How strange: that Arno and his woman would sit in a café and overhear this conversation. Its flight theme was particularly surprising since the pair was about to watch a flight movie: Gula divisionen starring Hasse Ekman.
Arno drank his coffee and looked at his lady. She was beautiful, every inch a woman. But still…
Arno was still restless. He disliked being in the peacetime army. When no war was to be fought everything became increasingly indifferent, he thought. Sure, it was cold war, Sweden and the West were threatened by the Bolsheviks. But Arno got nothing out of training grunts how to sling arms, stand straight and shoot, year in, year out.
He took a bite of his puff pastry, chewed it, looked across the street and stirred his cup. Solbritt looked at him and said:
“What are you thinking of?”
“I don’t know,” Arno said. “I’m just so bored at work. If you’ve been at war with the Soviets, it’s pure death pottering around in a peacetime regiment.”
“Maybe you should become a mercenary,” Solbritt said. “Get away to Africa, Asia… Wasn’t there something going on in Indochina…?”
“Indeed,” Arno said and cheered up. “The French Foreign Legion hired some Germans after the war ended, in the late ’40s. Some of them ended up at Dien Bien Phu, mind, where they eventually surrendered.”
The Legion’s Dien Bien Phu disaster had happened in 1954. And this was in 1958. Solbritt said:
“Exactly. Din Bin Foo. Perhaps it’s something for you? Being a hired soldier, fighting Reds in the jungle?”
Arno looked at her. And he rejoiced over her sympathy. She understood him. She didn’t try to hold him back, trying to tell him that the post as a Swedish Sergeant Major was the best in the world, like a lot of girls would’ve done.
“It’s worth considering,” Arno said, taking another bite of pastry and drinking his coffee. “Maybe I’ll join the Foreign Legion. Or whatever. I don’t know.”
Solbritt finished her cup. Arno went after a refill for them both. When he returned he patted her on the shoulder, put down the cup for her, then his own, sat down and looked back out on the street. A red-tinted, metallic blue heaven shone over the street. People were strolling by. Volkswagens, Borgwards, Volvos and small black Saabs drove past. All was well in late ’50s Sweden. The Social Democrats ruled and expanded the so-called welfare society, that is, the state system of health care for all, education and care for the elderly. Even the Conservatives went along with the project although they did protest against ATP. This latter issue was debated at the time, being about systemic, not optional, retirement savings, based on how much you had worked in your life. ATP was a supplementary pension; basic pension, state pension, was given to all Swedes above 65 since 1913.
Arno, for his part, didn’t care about retirement savings. He wanted something to do, something sharp and edgy, something inspirational. But, despite the talk of Vietnam, he didn’t really feel like going to war again. And as for becoming a Swedish officer he was too old now to enter the Karlberg War Academy. Oh well, he thought, time will tell. I still have something to give. I’m still only 39.
They went to the cinema. The film was hardly worth seeing. Arno dismissed the whole story. It was about the tribulations of a Fighter Wing in contemporary, peacetime Sweden. Hasse Ekman led a unit of J-29 Tunnans. True, there were some tasty flight scenes but overall the film just didn’t work; it lacked both style and urgency. The story about marriage problems, career and petty personal squabbles could have been set anywhere; the flying environment wasn’t essential to the plot at all.
So the movie was a disappointment. Arno felt that its predecessor, Första divisionen which had been released in 1941, had been much better. It was about flying, period. The plot was integrated with the activities of a Bomb Wing during the War Preparedness.
When there’s war, the soldier lives on the edge. When in peace, the edge is lost!
That was true both for Arno and these films.
Arno had seen Första divisionen at the movies, in Sweden, the previous year. The tip from Lekatt had led him to go and see the rerun. Arno had enjoyed it, and he especially liked the final line. The background is this: the Wing has seen some losses but then the gaps are filled with new recruits. So the Wing Commander could report: “The unit is complete. All present.”
Arno came to think of this now, in 1958. He said this to Solbritt as they strolled home through the city to the flat on the riverside.
“The unit is complete. That’s how it should be. The unit must be combat ready. There’s always another battle to fight. Deaths you leave behind. Tears have to wait until the funeral.”
“You’re a hard man,” Solbritt said.
“Maybe. But you don’t survive in combat by brooding. OK, I brood as well, I even did it during the war and I do it know. But I know how to keep it in check.”
They went home, put on some tea, talked a bit more and then went to bed. During the night Arno had a strange dream. A nightmare. He dreamed that he was a criminal. Specifically, he was a murderer. Then he was sentenced to death. Just as he was about to be executed by the firing squad he woke up, sweating.
He was somewhat bothered, not only by the nightmare itself, but by the fact that he still had these recurring dreams of guilt. In his daytime he was the epitome of cool, he was the paragon of bushido, being something of a reflecting samurai, western variety. And then, not every night but now and again, these dreams of being a global pyromaniac haunted him. Dreams of being a killer. Dreams in which he ranted and raved. OK, maybe the dreams were an outlet for hidden tensions. As he lay there, trying to fall asleep again, he said to himself: “I’m no saint, I’m just a man, and a man sometimes has nightmares. Now let’s get back to the nightmare.”
This, for its part, was a “vice versa” strategy. Instead of avoiding the dream, shying away from possible further unpleasant happenings, he willed himself back into it, as a way of quietening down his mental turmoil. And it worked. Soon he was asleep again, not having a nightmare.
34
The Bivouac Drill
Next week, the platoon Arno trained was to have a field day. They would go out on Monday for a camping exercise, a bivouac drill. They would practice putting up tents, cooking on camp stoves and so on. Arno supervised the quartermaster side of it, like ordering rations and arranging transportation, but he delegated the running of the actual exercise to two officer cadets from the Regimental Guards Company. These Sergeants, prospective First Lieutenants, had to lead the platoon’s doings with the tents, sentry lists, foxholes and so on.
It was a Tuesday in September, 1958. The platoon had spent their night out in the woods. Arno himself had gone home at four o’clock on Monday and, as usual, spent the night at home. It was the Cadets, Kadax and Forslid by name, who shared the bivouac with the soldiers. The exercise would be completed this Tuesday afternoon. This morning Arno had been out and overseen it. Then he had gone back to the Regiment for lunch. The soldiers, however, had to heat tins on their field stoves. A good basic exercise in the ways of the combat zone, Arno thought. As for himself, he rode his service motorcycle back to the regimental base and ate in the dining hall. It was one of the privileges that come with age. True, he inculcated the ways of the combat zone into his men, promoting the ideal of active combat training and speaking of the demands of total war. But you needn’t go to extremes, like sharing every peacetime grunt hardship.
On this day the cafeteria was serving meat casserole with sweet-and-sour dill sauce, a Swedish classic called dillkött. This he couldn’t resist. And it was excellently cooked, Arno thought as the trained chef he was. After lunch he went to his office in C Barracks and rested, taking a nap.