I talked with a soldier whoвЂ™d accounted for three 30-ton tanks this way!вЂќ TheyвЂ™ve got a new trick which is to tie a mine to the end of a string, then hide in a ditch until one of the Russian tanks comes along and jerk it across the road. And talk about improvisation-they invent their weapons as they go along. They donвЂ™t seem to be afraid of anything. вЂњTheyвЂ™re the damnedest fighters IвЂ™ve ever seen. He had just returned from the Mannerheim Line and was filled with admiration for the Finnish soldiers. Out of the general confusion I managed to find Webb Miller of the United Press and had lunch with him. But when I went downstairs the following morning, I found it overflowing with a noisy conglomeration of people there were Finnish soldiers, women volunteers, politicians, and foreign journalists and photographers of a dozen different nationalities. When I arrived late at night it was deserted. The Hotel KГ¤mp was the capitalвЂ™s war-time center. Although they were aware they couldnвЂ™t hold out indefinitely in such an unequal struggle, they clung to a stubborn faith that some event, unforeseen though it was, would save them from final destruction. It was only when we left and wished him good luck that he said, вЂњIt will take a miracle to save us, but perhaps a miracle will happen.вЂќ Then, almost beneath his breath, вЂњIt must happen.вЂќ This boy was typical of many Finns with whom we talked. Apart from a few reserved remarks he did not discuss the war.

Fortunately, he had sent his wife and children away the previous week.

He told us he had heard only that morning that his house, some distance away, had been bombed and completely destroyed. He was an engineer in ordinary life, and now his job was to detonate unexploded bombs. The young Finnish lieutenant had spent considerable time in America and spoke English fluently. Somehow it was an odd experience to be sipping coffee in a burning building also somewhat of a contradiction trying to get warm in a house that was on fire. His sons were fighting it, and he was confident everything would soon be under control. It had been struck by an incendiary bomb two hours before. While he was serving us, he informed us cheerfully that the top floor of the house was on fire. The proprietor brought us hot meat sandwiches and coffee. Half frozen, we finally stumbled into a corner cafГ©. One of the Swedish journalists shouted at him, and he quickly rubbed it with snow. A 20-year-old army lieutenant detailed to show us through the town forgot to pull down one of his ear tabs, and a few minutes later his ear went dead white. The charred framework of the houses stood out blackly against the snow, but there were no curious pedestrians to inspect the damage, for icy winds from the sea swept through the streets. The roads were littered with mattresses, chairs, and household articles that the soldiers had salvaged from the fire. But if you can visualize farm girls stumbling through snow for the uncertain safety of their cellars bombs falling on frozen villages unprotected by a single anti-aircraft gun men standing helplessly in front of blazing buildings with no apparatus with which to fight the fires, and others desperately trying to salvage their belongings from burning wreckage-if you can visualize these things and picture even the children in remote hamlets wearing white covers over their coats as camouflage against low-flying Russian machine-gunners-you can get some idea of what this war was like. It is difficult to describe indiscriminate aerial warfare against a civilian population in a country with a temperature 30 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. All along the coast I passed through villages and towns which had been bombed and machine-gunned in Hanko, the Finnish port which the Soviets demanded in their ultimatum, 20 buildings had been hit, and when I arrived, 10 were still burning. The deep quiet of the snow-bound countryside was broken by the wail of sirens five or six times a day as wave after wave of Soviet bombers-sometimes totaling as many as five hundred-came across the Gulf of Finland from their bases in Estonia, only twenty minutes away. Here I saw for the first time what continuous and relentless bombing was like.

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