“Welcome to Aspeboda War Academy. I’m your teacher. I’d say: A motti may be more or less exposed, depending on whether it has artillery support or not; if friendly artillery positioned outside can reach it and defend it with proper salvo points, then it is less exposed. As for artillery I also come to think of a formula – like, you know – this one, in the realm of, ‘what artillery and mortar should do, type of fire and for how long, possibly smoke and flare – and fire control sites and observation posts, and a fire control officer with a radio, sent along with a patrol, and signal rockets to call in a barrage.”
Arno sat in his cabin; he spoke to himself, a lot of words and little structure. Through this talk he processed his war memories. Whether he was mentally disturbed or not is debatable. In any case, he had to try to adapt to peacetime existence. He had already done it on a conscious level, for example, saying to himself, now there’s no need to look for mines when you’re out walking… And when you’re in town, don’t keep looking for snipers in the windows of buildings…And when a delivery truck backfires, don’t hit the deck…
These things he stopped doing quite quickly. True, he was an infantryman by nature and they move in a special way: checking the terrain, listening into the silence. But he didn’t sneak around in the bushes with a rifle believing himself still to be on the Eastern Front. He was in Sweden in post-war days, in peacetime, and he knew it.
But the rest of the warrior life lingered in unseen ways in his mind. To get over the memories of bloody corpses, spilling guts and staring eyes that came to you now and then – this was more difficult. And to get rid of the war jargon, clear your mind of unnecessary memes and attitudes – this took its time too. So he gave it time. He sat in his cabin and remembered. And now, in the bird-song summer of 1946, he composed off-the-cuff, impromptu prose poetry of the combat zone variety:
“A dead city, a city of darkness, a town of shadows – to roam in this metropolis, howling with the wolves and barking at the moon – venturing out into the delirious glow, an endless patrol in a grey area…”
In other words, he raved. He paid tribute to a city in lyrical terms, a deserted war city, a mix of the destruction he had seen in Stalingrad, Kharkov, Kamenets-Podolsky and Tarnopol. He sang where he sat and he teetered on the brink of insanity. However, he continued to speak and he did it in these more prosaic terms, as fragmentary and chaotic as before, a strange man, babbling in his loneliness. He thought of it all as part of his War Academy preparations, as a draft for what he would teach, but there wasn’t any structure in it. He said:
“Aspeboda War Academy. On the weapons side: combined anti-tank, anti-aircraft-cannon with 20, 40 or 75 mm calibre. Preparing to shield off the enemy with rifle grenades, then advance in the van… Just look at the Swedish M/42 tank – eight track wheels, three track supports and a nut for tightening the track tension – and a cannon and two MGs, one forward and one backward. One of these MGs should be coaxial with the cannon, that’s ideal, because you can shoot tracers in order to see where the main gun’s projectile will land. Works especially well in forested, mountain terrain. This can be difficult otherwise. That’s what the German armour fighting in Norway 1940 quickly learned.”
Arno sat at his kitchen table. Sometimes he experienced some kind of peace, inner peace. He drank a sip of spring water from a glass. No metallic tang from a water bottle. Inspired by its clean taste, he said:
“I’m at home in my home country, The Secret Wonderland of Sweden, the mid-Swedish forest… Here I can roam every day, every second in my imagination, storming forward in solar expression, erecting a bivouac, patrolling and living in wonder and glory forever…”
Then the war jargon burst through again: “MG, MP and StG, canvas gaiters and Dopplellitzen on the collar patch. MG fire can sometimes break through brick walls – and Molotov cocktails may contain potassium chlorate and with a sort of matchstick fastened outside – or gasoline and sulfuric acid plus a small dose of potassium chlorate stuck on the outside, in an envelope or whatever; this is the catalyst, the explosive trigger. We’re fighting with suicide units, we’re bombing cities, the losses are high. Death is followed by a troop parade at the graveside. Forward over trenches, vorwärts über Gräber – syntax committing hara-kiri in the light of the explosions, eternal operation, endless combat zone – fresh troops to the slaughter, crescendo of doom – don’t judge me, don’t forget me but tell my story, you, the living – pitch black, light grey, rusty brown and signal red – forget my name, mask my face, de-mythologise me and bring me alive again – heating a tin of iron rations and having to do without water, the carrier team fetching it hasn’t returned – the clouds chasing across the sky, the cuckoo calls…”
He left the table, went out in the yard and lay down in the soft, dappled shade of a birch. He said: “The planes in the sky, eternal hieroglyphics in my mind – when I was a child I wanted to be a pilot, now I’m an army soldier, it’s more in harmony with my being. I’m a soldier, a fighter on the ground and I see hieroglyphics in the sky, enigmatic ideograms; they are portents whose meaning I don’t know but I feel their essence with my whole being.
“A forest clearing with a road, a clearing sloping down towards a lake, a clearing with a row of trees as a screen. Taipale 1941, it was a Via Dolrosa – I’ve heard of this, this was in Finland. The reconquered battlefield made for a depressing sight, the region where they had fought during the Winter War was like a desert – in that summer they retook it and it was a waste land, full of blown up trees, they still stood but were splintered away at head height. A veritable Via Dolorosa: not a forest, not a plain, but a slightly different third. It was like Radzymin, I was there, I also saw one of these woods, I patrolled a forest with trees blown up, a little patch of ground in the flow of eternity, a symbol of life in the grey area…”
Now Arno again took up the thread of the “Aspeboda War Academy.” As he lay under the birch tree, he said:
“Aspeboda War Academy is beautifully situated in a pine forest, a moorland covered with pine trees and heather. Beyond the sandy ridge flows a river. And beyond that, flanked by a hill with birches and aspen, lies the Academy proper: namely, this cottage that I live in, located in Aspeboda in Närke, north of Örebro. In my Academy I lecture about the ins and outs of artillery – like the importance of artillery for defence (sometimes artillery alone can make up the defence, sometimes infantry weapons needn’t be inserted) – and the importance of artillery for patrol operations (bring an artillery observer along), and the risk of counter fire from enemy batteries. And fire control via light and sound measurement and aerial reconnaissance. And hostile barrages in areas where the enemy believes that our attack will go forward.
“Aspeboda artillery course: first a two-minute thrust against the enemy’s forward positions, then moving the fire towards the actual attack target – through the battalion F-group seeking fire clearance with the battalion or brigade mortar and artillery – listen in on the Battalion Support Net and hear how it goes, know when to ask for clearance. The support of artillery T-5, of mortar T-3, in the flank assault guns, first firing with their cannon, then their MGs. Register targets, prepare insert of the Artillery Division.”
“TNT-black sky, steel-grey sea, war winter, world at war, patrolling over white sandy heaths, scouting in forest clearings, walking with a grey-brown column along a polder, transport planes droning in the sky – dropping equipment, white parachutes with canisters, falling like clocks to the ground…”