FIRST CASUALTY

(Teasing the encirclement of Hanko, Adolf Molnár) 

3rd of August 1941 

- Grenades are exploding and the ground is shaking as the Russians try to locate the fire control position. I meet Vesti on the road, he's a stretcher-bearer from the 2nd Company and along with him is the submachine gun man from the Granholm Group. Vesti shouts like mad and runs to the forest. The Russians must have heard this as more grenades lands close to us. We advance into the forest and Vesti shouts that there he is. Near the tree a dark figure is lying without moving. 

- I feel a lump in my throat as I turn the figure around. It is Lindquist. His dark hair is sticky from blood. A fragment from a grenade has hit to the brain. He is still wheezing, but is unconscious and his face is turning dark. This is Lindquist, a metal worker from Helsinki. 

- We lift him carefully from the ground and carry him to the road. Lindquist is let down to the stretcher and men starts to carry him away. At the harbour Vesti dress the wound on his head. His jacket is open and the dog tag is visible on his chest. Say good bye to Lindquist orders Edh. 

- Lindquist died when they were getting him to the shore. He never came back to his conscious, he didn't know that he is going to die. Perhaps his last impression was the dark afterglow behind Bengtsår and after that, everything was turned off forever. Sergeant Eden has also been wounded from few fragments and is lying on another stretcher. His face is pale but he survived. 

- Lindquist is buried in the military cemetery of Helsinki, a city where he saw his mother and fiancé last time when we marched to the Hanko Front. I didn't know then, that I would be carrying him away on one Saturday evening under artillery fire.

- Structure 192, filled with water.

- Structure 192 is full of water, which again makes it easier to see the shape of the remains. This one is located right next to the road. Notice the second tree from the left, which has grown strangely askew. Shrapnel hit?

- There is also another dugout remains near of the road, which would be a good candidate for the structure 192. However it seems to have been partly destroyed by the road and what remain is now covered with firs.