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A secret society, a suspicious death, an elite New England graduate school, and a professor and student who come together to study an illicit form of magic and wind up in a dangerous romance. The Arcane Arts bios Decovering the electrifying debut novel that is leaving readers breathless, Available at bookstores everywhere.
The woods are cold, dark, quiet. It's December nineteen thirty nine on Finland's eastern edge. The lakes are frozen, the swamps sprinkled with frost, and now deep in the wilderness, a crisp breeze skidds through the brambles, Snow begins to fall. Flakes tumble over a thicket of birch trees and come to rest on the shoulders of a man lying flat on the ice. His name is Simo Halja. He settled
here hours ago in the black of night. He's surrounded by biting, cold, silence and thousands of Soviet soldiers, and now he waits for the sun to rise. When Soviet troops and tanks barreled over the border of Finland a few weeks earlier, Simo vowed to fight back. Today, it's twenty degrees below zero, He's dressed in a white snowsuit, nearly invisible from head to toe, his eyes squinting against
the wind, scanned for invaders. Simo peeks out from behind a small ridge of snow and surveys the horizon, now glowing orange under the morning sky. Light glitters off the snowpack. Somewhere beyond the birches, past the bombed out craters, past the splintered trees, Simo notices something, a distant flash, the morning light reflecting off a glass scope some three hundred meters away. Simo reaches for his rifle. The Russian soldier lifts his head, just for a moment. Then the soldier's
head falls to the ground. No warning, no flash, just snow in silence. Forsimo, A day of work has just begun. The Russians will never see the shooter, but they'll see the bodies of their comrades frozen on the ice. Dozens of them, then hundreds, all dropped by a single man, a quiet, thirty three year old corporal in the Finnish Army, who never used a scope, never left a trail, and
never stopped defending his homeland. In the winter of thirty nine, every Soviet in Finland, feared the Reaper, lurking in the forest, cold as ice, quiet as snow. Simo hal Haa The White Death. Welcome to very special episodes an iHeart original podcast. I'm your host, Zaren Burnett. Today the story of a quiet farmer who became one of the most prolific snipers in military history. Simo ha Ha The White Death.
Welcome back to very special episodes. My name is Jason English. We got a good one for you today. I'll get you right back out to it. I just want to do some shout outs at the top here. Occasionally we get to work with a production company called School of Humans out of Atlanta. They're a film, TV and podcast company. We've done many, many projects with them over the years. They worked on today's episode with us Amelia Virginia Ealy's
Jesse Lucas Riley worked on this script. He's been here since the beginning and I'm told this is going to do good things for our numbers in Finland.
Before the Soviet invasion of Finland in November of nineteen thirty nine, Simo how Ha led a peaceful life. He was raised in a Lutheran farming family in a rural hamlet called key Schenen. Life was simple, crops in the summer, skiing in the winter, and hunting year round. Like most kids from the Finnish backwoods, Simo learned how to shoot a rifle. As a child. He earned pocket change chasing down squirrels and selling their pelts. Timers praised him as
the town's top pest exterminator. At seventeen, Simo joined the voluntary militia, where he excelled at marksmanship. After he turned nineteen, he began his mandatory military service. Shy, with blue eyes a gentle face. Standing just five foot three, he didn't look like an imposing soldier. He was assigned to a bicycle battalion, but the job was overall pretty boring. It
was the nineteen twenties peacetime. Once his military service concluded, Simo hung his uniform up and returned to the family farm, and for the next decade he kept to himself. That is until in October nineteen thirty nine, rumors began swirling. Finland was on the brink of invasion. A month earlier, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union stormed into Poland and split it down the middle. Secretly the countries signed in agreement. Germany would take western Europe, the USSR would take the east.
It was an uneasy alliance. Joseph Stalin feared that an emboldened Germany could ally itself, with Finland opening up a gateway to attack the USSR from the west. He set his sights on Finland's east as a strategic buffer and as a matter of pride, to restore land lost during the Russian Revolution. Finland was up for grabs, and Simo could feel it, writing in his war memoir.
There was a sense of war in the air.
This memoir, titled My Winter War Memories, was discovered in twenty seventeen and recently published by the Finnish historian Tavet ais. In it, Simo writes that in late nineteen thirty nine he gathered his family and told them that the Red Army was poised to invade soon. Finland would need every man to step up.
This is our land and we have to defend it.
Simo rejoined the military and was immediately assigned to sixth Company, Regiment thirty four. The men were soon deployed to a region of eastern Finland called Karelia, a land of rolling hills, tens of thousands of lakes and swamps, isolated villages, and deep remote wilderness. And then, on November thirtieth, at three in the morning, it happened. Soviet troops marched across Finland's border.
Their goal was to reach a fifty five mile long fortification called the Mahndarheim Line, a series of bunkers and trenches stretching between the Baltic Sea in Europe's largest lake, Lake Ladoga. Think of it as the Great Wall of Finland. The Mahnnarhim was built to protect Finland's interior from invasion and the Soviets. They were determined to tear it down,
but that would be tricky. The Mahndarheim was protected by natural terrain and defended by highly motivated military, So the Soviets went for Plan B. They couldn't break through the Mahnarkheim Line. They go around it and use the back door. The back door was Northern Karelia, the woodlands, where Simohaua and the men of Six Company were now waiting. Approximately one hundred thousand Soviet troops poured into North Karelia. The Finns, outmatched three to one, didn't stand a chance. Mortar fire
lit the sky. The earth shook In the village of Hautavara, townhouses crumbled and horse carts were thrown into the air. The town turned to rubble. Simo was just a few miles from the destruction.
Well, this is it, we thought the war had begun. Be assembled our bark fire, fortified our trenches, and finished digging our fox holes.
More villages would fall. The Soviets made quick work and began marching towards Simo's unit. In early December, Simo would glimpse his first Soviet invader.
I got the first across the border person in my sight.
Simo saw the soldier walking straight at him. He could tell immediately that this man was not a run of the mill grunt.
A bat carrying enemy company leader who tried to end my boar right there and then.
Simo was not yet a hardened sniper. He didn't know how to hide from the enemy, and the Soviet soldier had him in his sights. Bullets whizzed past Simo's ears, Shrapnel kicked up sand and tossed it into his eyes. Simo wiped his face and rested his cheek on the stalk of his rifle.
Then came my turn.
He took a breath, cleared the sights, and.
I got the mark my first hit. With time and care.
The Soviet leader fell. This victory was short lived. The first few battles did not go well for Finland. Surrounded by the Red Army on three sides, Simo's unit was forced into retreat. As they ran, the Fins realized the enemy would use every abandoned village for cover. These little towns would become Soviet fortresses. The Fins couldn't let this happen, so one by one they set fire to their beloved homes. Entire villages went up in flames vataneami leos vara kaifa
sua Yervi. Anxious Fins watched as the tables where families ate, the cradles where they rocked their children, their family bibles, everything burned to the ground, and the orders to retreat kept coming.
After a couple of days of fearce fighting, we received orders to retreat as far as Souvi Lahti.
In the lakeside town of Suri Loachti sixth Company was hiding out in a graveyard when the Soviets charged machine gun fire, rained down bombs exploded from all sides. The enemy was just two hundred meters away and getting closer. A messenger arrived on horseback, breathless. He had a note from the higher ups. Simo's commander arenau the line and waved the messenger off.
There is no time to read when they had On's here.
It was in order for another retreat, but sixth Company had nowhere to go. As the Soviets approached, four hundred homes were building into an inferno. The flames grew hotter and hotter. The Russians grew closer and closer. Machine guns blared, tanks squealed.
In I'll never forget. I was given a mission to destroy the telephone light.
Simo ducked his head and darted between live rounds from one house to the next.
I cut the wires, taking my tie.
Although the Russians were shooting at me with the machine gun from a position about two hundred meters away.
He dodged flames to his left and bullets to his right, snipping phone lines and moving on. He felt invincible.
At that time.
I hadn't learned to think that there fire could cause any danger to me.
He rushed back to sixth company. When an opening in the flames appeared, the company rushed through and regrouped into the woods. From the sky above, Soviet bombers hunted the retreating soldiers, but the town was a fireball. The heat was blistering, billowing smoke clouded into the sky. The bombers couldn't see. The homes of the Fins had provided safety and shelter one last time. Finland's scorched earth tactic ultimately worked.
When the fires died, the Soviets had no abandoned buildings to shelter in, nor did they have telephone lines to make calls. They were cut off, trudging deeper into the Finnish hinterland, forced to sleep in ditches, it grew colder. The temperature would never rise about of seven degrees fahrenheit for the rest of December, and as snow began to fall, the tide would change. In what's known in Finland as
Kara Disota, or the Winter War. David would punch Goliath, and a sharp eyed farmer who could not die would become a legend. That's when we come back. When the Soviet Union invaded Finland, party leaders promised the war would be over in a matter of days, the Soviets heavily outnumbered the Fins, both in manpower and machinery. They had more than two thousand tanks, the Fins, by comparison, had about thirty Dakita Khrushchev, then a member of the Soviet Politbureau,
would later describe the Kremlin's mood as confident. Very confident. We could fire on unshot, he said, and the Fins would put up their hands and surrender. This was a spectacular misreading. Finland punched back hard, and they got help from an old friend. The weather the winter of nineteen thirty nine into nineteen forty would be one of the coldest on record. The Mercury routinely dipped to thirty and
even forty below. The Fins were used to this. In fact, trudging through sub zero snow in the middle of the forest was their idea of fun. Soviet soldiers disagreed. Many were conscripted from places like Ukraine, where the climate is more temperate. Most had never experienced such extremes, and many of them didn't even know how to ski, and so as the December snow fell and the lake's froze, Finland had the home field advantage and their wardrobe gave them
a leg up. The Fins wore white camouflage snowsuits, which blended in with the drifting ice. Meanwhile, the Soviets wore tan wool coats, basically walking around with shoot me signs taped to their backs. Simo took that as an order.
The enemy snipers systematically picked off our leaders.
A Soviet sniper had killed three finished platoon leaders. That's when Simo got the call.
The company leader assigned me to send greetings back to them.
Instead of taking up positions with his fellow soldiers, Simo peeled off on his own.
The lieutenants sent for me and showed me approximately where he thought the enemy sniper's position to be.
This would become his new routine. Each morning, Simo would ski out before dawn, slink into the woods, set up a perch behind enemy lines, and wait.
They called me a stalker.
I silenced the men of the enemy's machine gun nests when the occasion arose.
Once he found a spot, he piles snow around it. He then wrapped white gauze round the barrel of his rifle. He tossed water on to the snow, making it freeze and crust over, preventing the powder from puffing up and revealing his position when he took a shot.
When an enemy sniper was potted, I started stalking. A show down between snipers always has the nature of her due. Each one takes cover and wait for the other to show up.
Simo tucked in and waited for an invader to take aim at one of his comrades.
It often happened that an enemy sniper saw a good target and tried for it.
The shot might have hit, but it was his last.
My chance came when the opponent began a side task. I thumped with an open scope as soon as the man's head came into view.
On his first outing, Simo scanned the woods. His enemy was a master of disguise, it seemed.
At first I did not see a trace of him, just a small rock where he was supposed to be. After a careful investigation, we spotted him behind a little hump of snow near that rock. I took a careful aim, and the very first shot hit the intended target.
Soon this became Simo's routine. Each morning, he would set out with at least fifty cartridges, a handful of grenades, and a submachine gun, and of course, his trusty rifle. One day in the field, Simo scanned the forest. In the distance. About three hundred yards away, he spotted a shimmer. It was a pair of periscope binoculars poking out of the snow. Simo couldn't see the enemy, but he knew they were there hiding. He loaded his weapon and took two shots.
The Russians started pounding with their mortars towards us. Shrapnel, twigs, and soot were flying from everywhere.
The pines shook violently.
About fifty shells landed around my foxhole. Many of them threw clouds of sand into my face. Lieutenant cued the line and sent a man to tell me to get out of there. They'll kill you there, he said, Well, getting out of the foxhole was not really in my mind, so intense fast the enemy fire.
Eventually Simo escaped. The near miss motivated him. The next day, he returned and set up in a hollow nearby.
Suspense gets the blood circulating, so the cold didn't really face me.
Simo surveyed the snowscape and again noticed the glimmer of binoculars. This time he could see the soldiers behind them.
From this place I could choose in peace. The mortar fire didn't hit so close.
Simo took out the soldier behind those binoculars and six others in the camp. The next day, when the Soviets set up in the exact same spot, Simo repeated his routine. Around that time, he began keeping count of his kills, what he called his list of sins ligament elichomedexixy. Throughout the entire winter war, Simo Hauha refused to use a scope. He executed his enemies from distances of two hundred, three hundred,
even five hundred yards with old fashioned iron sights. Sometimes the biting wind would sweep shards of ice or snow into his naked eye, but to Simo the discomfort was a small price to pay. It was, after all, the reflected sunlight off of glass scopes and binoculars which gave away the position of enemy snipers. With iron sights, he would be virtually invisible. Besides, a scope would have given Simo a closer view of the person he was killing,
and he didn't have the heart to look. By mid December nineteen thirty nine, Simo and his company had built a fortified position along the coal Law River, it was a natural place to set up a line of resistance. The coal Law was a small, gentle creek fed by a freshwater lake. It was surrounded by swamps and endless thickets of pine. Only one road crossed the river, and the Fins had blocked it. The Fins at the Coolaw were outmatched three to one, but they believed the little
river was on their side. They appeared to be right. Over the next two months, the two sides would be locked in a grinding stalemate, with the co Lah dividing the two. Day after day, the Soviets sent tanks to take the bridge, and day after day the Fins lit those tanks on fire, and when the sun set, the Fins would put on their skis, glide through the woods and over the frozen lake, and steal cannons and mortars
left by their fleeing enemy. In fact, the Fins would steal so many weapons Moscow would claim that a quote great power must be supplying the small country with extra weapons. Their suspicions were correct in a way. That great power just happened to be the Soviet Union. As Christmas approached, the Fins were routinely used the Soviet's own machine guns against them, forcing the enemy to lay low and sleep
in the frozen bogs across the river. Here is how Erqui Palo Lampi, a Finish writer dispatched to the battleground, described the scene.
The ice is uneven, torn by artillery cells. Showers from the machine guns sweep over us all the time, and the noise of the battle is intense. The enemies have fallen into dinright piles.
As most of the Fins worked to defend the road and the river. Simo Hauha lurked in the woods alone, waiting watching.
The sniper's job was relatively free. You had to move all over the company's area wherever you were needed. Sometimes I looked for suitable targets myself, sometimes they were shown to me. The company leader and platoon leaders would often say that there's an annoying opponent over there that would need to be taken out of the game.
He was a specter, a whisper in the wind, a ghost in the snow, and each day he returned to camp with more notches in his belt.
Udism the vizi udix Ingkament, the cozy ludisingment.
One day, the company chaplain Antirantama joined troops on the front lines. He asked Simo how many kills he had so far.
Come on the top log onya.
Simo replied, nonchalant.
Around one hundred and thirty eight a certain cases.
Reverend Rantama rolled his eyes. Surely this was an exaggeration, but then he exchanged glances with Simo's buddies. They all flashed a look, yeah, that sounds about right. The Reverend gave Simo a nickname, the quote number one Reaperman of the Cold Law. He had others, including the magic Shooter. Simo, how Ha, was always a good shot, after all, he grew up blinking squirrels and other varmints, but early on
he clearly had a gift for it. When he first joined the service in the nineteen twenties, his buddies marveled at how fast and accurate his shots could be. Once Simo hit a target five hundred feet away sixteen times in a row in just under one minute. He routinely entered local shooting competitions throughout the twenties and the thirties and regularly came home with a medal. Simo obsessed overmarksmanship. During his peaceful farming days, he used his lunch breaks
to silently cite his rifle. When the day's work had ended, he'd load his rifle and practice. That practice paid off. There's a photo of six Company taken just before Christmas nineteen thirty nine. In it, about two dozen men stand in the snow, smiling out of frame as a Christmas tree decorated with grenade shraud. Simo, however, is nowhere to be found.
I myself was not in the picture taken off the Christmas party, but I was in the foreground tasing the Russians, snapping twenty Russians and three more on the leg.
He was too busy hunting Soviets. On December twenty first, Simo returned to camp, stepped into the main tent to shook off his boots, and reported his count.
Twenty six here, Lieutenant, Oh, when he got it, just went thirty four hera lieutenant.
The lieutenant scoffed, joking.
You a wasted the States fan Simo.
Simo sat on the bare floor and lit a cigarette twenty six kills. It was his single day best, if we can call it best. He sat there smoking by Christmas, he had recorded one hundred and fifty kills, completely unaware that he was already the most successful sniper in military history. Today, many accounts of Simo's exploits are lost. Sixth Company kept a war diary, but those pages went missing decades ago. Fortunately, tales of the company's success lured writers to the battleground.
An author named Mika Vaultri came to the collah that December and painted the scene.
Snow blanket glows eerily in the moonlight, and the shades of the forest are unmoving. Snow clad watchmen blend invisible into the landscape. Sometimes a snowsuit wearing watch emerges from the snow, quietly asking for the password. The snow covered shell holds along the roadside are getting more and more numerous. Here and there you can see shattered trees in the distance. We hear the blast of a grenade and something snaps in the branches above our heads.
Vaultrie was invited into six Compani's tent, where Simo and his fellow soldiers gathered by the stove to share stories.
When reading about them in the newspapers, the story seemed unbelievable, But when you hear them in a soldier tent with the stove giving off its warmth. Told by the people involved themselves in simple words, without boasting or exaggeration, then you know that they are indeed true.
Suddenly five grenades exploded in the forest nearby.
No one lying on the hay flinched. No wants expression changed. Only someone glanced at me, amusedly wondering what effect this might have on their guests.
When Vaultri left the cola a few days later, he was convinced the underdog Fins would win. They had an advantage, a weapon that no military commander in a fancy office could understand.
For the first time in my life, I realized what Finnish wilderness truly means. The forests and the snow fight against the folk. The Finnish wilderness protects suns better than any fortifications or fortress.
By January, the co law still held Stories of bravery from the front lines spread across Finland and to other stretches of Europe. Once written off as a lost cause, Finland's push against the USSR was becoming an inspiration. In Britain. Winston Churchill marveled Finland alone and danger of death. Superb sublime. Finland shows what free men can do. If the co law could hold, if Finland could protect its then surely
the country would prevail. In February nineteen forty, Simo Hauha was awarded a four day pass for rest and relaxation. He returned to his family farm. He told no one what he'd seen or done. Instead, he fled to the isolation of the woods and practiced. Simo was always quiet, reserved, but it's fair to guess that a lot was on his mind. More than one hundred men from sixth Company had died. One of his best friends, tov Varis, had been killed by a Soviet sniper. Simo and Tovey had
been longtime buddies for years. They biked to the shooting range together in winter. They skied there with rifles on their backs, chatting, laughing. Now tove was gone, and Simo wanted one thing. The man who killed his friend.
That man who will be taken out of his days.
When he returned to the front, Simo interrogated the Finnish soldiers who saw Tovi die. Where was he killed?
He asked.
They opened a map and pointed here. The next day, Simo set out on his skis and set up camp. This mission would be different most days. Simo arrived early in the morning, hoping to catch the enemy at sunrise, but hunting a fellow sniper required a new strategy. Snipers, after all, stay put. They don't move, at least not until they leave for the night. So Simo waited all daylight. I came dusk, followed the moon and the stars began to rise, and instead of heading back to camp, Simo
stayed watching. A shadow in the distance moved. It was the sniper, calling it a night.
The poor boy climbed on the edge of the pit. I then raised the side a little. It was approximately three hundred meters.
Three hundred meters in the growing darkness. A tough shot. Simo stared down his barrel focused.
I had the good luck to hit with the first snap.
By February, everyone in Finland would know about the Battle of the Cola, and everyone would know the name Simo. How there are many.
True tales about him, how deadly bullets do not touch him, how he can bear to be away from the front line ewan when wounded, and how he doesn't even stay on the front lines, but goes behind enemy lines to harass them. The famous sharpshooter has certainly felt already around two hundred enemies with his rifle.
More journalists arrived on the frozen battlefield, and Moore returned home with stories of the ghost in the snow that was Simo. How ha, Each tale made the five foot three soldier larger than life. Here's one. Simo was lying on a rock staking out Soviets when artillery reined down over his position. A grenade exploded so close it tore the shirt off his back. Simo brushed himself off, a red burn streaking down his back. When a writer asked Simo if the hit hurt, the sniper didn't appear to
understand the question. He simply replied, but it didn't hit, And so his legend grew.
Death moves along the front lines.
Sometimes it takes a man from where you wouldn't believe it. Quite often man is miraculously sparred from what seems like certain death.
Accounts of Simo's venerable hunts began appearing in newspapers as far off as Paris and Belfast. The race was on for eager reporters to flock to Coola to profile him. Many surprised that he didn't resemble the cold blooded killer of their imagination.
You have to look that if.
He were to murray, he would be a great danger of being put under the sleeper. He looks as innocent as if he wouldn't ever even have failed an apple from a three.
The resistance at Cola became synonymous with Finnish grit. Powered by small units, they used terrain, cunning, and extreme conditions to hold off massive Soviet forces for months. The Finn's stubborn resistance was becoming legendary, and Simo was approaching mythic status.
On his back is his famous rifle, with which he has, according to precise accounting, felt two hundred and nineteen enemies. He has a habit of skiing along the front lines and with his sharp eye watching what the other side is doing. Usually the first shot always hits when the cost is the price of the shot fifty five pennies.
Across Finland, a belief emerged if Simo survives, so will the country and Simo, they believed, was untouchable. By early March, a trail of burnt out tanks stood as a monument to the Soviet's failure to cross the Kola. Stalin's men needed a new strategy. Miles away, they began felling tree and building a new road. They hatched a plan to send thousands of fresh troops across the river. The two sides were destined for an epic clash for finland. All
hands were on deck. Leadership could not afford to have Simo sitting in the forest alone. They ordered him to join his countrymen and prepare for an all out assault. It's five a m March sixth, nineteen forty. Simo and his men poke their heads out of their tents. They strap on their skis, slowly, silently, under the cover of moonlight. They glide through the Ulis Minin forest and come upon a frozen swamp. The bog is the size of three
football fields. There is no tree cover. The men exchanged glances. The sun is rising. They need to cross the open ground fast, and soon suddenly an explosion around them. Trees crack and splinter. Dirt flies into the air. Soviet shells rain down on their position. There is no time to think. They must cross now.
On the other side of the swamp, an assault begun against an enemy that was right nearby.
Simo presses his submachine gun to his shoulder. He skis across the swamp as fast as he can. Bullets whiz past. He returns fired.
My rifle was working fine. I was happy with its results.
We were so close to the enemy that the nearest was about two meters away from me.
Simo can see the Soviets in their foxholes. Some are so close he can practically grab them. They're running away, disappearing into the trees. Simo looks around the woods for quiet.
While fighting clashing in the dark forest. I couldn't see the enemy in front of me, and that's when my luck turned.
A Soviet soldier is hiding behind the tree. Simo never sees them.
Suddenly I heard a shot from maybe fifty to one hundred meters away.
And I felt that now it had hit.
Simo opens his eyes. He is on the ground in a pool of blood and melting snow.
The world was spinning and tilting in my eyes. I think the stars were also showing. Then a rush of blood blinded my eyesight. My mouth felt to be full of bone, fragments and blood.
Simo feels a warmth spread across his face. He feels his jaw dangling open, like wet meat. Pieces of his tongue lay on the snow. A bullet pierced his left cheek and upper lip. Soldiers rush to his aid, screaming for a medic. They turn him onto his side, hoping to stop him from choking on his own blood. Simo is still conscious. He feels his men drop his limp body onto a sled, tugging him back across the frozen swamp.
The sled glides over the ice, The dawn sun begins to rise, machine guns fade in the distance, and Simo's world goes dark. Hours later, Simo's body is placed on a pile of fins, killed in action. His lieutenant is informed of his death. The news spreads across Finland. Radio and newspaper obituaries report with sadness that a national hero has perished.
The freedom fighter simohioa of whose unique service the papers have told down around Miraculos stories, has fallen in the last battles of the water on the Kolarida.
Around fifteen hundred Finnish soldiers would die defending the Kola and yet, despite facing a Soviet army much bigger than their own, the river would hold the Mohnarheim line, though would not the Great Wall of Finland would crack, Soviet forces would pour in, and Finland would be forced into an impossible position. On March twelfth, the two countries signed
a peace treaty. Finland agreed to give up about ten percent of its land, all of the region around the Coolah River, the town of Simo's boyhood, his family farm. All of it was now part of the Soviet Union. The Coolah fell not with tanks or greens or a sniper's bullet, but rather with the stroke of a pen. The same day Finland surrendered, the family of Simo Hauha received a telegram.
Stop the funeral the disease, dismissing the message.
It was from Simo. He wasn't dead. He was in a Red Cross hospital. He'd been unconscious for nine days. Somebody had pulled him out of that pile of dead bodies and taken him to the hospital. He had four surgeries. Doctors reconstructed his face with pieces of his hip bone. Now he was eating through a feeding to but he was alive, awake, and in good spirits. A few weeks later he got a note from his lieutenant Arnayuti linen Seemore.
We believed you were gone, we needn't told a memorial feast. But when we learned that you were alive, then we held quiet up on hardy. Hope your health returns. Every finish free or unofficially at Bat's grandmother, we'll accept the us a bachelor us Grando.
In the years that followed, Simo underwent twenty six surgeries to reconstruct his jaw. By nineteen forty two, he was able to cross the border into Russia for the dedication of the Kolah River as a protected area, a joint memorialization effort by Russia and Finland. Approximately fifteen hundred Fins had perished in those woods, along with about sixty one hundred Soviets. Simo would be credited with two hundred and fifty nine sniper kills, plus another two hundred and fifty
more with pistols and automatic rifles. All told, Simo was responsible for nearly ten percent of all Soviets killed at the Kolah, making him one of the deadliest snipers in military history. Simo Hauja would and the rest of his life on a woodland farm in solitude. He never married. He spent his years raising hunting dogs and guiding moose hunts. He rarely spoke about the war. When he did, he never boasted about individual accomplishments.
Listen, no one slacked off there in the war. Together we underwent the tough moment and we eat tried to do our best. The most important thing is that you trust your friend.
Simo carried the scars of battle for the rest of his life.
But never complained the shot that wounded me. Came an honest man to man combat.
Decades later, as an old man, Simo met up with a group of veterans who'd survived the Battle of Kola. At one point, somebody asked him, had any snipers from Russia shown up? Simo looked around and shook his head. They cut an RSVP. He had already buried them. Very Special Episodes is made by some very special people. Today's episode was produced in partnership with School of Humans. This show is hosted by Zaren Burnett, Danish Schwartz, and Jason English.
Today's episode was written by Lucas Riley. Our senior producers are Josh Fisher and Amelia Rock. Additional production by Etily's Perez. Our story editor is Virginia Prescott, editing, sound design, mixing and mastering by Jesse Niswanger, Research in fact checking by Austin Thompson and Lucas Riley. Got to give major props to our excellent cast who brought this one to life. Starring Niska Kayanos as Simo Haukra. Additional voices provided by
Tuamas Achva Home, Tuamas Brock, and Touka Ra. Special thanks to Sirifa Rista Marquis Brock. Original music by Alise McCoy and Jesse Niswanger. Show logo by Lucy Quintanilla. Executive producers of today's episode are Virginia Prescott and Jason English. Very Special Episodes is a production of iHeart Podcasts. If you're a fan of the show, go give us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform