Arno looked around and finally saw one of the singing birds, a white, quaint figure with bushy head feathers. It was a cockatoo. It swooped down, circled and landed on the bench. Arno, in the dream, spoke to the bird, calling it Maja. Maybe it was a reminiscence of his one-time friend, Maja Boklöf. Now this bird Maja said this to Arno:
“The dragon Dramation has just been born!”
“How?” Arno asked.
“A golden egg has been hatched revealing a benign dragon, a veritable golden age dragon, born to bring good vibrations to a stagnant culture.”
Arno rejoiced at the news, composing a song about a golden future for all, of sapphire trees, ruby lakes and emerald meadows in the sun. It was a dream-like song in a trance-like dream. When Arno woke with a start, he couldn’t remember what he had sung. He only remembered the feeling of trance, of inspiration.
Arno was lying in a bed in a house south east of Berlin. In the city itself few houses stood unburnt or unblasted, but on the outskirts there were still habitable billets to be found. 8th Company was there in order to fend off Russian landings on the nearby lake shore. It was in the early morning of April 15, 1945, and Arno lay deliberating on the dream he had just had. There had been some hope in the dream, however hazy the narrative with the golden dragon and all.
But Arno was a spiritual man, and he acknowledged the ideas of “good will to all men,” of God as the creator of the human soul, of rebirth and karma, and much else that formed the basis of a moral world order. He could see traces of the same in the world, in his waking life, notwithstanding the grim times: he could see the changes in the water, the wind and everything that grew, in the flowers’ very essence and in the trees’ greenery, in the rustling of the leaves and the rippling of the waters, in the highlights of the skies and in the twinkling of the stars. Dark these times were, certainly, a so-called world war was raging, but there were also good signs. You have to have the willpower and imagination to be able to see this. Everything seemed to be holding its breath, everything was waiting for the end and for something new; everything, all of creation, waiting for moment to come when people would start to realise their power, to realise the I Am-impulse.
Arno knew this, he felt it. He knew that something other than materialism must come in the world – but so far he wouldn’t go out and preach it, knowing from experience that it was pointless.
People, people in general, the masses wouldn’t start affirming their immense personal powers until enough philosophers and authors were vindicating the ideas in question, the ideas of self-empowerment, the practice of saying “I Am” to yourself, the use of willpower, the practice of meditating, an activity that was primarily led by willpower. You never start meditating by accident. People in general didn’t get this, they always waited for someone else to hand out the goodies, waiting for some God figure to say that Good Times Are Here, the party begins at eight and you yourselves don’t have to do a thing except turn up.
Arno hated this attitude. Instead, people had to mobilise their will. Until then nothing good would come out of this world.
Will, the individual’s free will was, as always, what was needed. Free will to believe. This was what Nietzsche touched on: it’s incumbent upon the will. He reduced all of metaphysics into will. Nietzsche had no monopoly on ideas of will, and he got lost in ego-inebriation and pushiness, but he did emphasise the concept of willpower more than his contemporary thinkers.
This was valuable: that Nietzsche had lifted Will as a concept, a force of nature. Therefore, Arno appreciated Nietzsche. And therefore he thought of the spiritual boost in Nietzschean terms – in, let’s say, combined Christian, esoteric and Nietzschean terms.
Arno was interested in matters philosophical. And he soon began to brainstorm on his own philosophy, a soldierly creed that incorporated the combat zone experience. For instance, he knew what the symbolic person he wanted to portray should be called: Operational Scout. But other than that, for the moment his concepts were too dim to be written down.
Arno groped for his watch lying on a chair beside the bed. The luminous figures said three. Then he could sleep a little longer. He did so. He was in his quarters in the company’s billet south of Berlin; he was in vest and pants under a blanket, all on a bed with a mattress. He asked himself why he had dreamed this ethereal dream of bird, peace and emerald meadows, the location at hand being anything but rosy. His army was fighting its final struggle. The company was inserted south of Berlin in order to stop landings on the northern shore of the Müggelsee.
Arno fell asleep again. At last he was awakened by aircraft noise. He looked at the sky and only saw a ceiling. He had expected to see the aircraft. He was still in the quarters.
The heavy drone of the big engines went by. It was Lancasters on the way home from yet another raid. Was there anywhere anything still left standing? Arno sat up, took out a cigarette, lit up and inhaled the smoke.
It was April 15, 1945, 0530. The unit was ordered to defend a front line just north of the Müggelsee, a lake south east of Berlin. The company had arrived there some days earlier and was grouped for defence with the Company HQ as a strongpoint. Arno had suggested that they deploy along the lake shore instead – ”catch them as they land” – but the current Company Commander, Captain Friesler, had rejected this. Battalion Wolf now had been deployed in defence of the Deutsches Reich capital. At this time Berlin was attacked by the Soviets from the east and southeast. This was where the heavy blow was expected. Arno saw no logic in the Captain’s comments, but he was the Captain, and orders are there to be obeyed.
Arno got out of bed and pulled on socks, trousers, field shirt and tunic. Then he put on his boots and gaiters.
He took a few deep breaths. He meditated, trying to gain mental peace. This was nothing new; this he had done throughout the war, day in, day out. Whether he was in Stalingrad, Kharkov, Tarnopol, Hanover or Berlin. Having calmed his breathing down he usually said aloud to himself: I AM. This he also did this very moment, early in the morning of April 15, 1945.
He put on his Sturmgepäck, helmet and map case. The helmet was of type M/42 without the processed edge. It was a simplified way to produce helmets in comparison with the 1935 variant, which in comparison was a blacksmithing miracle. However, the current helmet was better than the older one at one point: it had a dull, rough surface, not polished as the old one. When the M/35 was wet it shone it like a mirror and that was bad in the reality of infantry battle. Back in the day, this had been cured with matt paint or by giving it a fabric cover.
It was again time to fight. And again Arno stoically said, “I Am.” He was still determined to fight. The battle was largely lost. But there was no thought in him of just giving up and surrender arms. All his surviving platoon were of the same opinion. And even if someone had attempted a mutiny, if any soldier in the platoon had protested against the continued fighting, he would have been shouted down immediately, probably shot on the spot. Despite the overall collapse, random unit morale remained remarkably high in the Wehrmacht until the end.
Putting a packet of cigarettes in his pocket, Arno left his room, walked briskly through the house, went out into the open and soon reached a farmyard where he met his squad leaders. Bauer, Weissbart and Lenz stood there in the grey first light, scarred and weary but with their fighting spirit intact. He ordered them to him and asked:
“Time to fight, time to die. Are you prepared for that? Prepared to fight?”
They all nodded.
Arno led the way to the Company HQ. As intimated they now had a new commander, a certain Captain Friesler. Wistinghausen had been ordered to take over a battalion on the Western Front. The HQ building was 100 metres away, a wooden two-story house with a whitewashed front. The company was fighting separately now, the rest of the battalion having been positioned in Berlin proper.