“What now, Herr Wiking,” Bauer said.
“Viking…?”
“Well aren’t you, a Nordic hero in an adventure in a foreign land, steering a boat towards new shores…”
Arno smiled:
“Well, I suppose I am. Ich bin ein Wiking, ich bin ein Warjag ‘varjedag’. Durchaus!”
While the boat chugged away across the lake Arno elaborated on his plan, finally saying to the men:
“We have reinterpreted our orders. Deserted by our HQ but maintaining the Deutsches Heer spirit of ‘attack, always attack,’ we decided to commandeer a boat to continue solving our tasks on a new beach. We acted in the spirit of the task, which was to fight the hostile advance upon Das Vaterland.”
“Indeed,” Bauer said, “this is in the spirit of the attack. We’re advancing.”
Vikings or not, this boat adventure was in a grey area. After all, Arno could have moved back to defend the empty HQ. Or they could have launched a suicide assault on more Russians as they landed. In either case they’d all have ended up dead or as prisoners, which, knowing the Reds as they did, was probably the worst option. He was growing tired of the war and he admitted it. Yet, he was prepared to meet anyone saying to his face that he hadn’t done his duty and solved his tasks during the operations in Stalingrad, Kharkov, Ukraine, Belarus and Hungary from 1942 through 1945. And in the operation today he hadn’t turned and fled, he had headed on to the target, the lake shore and beyond. He remained the fighter.
They chugged on over the lake until they reached the western shore. They left the boat among some reeds and headed off through a spruce forest. They spent the night in a barn, heating tinned meat and eating biscuits from their “iron ration”, der Eiserne Ration, the emergency rations each soldier carried for if he got cut off from the baggage train. How many of those were still operating in the fighting ruins of the German army?
So, westwards. Always westwards. Finally making contact with another German unit. Arno’s report was accepted. It was difficult to verify things in the current chaotic situation so this dubious transfer from the Berlin sector to the Western Front prompted no action from the authorities.
Arno’s men were given food and shelter. Then, resupplied with ammunition and not much else, they were sent, constantly on the lookout for allied fighter bombers, to the Hunsrücker Taunus. There they participated in the final German battle against US forces. They fought through the last days of April, as the battalion to which they now belonged was ground down. At the end Arno’s team was only Bauer, Ilo, Gipp and Sachs. They were with Arno that last day, in the village of Messendorf. Facing strong American units, with infantry deploying from halftracks under cover of a hail of suppressive fire, they found a Sherman tank attacking from their rear. They had no Panzerfaust; not even any hand grenades. And they were trapped in the backyard of a burning house.
So Arno gave the orders to surrender arms; tears streaming down Ilo’s face as the Yanks roughly prodded them away to captivity. They were held in a prison camp for eight months. Arno was questioned repeatedly about how he had ended up there, as most Swedes who had fought for Germany did so as Waffen SS volunteers. But, unlike all of them, he didn’t have his blood group tattooed on his shoulder, so in the end his explanation that he had been conscripted on account of his dual nationality was accepted. Arno was released. Since he still held his Swedish citizenship Arno went home to Sweden.
Coming home to Sweden, in the New Year of 1946, Arno was jailed for having illegally strayed from military service. When, back in 1941, he had obeyed his German call-up he had – as told earlier – not had permission to do so approved by the Swedish Military Authority. So he had broken the law when he had gone to Oslo to report to the German Army Authority. And so, back in Sweden in January 1946, he was sent to prison.
28
Aspeboda War Academy
Arno was imprisoned for desertion. He had to attend “the big house,” sitting in a stark cell in Långholmen Prison in central Stockholm. It was warmer than Russia.
So, having first sat in an American POW camp from May through December 1945, Arno now spent another three months in jail. Three months for desertion, for leaving Sweden with the ulterior motive of going to Germany to serve in its Army. It was a pretty harsh penalty; some Swedes only got a week for similar offences.
But at least Arno wasn’t totally destitute when he walked out through the prison gates. During his German service he had received his Wehrmacht wages, deposited monthly into his Swedish bank account. He didn’t spend that much cash in service as a German soldier. He had only really been on leave twice, during the battalion resupply stints in Dresden and Frankfurt an der Oder. Then he had spent money on wine, women and song. But most of the time he was at the front, eating supplied rations and sleeping in bivouacs and quarters.
He was one of those who had to be ordered out on leave, he rarely applied for it himself. He had been an instrument set for war; if he left the front for long he kind of lost it, falling down from the elevated state of mind the combat zone engendered. It took time to get back to the combat zone state after a few days of leave. Plus, he had no home to visit, no known relatives in Germany; his parents were in Sweden and they were off limits. So he had never applied for leave voluntarily.
So Arno’s wages had accumulated in his account. So when he was discharged from prison in early April 1946, he withdrew some of the money, rented a cottage in the country, where he could live on spring water and spend his days in meditation. The cottage was in Aspeboda in Närke, halfway between Stockholm and Karlstad. While living in the cottage he pondered. Now I’m back in Sweden. How nice: I’m in the native country of the Sandviken hacksaw blade, Aga-Baltic, Volvo and Rederi AB Nordstjernan. Well, I shouldn’t be sarcastic, he thought. Along with being a German I’m Swedish, this is my home country and I’m still alive. And the world hasn’t come to an end, despite atomic bombs and global conflagration, so praise the Lord and sing nonny-nonny.
Arno had time to think these days. He thought of various things. Among other things, he got the idea: why not start an independent war academy, such as they have in the USA? A military college for high school youth intending to become reservists and regulars. A school preparing its pupils to become officer cadets in the Army.
I could do this, Arno thought, while he was sitting at the kitchen table in his cottage, looking out over the summer green neighbourhood. I could manage such a school. This day in July 1946 the thought occurred to him and now he brooded on what he could teach at his academy. Essential to prospective officers was of course leadership, the art of leading units. And Arno knew this subject. Even the smallest military leader, he considered, even the Squad Leader, must be something of a guru. He must teach his men a thing or two. And then some more. Such as to endure, forgetting hunger and overcoming hardships. Being an operational scout shapes your character; that was the thing. You must have the will to make it, the will to survive, the ability to persevere. To project your will on events and change them. For example, hunger isn’t so merry. But as a soldier you must have the will to cope with it – the will to survive, will to endure. And hunger can be endured. Primarily, water and sleep are what a human being needs, food only comes third.
Arno suddenly began to think aloud as he sat. He began training for his role as teacher at the Aspeboda War Academy, as he would call it. What would he say to his students?