but it was so dark that Mike couldn't see it clearly. At this time, a comrade-in-arms whispered to Mike, "Did you see that? The Russians piled up the corpses of their comrades against the cold wind. ”

At this time. The sergeant major shone his flashlight over the city. I saw that every flat car was piled up with corpses like this. Mike watched as the carriages slowly drove by. He could clearly see many pale faces and limbs that had stiffened in the cold wind. In a state of extreme consternation, Mike only let out a whimpering response.

Just when Mike thought the nightmare was coming to an end, something even more terrible happened. About four or five bodies fell off the pile of bodies and landed on the side of the tracks because of the shaking of the carriages. The Finns showed no signs of stopping, though, and the bodies were crushed to pieces by the train's wheels......

After a series of nightmares, the train stopped at Parikara. This was the forward base of the Entente expeditionary force, about a hundred kilometers from Vyborg, and they could not take a car for the rest of the journey. Instead, you have to rely on your legs and a rifle in your hand.

The entire platform was filled with a busy crowd of soldiers, heavily armed soldiers, as well as civilians and Russian prisoners of war. The ragged prisoners of war were scolded and whipped by soldiers with batons until they were put on the death train heading north.

Michael later learned that these so-called prisoners of war were all the navy of the Russian Baltic Fleet in Helsinki, and after being arrested by the Finnish government, they were all sentenced to hard labor.

However, it was clear that the Finns' fundamental purpose was to execute the disobedient Russians. In the harsh winter, the Russians were hungry and hardly protected from the cold. I'm afraid none of them will survive.

Compared to the unclothed "Russian prisoners of war", Mack was undoubtedly lucky, and the United States was sparing no effort to protect its soldiers from the obscenity of the Russian winter. In Murmansk, ships carrying blankets, cashmere jackets, winter boots, gloves, fur hoods, and portable heaters are constantly docking.

However, the question of how these mountains of supplies reached the front was a big problem, and the Finns made great efforts to achieve this, but these efforts did not have the desired effect. The force of Russia's harsh winter is too great to describe.

In both Russia and Finland, apart from the main towns, there are hardly any decent roads, and the roads everywhere are dilapidated. The vast expanse of land was tightly enveloped by heavy snowfall, and all roads were covered by a thick layer of snow. The continuous winter snow and extremely muddy roads had to bring traffic to a standstill, and almost all the baggage was literally stuck in the mud, and only the old horse-drawn carriages could barely pass.

By the end of December, traffic in northern Finland was completely paralyzed by heavy snowfall. The expeditionary force had to stop to clear the road, and Mike struggled to shovel snow to restore traffic. As a result, he found that as soon as he and his friends stopped, the road would immediately be re-covered by heavy snow.

After a long day of useless work, Mike and his friends had to stumble to find a place on the side of the road to block the wind and set up a tent for the night. To their dismay, the officers were able to requisition local houses and hide in them for a good barbecue, smoke and drink.

It wasn't until three days later that Mike and his friends finally arrived at Lappeenranta, where the expeditionary force would regain and then make a headline for Vyborg. But for Mike, it doesn't matter what the fight is, dying sooner might get rid of nightmarish Russia sooner. What he and his friends are most afraid of is standing guard, and the winter night is more terrible than a hundred strong Russian men!

After standing on his post for about an hour, he suddenly saw several dark shadows appear in his eyes. Mike immediately lay down on the edge of the bunker, and before he could take his hand out of his pocket, he glanced out of the trench and saw the dark shadows walking towards him. Feeling good, Mike thought it was his own, but he couldn't rule out that it was a Russian scout!

On the front line, there are stories of Russian scouts everywhere, it is said that someone in such and such a battalion and such and such a company deserted when they were standing guard, and as a result, they were cut into eight pieces by the fierce hair, and there was not even a whole corpse.

But Mike thinks it's more like the officers made it up to scare their soldiers, for the natural reason of preventing them from dozing off on a cold winter night or drinking too much vodka to get drunk.

Mike shuddered and pulled out his hand to pick up the rifle, which was already covered in hoarfrost, and the skin of Mike's fingers was sticky. He endured the pain in his heart and shouted to the black shadow, "Password? ”

The Black Shadow gave the correct answer, which made Mike breathe a sigh of relief, as a recruit without any combat experience, encountering this situation, nervousness was inevitable. And he didn't want to kill or be killed on Christmas Eve.

The creaking sound of military boots on the snow signaled that someone was approaching, and Mike could see that the three were dressed thicker than he was, almost like cotton bales, and even covered their faces tightly with scarves, leaving only one pair of eyes exposed.

Mike was about to say hello to the other party, but suddenly the other party moved, and after a whirlwind, Mike was pushed to the ground, and before he could shout for help, his mouth was blocked by a rag.

At that moment, Mike's heart was full of remorse: "It's over, I'm going to be the appetizer of the communist devils' Christmas dinner......" (To be continued......)

PS: Bow and thank you to Pig Chic 2, Sweet Potato in the Melon Field, Fat Man Lu Fei, Wind Drifting Shadow, Southern Wanderer and Comrade hzwangdd!