Lidendal, age 52, indeed had aces up his sleeve. As the head of the shooting range he steered his C3 grunts with an iron fist. He went around Tjärnmyren in his Willys Jeep and ran the shooting operation like a true military commander. He knew every nook and cranny of the field, he knew all the back roads and road bars. He knew all the tricks of the trade, like knowing how to smuggle home waste wood to use as firewood in his own cottage on Rämslemon. He would stuff short planks in a rubbish bag and sneak it into the boot of his Volvo PV and think, “Indeed, I know my way around this and that… if they only knew how much free firewood this service has given me.” The same wily look would cross his face if the cargo was a deer that had wandered onto the range.
Lidendal did this and then some. He was an old hand, having, as some said, a fox behind his ear. He was, in short, a legend of the I 21 Regiment.
They sat down in the day room. The interior was spartan with unpainted paneled walls, plywood floor without carpets and furniture of the patched and mended variety. Boiled coffee, prepared on an iron stove, was what the house offered. Liden smoked a pipe, Arno smoked Cecil, a cigarette brand that was popular then. The ashtray was octagonal, of glass and with the inscription “AB Bolinder-Munktell, Eskilstuna”.
“So, you’re out riding?” Lidendal said.
“Yes,” Arno said. “I’ve got time. At least now, in the gap between two trainer battalions.”
“Same here,” said Lidendal. “There’s little to do. But I see to it that I look busy when officers pass by. Nailing targets, mending emplacements…”
They spoke of the history of the Regiment, the legends of the city and the secrets of the river. Eventually Arno bade him farewell and left the building. He slipped the reins from the tethering ring, sprang lightly into the saddle and rode towards the valley where the central firing ranges of Tjärnmyren were set out. He rode along the valley that was one big staging area for war games, for live fire exercises, open fields lined with hills clad with coniferous trees.
At the so-called anti-tank shelf, he stopped. It was a niche in the forest edge, intended for the deployment of heavy weapons. In this valley, on this and other duly designated spots, units were deployed for combat shooting, firing on life-size sets of cardboard figures, to see if the soldiers, deployed in field units, were able to hit the targets. The valley was a dolls-house version of a war-zone, a place where small arms fire danced over the meadows, with MGs, rifles and sub machineguns wreaking havoc on the cardboard targets.
Here we practice, Arno thought, we Swedish men, determined to defend our country against the Bolsheviks. It’s the same battle that I fought 1942-45. I was there, I battled Bolshevism, the Red Menace from the East. This is a noble cause. I want Sweden to remain free. Russia should stop shooting down our DC3s and Catalinas.
Arno remembered well the sense of national shock and outrage when these Swedish Air Force machines had been shot down over the Baltic Sea by the Soviets in 1952.
Here we practice combat, Arno thought. And maybe the thunder-flashes, explosions and MG rattle sound rather like the Eastern Front at times. Burning magnesium over Gammberget. But still, it’s not the same. That “roaring monster raging out over the frontal zone” that Gösta Borg writes about – it just isn’t around – and no one here knows what it is. I’m over-qualified in this service. That’s why I get frustrated being here. Not that I want war. But I want another service, an operational service.
Arno rode on along the dirt road, passed the deserted farm called Berghem and reached the field beyond which the road went uphill again. Here he nudged his mount aside for the passage of a grey-green Volvo 915, a staff car on whatever mission was keeping its occupants busy at present. Then Arno rode up to the crest, then downhill, passing Madhouse Meadow, a narrow, elongated field with the actual madhouse at the far end. Then down another hill and thence back to the regimental complex.
Arno was Sergeant and troop trainer on I 21. Until 1956, when he was promoted to Sergeant Major. He knew his stuff. He had been at the front. Over-qualified or not, his melody was active combat training. He tried to impart the demands of total war to the Swedish grunts. Some feared him; some admired him; all learnt from him. There were whispers of his war; Arno was something of a regimental legend too.
33
Movie Night
It was a Friday in September 1958. Arno sat with Solbritt in a café in Sollefteå. It was six o’clock. They would go to the cinema at seven. Cinema Rio was showing Gula divisionen.
They sat at a corner table, drank coffee and ate pastries. The chairs had leather upholstery. The tables were made of painted, nut brown veneer. The walls were beige and adorned with paintings depicting Mediterranean motifs. Arno wore black corduroy trousers, a tartan flannel shirt and a poplin lumber jacket. Solbritt wore a green and blue blouse, a yellow dress and jacket and her hair in a bun.
Next to them sat two other figures. They are minor characters in this story, they only occur in this chapter. But they were interesting in their own way.
On the table next to Arno and Solbritt, at a window table, sat a boy and a young man. It was, more precisely, a brylcreemed young man in blue serge suit, smiling sunnily at his cup of coffee and a custard wheat bun. Opposite him sat a younger lad in homespun trousers and knitted pullover. He drank a ginger ale. He had heard that the older fellow would enlist in the Air Force, so he asked:
“Oh man, joining the Air Force, eh? Going to fly Saab Draken?”
“Even better,” said the brylcreemed lad. “A-36. Atomic bomber, ain’t it. Dropping the fototurb, ain’t it. Bombing the Russians in the Baltic and wherever: Nuke’em ’til they glow, then shoot ’em in the dark. It’s the way of the future.”
“True that!”
That’s what these two figures said. And this perhaps raises some questions. Like: what was the “A-36” that the Air Force aspirant was talking about? – It was an aircraft project at Saab, planned as a nuclear bomb carrier. According to the sketches it looked a lot like the French Dassault Mirage. However, this Swedish project was scrapped on the drawing board and instead they ordered the FPL 37, which became Saab Viggen, not fully operational for atomic bombs like the A-36. But the Viggen was suitable for conventional attack, interception and reconnaissance. This was enough, in the end, because the Swedish nuclear bomb was never developed. Thankfully, the suspension and scrapping of the project “Swedish nuclear bomb” was resolved in 1960.
More questions that may arise from the above scene might be: what is the “Draken”? It was the most modern Swedish Air Force plane at the time, in the late ’50s. The J-35 Draken, designed by Erik Bratt at Saab in Linköping. “Drake” means “Dragon”.
Then you might ask: what is “fototurb”? – That’s the name of the atomic bomb in Harry Martinson’s science fiction epic Aniara from 1956.
As for atomic weapons Arno was against them. Ever since he had dreamt of The Cherubim Sword in 1944, he had something instinctively against this ultimate weapon – both the sword that he dreamed of and the atomic sabres of the real world. They were too much; they destroyed the game, he felt.