Recollections of Olev Metsmaa

The seaplane harbour was built in Papissaare and air defence batteries were erected in Kiirassaare.

At first, the soldiers were housed in and around Kihelkonna. The locals were beginning to feel really jammed together. A lot of construction workers were brought in from the mainland, even from as far afield as Setomaa. Construction work stalled when the war broke out. The workers returned home and the military had to make do with the complex as it was, unfinished. At this point the situation became very unnerving. The military started moving troops here and there. The small but aggressive German and Finnish fighter planes could be seen flying overhead nearly every day. The skies echoed with the rumble of aircraft, the rattle of gunfire and explosions from anti-aircraft shells. At one point, an anti-aircraft shell detonated near a small Finnish plane, which looped the loop before it came hurtling down. A machine gun could be heard firing for 10 minutes before smoke began rising from Papissaare. The Russians were certain the plane had crashed. But the people in Vilsandi could see that the little aircraft had dropped down to sea level, carried on flying at a very low altitude and opened fire on the four or five aircraft docked at the harbour. The Russians had been duped. German fighters caused a lot of trouble at the base in Papissaare, disguised as Russian aircraft. They flew at very low altitudes and at very high speeds. The battery in Kiirassaare couldn't aim that low, so the Germans wreaked their havoc with no one to stop them. This continued into autumn; September, I think.
One day, black smoke began to rise from Papissaare, accompanied by a peculiar crackling noise. It sounded like a lorry stacked with timber was driving along the cobbled Kihelkonna-Papissaare road. The barracks and ammunition warehouses had presumably caught on fire. Things quickly turned serious.
Since our yard was full of thick smoke from Papissaare and it was becoming impossible to breathe, my father told me to move the carts, which were piled high with hay, away from the threshing barn to some bushes in the shade so as to avoid the farm catching fire. I released the hook on the rear door and the doors flung open with a crash. I was shocked to see dozens of sailors stumbling around in the bushes, seemingly even more shaken than I was, running frantically towards the road to Lümanda, some bareheaded, some even without their tunics. I didn't catch notice any of them bearing arms.
After a while the smoke thinned. A train of soldiers and horses was moving along the Lümanda road, everyone hurrying along.
They were all still very agitated the following night: no one could get to sleep. By morning the situation had calmed down hereabouts, but the approaching sound of warfare could be heard from over yonder. At noon we saw the first German troops, riding bicycles like tourists along the Kihelkonna-Lümanda road towards Sõrve. This left me feeling that the end of the war was near. Unfortunately, I was wrong. No one wanted to believe that this might be the start of a much bigger war.