He didn’t stop: “Handgun, MG and hand grenades – clear the flank. Fire and movement.”
“Make a plan of attack, make a fire plan – artillery and mortar, type of fire and for how long.”
Drifting away: “The clouds are on parade, blue mountains in the distance. Somewhere a dog barks.”
Back to war: “Ranges of fire. A soldier must know all this off by heart. Cover, concealment and ranges of fire are the alpha and omega of the infantryman – and with the weapons we had, it was 150-600-1000 metres for MP, StG and MG; for the Panzerfaust it was 60 metres; for flare pistol it was 250 metres, that was the circle being illuminated, a circle 250 metres in diameter. With illumination rounds it was 800 meters, mortar grenade, a mortar flare bomb.”
Rambling: “Assign each man a fire zone. Drum magazine, stick magazine – jet noise over a field, light rain at dawn – belt buckle, collar patch, camouflage smock, mitten with hole for the trigger finger, automatic counterattack – company reserves, Terra Incognita – the Battle Zone – the Zone – No Man’s Land – the Secret Land – the Dreamland – the Promised Land – the Land – the Battle Zone That Never Was…”
Silence. Then: “Deserted city, symbols, reserves and reinforcements. Walking in the void behind armoured spearheads, walking in the winter wonderland. Clouds in the sky. Battle as a state, the eternal cycle of battle elements, eternal feedback. Platoon leader writing in his notebook as around him a world is falling to pieces – he’s the operational scout, the creative Self in an eternally present moment – thus overcoming time, the world, everything, even if the world at the same moment goes to pieces.”
“Burning magnesium, ersatz moonlight, spooky clouds in the morning, uncanny valley under the searchlights – anti-personnel mine, telephone wire, 9 mm projectiles. Sun over a clearing, white clouds in the sky, rustling woodland.”
“The rain stops, the sun peeps out, birds chipping. Heather glistening with water droplets.”
“Advance, take, prepared to support. Fire on emerging targets, willing to go to hell and back. Deployment there, fire towards the flaming field, prepared to blind targets here and there.”
“The pine forest, huge, deserted and dormant, and mountains in the distance as an ever-present reference – smell of resin, soil acids, needles and sprigs. This is nowhere, this is here, this is the Land, this is the Thousand Mile Forest.”
“Reindeer droppings on the ground – a hare at a forest edge – the cuckoo calls – a woodpecker hacking, a crow cawing. A buzzard flying in the sky, a car hurrying past on a dirt road.”
“The stillness. You don’t see a living soul, but forest is alive, and you yourself are alive – you are a part of the forest, the forest you’ll go into once you leave this world.”
Arno stood up, left the shadow of the birch and walked down to the river. It flowed past him in a slight curve, bordered by birch, aspen, spruce, moss and grass. Sitting down on the trunk of a fallen conifer, contemplating the soothing, hypnotic flow of the water, he again came to think of the Academy he would start: The Aspeboda War Academy. He practiced delivering a speech, sketching mentally what he would say in an academic lecture. Now he said this, comparatively structured and ordered, on the theme of death and how to overcome it:
“Today’s Academy lesson is about dying – or rather, being denied death. A soldier must be prepared to die. No! He must even want to die, desiring death on the battlefield. Why else be a soldier? Dying in battle is the ultimate, transcendent goal. Dying in the elevated state of consciousness that is typical of the soldier in combat; to die in a mental boost, dying in a higher state of consciousness, and thus go from this world to the next with that enhanced consciousness intact.
“However,” Arno continued, “if you’re denied the opportunity to die, then? It was like when I was in Kharkov, that time in March 1943 when we retook the city. I was hit by a bullet, silent as they are. They are silent because of this: the bow wave going in a plough shape on both sides of the bullet doesn’t reach the ear until you’re hit. And so, about my fate, this was in a muddy park we were about to clear – the enemies retreated but someone threw away a chance shot – I was hit and knocked to the ground. But the bullet was stopped by successively a gun sling, the shoulder strap to the battle harness and a wallet. I was hit and I made it through. And I realised: this could have meant death if not ‘if’ had been. And then I felt, in some strange way, that I would never die in battle. So I had to continue to fight, with Mr Death at my side but never as my redeemer. It took a while before I learned to live with it. I learned, one might say, to appreciate life.”
Arno said this in his delirious talking to himself. The incident itself was a fact of course. Now Arno added to fact his views on death and awareness of death, things he had deliberated on during the course of the war:
“‘Like cherry blossom in the spring time, let us fall pure and radiant,’ the Japanese say. Indeed, this death wish has some allure. As a soldier you mustn’t be afraid to die. By the same token, you mustn’t seek out death for death’s sake. We’re all gonna die so this is pointless; to revel in death is indulgence. Instead, you have to live deliberately, to live on such a mental level that death won’t sneak up on you unexpectedly, taking you by surprise. Because I imagine that an unprepared, totally surprised psyche ends up in turmoil after death, with the individual in question having to start anew in the next life, having to continue at the same level as in the earlier life. A raised, conscious psyche, however, for its part goes on to a higher level when he dies, to a new celebratory frenzy. So in short, to die with preserved consciousness, this is the goal.”
He left the river, found his way through a copse and walked away across a moor, passing a thicket of willows and ending up on a wooded ridge. Between the trees, 50 metres below the ridge, you could see a tarn. In the azure sky the clouds drifted by, silently and majestically. A woodpecker was heard chopping at a tree. Otherwise it was quiet.
Arno sat down on the ridge. He rambled on:
“The storm of lead howling, the steel tempest raging. Fire is the main means of combat. To live forever and let your heart throb to the rhythm of the heartbeat of the universe – that’s the goal.”
The woodpecker ceased its hacking. Arno added:
“Thus it is.”
After he said this, Arno sat in silence, until the woodpecker started up again, hammering away at his tree. Arno said:
“Distribution, deployment, grouping, contact backwards. Fog giving concealment, ditches giving cover. Fire ranges, fire and movement, cover and concealment, morale and discipline: it’s the way of the future.
“Trooping the colours, sabres out, Stichelbein marschieren, straight lines dressed to the right, shoulder arms and the sun flashing on the bayonets.”
Once again the bird finished his staccato hammering. Arno squinted against the sun and said:
“The sun warms and the bees are buzzing. The harvest is rich and the stomach purrs. I have everything, having achieved everything. I live on a higher level of consciousness in an eternal present, an endless here-and-now – hallelujah – forever – in black and white, good and bad – going to hell and back, to the fire zone and buffer zone, to the plains and the blood forest – back home and on to the machine coast, to the culmination point – and beyond.”
All was peaceful. Nothing was heard over the wide moors. Arno said:
“Tiger heart, gunpowder heart. Steel storm, leaden tempest. It’s the battle as a state of mind, without beginning, without end – the way off, the way back, the way out. Living on a higher level, a sort of shell shock, but at a higher level, a conscious level. Living on the edge to raise yourself mentally.