Nowadays he spoke German fluently; he rarely had to search for words. But he still thought it sounded a little unfamiliar, despite several years of living with this language.
Arno became nostalgic for Sandviken hacksaw blades, for Veckans Äventyr and Aktiebolaget Aerotransport, for Saab and Volvo and ASJA and Aga-Baltic. He longed for Stockholm-Motala, Rederi AB Nordstjärnan, När det våras bland bergen, Flamma stolt mot dunkla skyar and Bullens pilsnerkorv.
That was it. He remembered Sweden. And he had never renounced his Swedish background. So it wasn’t surprising that he became nostalgic. For that matter, along with his German citizenship he still had his Swedish one, so he had the chance to return. But not during wartime. He had no interest in going on leave now, in the middle of Germany’s fateful struggle.
The fuel truck arrived. It pulled up off the road, between the ruins of two houses. Arno climbed to his feet and shouted orders to the SPW drivers to prepare to fetch petrol canisters. It was the drivers’ responsibility to keep the SPWs running smoothly, although everyone in the platoon had to be able to drive them. Even Arno. Long ago, he had received vehicle training in the Swedish Army to the ration team truck. And as for the SdKfz he had received one day’s basic training when he joined Battalion Wolf. It was similar to driving a truck except that you sat lower and that the vehicle had tracks and a steering brake that could stop one track so the vehicle could turn on a ten pfennig piece.
So Arno could, if the need arose, take over as driver. But a born vehicles man he was not. He was glad that he didn’t have to service the vehicles. Strictly speaking, as a soldier, he was more of a ranger type, less of a grenadier.
The vehicles were refueled. And as for himself, once again seated on the ammo box, Arno shook off the memories: the sudden appearance of nostalgia for that land to the north, the enigmatic country he came from. He took a deep breath and gathered himself. It’s strange I yearn for Sweden, he thought. I don’t want to go there, I enjoy being in the combat zone. But of course, you have to let the thoughts fly…
A certain Carlos Castaneda has since written about the sorcerer Don Juan.
In these books Don Juan mentions the feeling, “and yet,” something that haunts the circle of magicians involved. They know their stuff, they’re Operational Men in the service of esotericism, doing what they’re doing as free spirits. But sometimes they still yearn for something else, like a normal life. The epitome of this feeling is, “and yet”. And in the blackened ruins of Rissnovsk, Arno can be said to have experienced the same feeling. He was in his element, he was an elite soldier on the Eastern Front, but still he sat and longed for Old Sweden. Rationally, he shook off the whole thing but, emotionally, the Swedish Dream remained with him for the rest of this day.
15
Petlyakov
Arno stood at the prow of his SdKfz 251 as it splashed and lurched along a road across a plain. The snow had gone completely now, the land was pre-spring brown under a silvery grey sky. The plain was flanked by a spruce forest with some deciduous trees, still bare, on its fringe. It was just after four in the afternoon on April 5, sometime after leaving Rissnovsk.
The sky was overcast. Rain had fallen. The air was full of aromatic scents: it smelled of wood and soil acids, plus a hint of smoke. In front of the vehicle drove another 251, a car from 7th Company.
They were still in the process of breaking out from Hube’s Pocket, also known as the Kamenets-Podolsky Pocket. The situation was moderately positive: Hausser’s relief sally from Tarnopol had been launched and the Luftwaffe could support the mission with some maintenance flights and attack sorties.
The column rolled across the plain, the plain with its still-brown early spring grass, thickets and bushes. They were now about 70 km from Tarnopol. They passed a line of wrecked vehicles and dead Russians, the Soviet column having been strafed by Stukas armed with twin 37 mm cannons. As his vehicle passed in the field beside the road Arno saw the devastation: soot-blackened tank chassis, bullet-riddled trucks, turrets and drive belts, wheels and barrels and corpses. The shambles of war.
After about two kilometres the line of wrecks finally ended. Arno estimated that it must have been a full battalion. Arno’s SPW and the rest of the German column could resume the advance on the road proper. The road to Tarnopol.
Arno was wandering about on the plain. It was evening, April 6. In the background he could still make out the forest where the 251s had stopped for the night They had set up their bivouacs among the trees, about 40 km from Tarnopol, to get some food and decent rest.
Arno observed Battalion Wolf’s camp critically. He could glimpse the light from field kitchens and staff tents. It was an example of bad light discipline, a virtual invitation to the Red Army Air Force to do to them what the Stukas had done to Ivan back on the road across the plain.
The cloud cover had begun to break up. Scattered clouds scudded across the sky and were illuminated by the descending sun. The grey and blue-grey rags shifted in violet and gold. Sauntering in this way Arno suddenly spotted something, barely visible in the twilight. He flicked the safety catch of his automatic off and headed over. When he arrived he saw that it was a wreck, a plane wreck.
It was the remains of an enemy Petlyakov Pe-2. The propellers were bent. One engine was blackened by soot. There weren’t any corpses in the cockpit. Arno could make out three seats behind the glass hood. The exit hatches in the cockpit cover were open; the crew might have left the plane in midair, saving their lives by parachuting out. But, given that the wreck was intact it was more likely that they had managed to make an emergency landing, after which they had fled. But if so they had forgotten to burn the wreck. Shoot the fuel tank and toss a match was the usual routine which downed aircrews always had to try to do when landing in enemy-held territory. German forces could salvage the wreck and give it to the Finns who liked this plane. Indeed, Finland had a small force of this type of aircraft in its Air Force. It consisted of emergency landed Pe-2s; seized, repaired and renovated and then deployed against their makers.
The Pe-2 was a twin-engine bomber; more or less, a Russian equivalent of the British Mosquito. But the Pe-2 was used as a dive bomber whereas the British machine, however good it may have been in some ways, was made mainly of wood and probably couldn’t stand dive bombing. Twin fins added to the Pe-2’s distinctiveness. It had a top speed of 580 km/h and could carry a deadly payload of 1,600 kg in bombs.
This one was painted green, with a light grey underside. Arno further noted the Russian emblem on the sides, red, five-pointed stars outlined in white. Arno walked slowly around the machine, he drew his hand across the fuselage sheet metal and rivets, fantasising about what it would be to live as an aviator, a pilot, a conqueror of the skies.
Arno was fascinated by planes, although he had never flown one. He only knew about how to call in air support and that too wasn’t too elaborate. It was good to have but the means of communication between ground and air in those days were still rather embryonic, like using coloured smoke flares.
Apart from when he was airlifted out of Stalingrad, Arno had never even been in a plane. The nearest he had ever got to flying in one in the old days was when, as a child in Karlstad, he saw a Junkers F-19 landing on Lake Vänern. It was the famous Captain Albin Ahrenberg who was out on tour, taking people for a ride for a certain fee. But Arno couldn’t fly that day, he was harvesting potatoes in the family’s potato field. This was in August 1933.