Burning Magnesium

By Lennart Svensson

Brutal battles in the icy wastes of the Eastern Front are lit at night by burning magnesium flares. This gripping novel of war, and the timeless ethos of the warrior, follows Arno Greif, a Swedish volunteer in the German Army. Come with him, from the heady advances of 1941 through to the bitter fighting in the ruins of the Reich in 1945.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Logik
• Release date: Feb 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9789188667250

Lennart Svensson

Lennart Svensson is the Professor of Molecular Biology at Linköping University. He is presently researching virus disease mechanisms and the human genetics of susceptibility, with particular focus on the rotavirus and the norovirus.During his research, he and his team have contributed many important observations to the field regarding the processes of and reactions to these viruses in the human body.

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Burning Magnesium

Burning

Magnesium

by

Lennart Svensson

LOGIK FÖRLAG

Burning Magnesium by Lennart Svensson

Cover Design: Andreas Nilsson

ISBN: 978-91-88667-23-6

©2018 Logik Förlag

Box 22120, 250 23 Helsingborg, Sweden

www.logik.se | www.logikpub.com

[e-mail]

1

Arno Greif

He knew that war was coming. He knew it as early as 1938.

It was a sunny afternoon. Arno Greif was going home from work, accompanied by his younger cousin Gustav. Gustav had just happened to come by. Listening with half an ear to the youngster’s rants, Arno steered his steps towards a football field, a shortcut.

They stopped in the middle of the grass field. The weather was warm, the sky was a hazy blue. The sound of the city was a faint murmur in the distance. A football was sitting in one of the goals. Gustav went off to fetch the ball and begged Arno to take some shots with him, Gustav, as goalie.

You asked for it! Arno said, placing the ball some ten metres from the goal as the youngster placed himself in it. Right then, low-flying over the city, a Swedish air force bomber came thundering overhead – a Junkers Ju 86, a plane the Swedish Air Force called the B3. It was Sweden’s first modern bomber, purchased in Germany and introduced into the Swedish Air Force in 1936. Until then the country’s aerial defences mostly involved biplanes. Now came this giant, this archeofuturistic metal bird, one of its breed roaring over Karlstad this day in June 1938. It was a liaison flight between F5 Wing in Skåne and F4 Wing in Östersund.

Gosh, wow! Gustav said, forgetting all about playing ball. Junkers 86! Some monster, eh, this is the best we have. Heavy bomber. German.

Arno didn’t say anything. He was slightly paralysed by the sight. He knew, of course, that his country had an Air Force. And he knew that he himself would soon do military service. Yet this was something of a revelation: to see a military aircraft in the sky, flying so low so that you could almost touch it.

War was coming. He knew it. There were rumours of wars in Europe and now he grasped it at once: there will be war.

A roaring bomber in the sky doing a fly-past, in itself undramatic, but with the casual appearance of a flying dinosaur – with its grey, green and brown camouflage, the gaping engine nacelles, the glass windshield, the MG in the nose mounting, the radio antenna and everything – it was like a cry from another world – a world of steel and bronze, armol and magnesium, gunpowder and lead. A world calling on Arno Greif where he stood on the football field. A different world, a world apart from café sessions and Stockholm-Motala on the radio, Edvard Persson, Ulla Billquist and Levande Livet.

A fine plane indeed, Arno eventually said. Supreme airpower.

Yeah, Gustav said. The way of the future. No more biplanes.

Would you like to be a pilot? In the Air Force? Arno then asked his cousin.

Sure would.

Flying what, then? Bombers? Fighters?

The boy thought for a while, then said:

I think I would like to fly transport planes. More safe.

But what if enemy fighters attack you and your transport plane? What then?

Then there will be friendly fighters around. I hope.

A warrior can’t live on hope. He must be prepared to die.

Now you’re scaring me, man,

Arno for his part had often thought about death. As a Bible reader he knew the expression, The Valley of the Shadow of Death. I’m approaching this region now; this he realized intuitively and privately. The Junkers 86 in the sky was a sign of this, a symbol, a portent, an image that told him of another world, a different land. It was a sign of the times, out of time: a character from primeval times, from a timeless, archaic domain. It was a message from a country called War, a herald speaking of elemental forces – of dancing with the god Shiva, of gunpowder and lead and shell casings in a ditch, of bomb lines and air corridors, searchlights and sirens, marching columns and barbed wire, and all in one and one in all.

The bomber in the sky was a portent of total war. So it was a statement against the prevalent Swedish sentiment of we’ll manage, we won’t be dragged into a conflict, we stayed out of the Great War, we’ve had peace for over a hundred years and this will go on forever, hallelujah...

+++

Arno was born in Karlstad in 1919. He was 183 centimeters tall, rather slim with the body of a long-distance runner. He had dark blond, short hair and blue eyes. The gaze of those eyes was fixed and steady; wide open. But at the same time the look in those eyes had a slightly dreamy expression. You could say that they were the eyes of a dreamer of the day.

Arno’s father was called Horst. He was a German accountant who had moved to Sweden during the First World War. His firm, Ferrogut AB, which dealt with lathes, had urged this move. The company had an agency in Karlstad, a good investment considering the business it had with Bofors, Nohab, FFVS, Asea and other companies in Central Sweden.

In Sweden Horst had married Tora Bengtsson. And they had their only child Arno in November 1919.

Arno attended elementary school for six years. Then, two years in junior secondary school. He then became an apprentice chef at Karlstad City Hotel - because he felt like it. And he managed this job rather well, he was handy, meticulous and energetic. On finishing basic training he was employed as a cook in 1936. The place had three line cooks, a head chef, a woman handling the cold buffet, a butler and four waiters and waitresses. Arno wasn’t particularly interested in advancing in the profession. He was satisfied if he could go to work, being told that today he would make hamburgers, shape them, fry them and put them on a plate – and then go home and smoke, drink tea and read Nietzsche. He also took up meditation. Meditation mobilises your inner strength was his mantra.

Arno rented a room on the outskirts of the centre of town, in the middle zone. In his spare time, he read about Nietzsche’s vitalism, he read Jünger, he read Carl Jung. In Jung he appreciated the idea of the Shadow: we all have a psychological counterpart, a less appealing image of ourselves. If you can accept this shadow, realise that you also have some dark aspects; you can become a more fully rounded person, a more variegated, balanced type. One who isn’t merely governed by the good-bad, right-wrong duality. Instead, by somewhat integrating these and other opposites, life becomes richer.

Arno even read the Bible. As intimated he liked the image of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He also liked the line, I Am That I Am. This became his motto. And Christ’s saying that the kingdom of God is within you was important to him. That was what even the Old Testament writers had intimated, with words like, "though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me". And, having God within you, you didn’t have to go to church and worship him. There was no need to pray to an external God if you felt His presence within. You could meditate on your own Divine Nature, illuminated by the light of your own spirit.

Such was Arno’s God-oriented creed. Then, the question might be posed, how could he reconcile this with Nietzsche’s statement, God is dead? But to Arno God wasn’t dead. However, the approach to godhead needed to be redefined, maybe worshipping God in church on Sunday wasn’t the optimal way to approach this wonder. So far Arno could accept the critique of old school Christianity. Besides that, Arno acknowledged Nietzsche’s vital side, his worshipping of the elements, his happy-sad attitude, his tragic optimism.

Arno had also been influenced by the ancient text of the Bhagavad-Gîtâ. He cherished the idea of apateia also known as samatva, facing happiness and unhappiness, success and defeat with equanimity.

Arno acknowledged this apateia, this stoic serenity. He also liked the idea of physical exercise, the concept of shaping your life positively with cross-country running, skiing and football.

He had his companions, he had his girlfriend. She was named Maja Boklöf. They met from time to time. Indeed, the natural way to spend a Friday night was to be with her. This also came to pass this very night in June, 1938, even though nothing of interest happened; the pair met at Arno’s bedsit, had a meal, made love and went to the movies.

+++

So, Arno knew that war was coming. But what about this war, then?

We’ll get to it. First, Arno did his military service later this year, in 1938. For ten months, he trained and served as ration team leader in an infantry regiment, I 14 in Gävle by the north-eastern Swedish coast. As a chef he already knew how to cook; now he had to take responsibility as a team leader, leading two freshmen in the art of bare-bones, military style cooking. Arno quickly adopted his cooking skills to field conditions – and, he even more liked the art of soldiering, learning to shoot, bivouac and fight in the wintry woodland of Sweden.

An anecdote to shed light on Arno’s military service might be this one:

It was a Friday afternoon in February 1939, on Gävle Central Station. Going home on leave, waiting for the Karlstad train, Arno went along the platform, halting at the spot where it bridged a river. He looked at the water flowing between ice floes, he saw mallards sitting around, he saw the stone embankments. He was dressed in grey army uniform and side-cap and before he knew it a man was standing next to him, a man in topcoat and Homburger hat, a decent fellow, so it seemed. The man said:

You in the Army?

I am, Arno said.

Defending the realm?

Indeed.

But what use is it? the stranger then said. We’re all gonna die.

Wrong, Arno said. We are already dead.

Oh, are we? the stranger said. Well maybe we are. An unconventional answer, I’ll grant you that.

Then they boarded separate trains. Arno, riding his train, thought about the encounter. He had come up with a witty answer, the one about already being dead, but he could also admit that this stranger, for his part, was somewhat original in his thought. Now, Arno didn’t endorse defeatism but this was something more than that, some rare existentialism, rare, at least, for a chance remark in the crowd.

Make no mistake about it: Arno was all for national defence and combatting Bolshevism but he could also, to a certain extent, appreciate oddities, oddballs and odd men out. As Arno rode the train west to Karlstad, watching the meadows and copses fading away in the darkening afternoon, he thought: if we all were stern fighters, how boring a place the world would be.

+++

Having completed his military service in the spring of 1939, Arno returned to his job as a cook at the Karlstad City Hotel. Meanwhile, Hitler had occupied Czechoslovakia. In August, Poland met the same fate. Thus war broke out for real, with England and France declaring war on Germany. For Arno this meant no immediate change. However, as a fully trained conscript he was ordered to be prepared to serve again; if the order came he must go to Boden in Norrland, his wartime mobilisation station. The realm was in danger and he was forbidden to leave the country without permission. But besides this, life in Karlstad went on as before. Arno had his chef’s job and he had his Maja.

He had his girl, but the relationship by this time had cooled off. It all ended in October 1939. Maja gave him an ultimatum: marry me or leave me! Arno chose the latter option.

By this time Arno was thinking more about war than women. The ongoing war was getting to him. And later that autumn, in November, he was inducted into War Preparedness Duty, having to put on service uniform again. Sweden wasn’t in the war, it was neutral and not under attack, but it had to have its Field Army, Navy and Air Force mobilised at wartime strength, prepared for anything. This had begun on September 3, 1939, when France and England declared war on Germany. Thus, War Preparedness Duty was Sweden’s way of meeting the challenge of the already raging war.

As for Arno, the Field Regiment he belonged to was grouped in Norrbotten in the far north of the country. They lay quietly at a bend of the Kalix River, near the border with Finland. Living in a sailcloth tent, leading the two ration team cooks and ensuring that the Company had one cooked meal per day – this was Arno’s task. It was a life of grey woolen uniforms, marching boots, field cap and white fur coat, a life of guard duty, catering lists, the quartermaster’s sharp eye on the business, pea soup and meat soup. The meat was dried, government issue meat. One day in January, a welcome change: Arno got hold of an accidentally shot reindeer. It was dismembered and became the base of various stews and soups for a day or two. It made him popular among the Company’s rank and file. Being a chef in an immobile, bivouacked field unit was like being a ship’s cook: the service monotonous and food one of the few highlights of the day.

In December 1939 Soviet Russia attacked Finland, Sweden’s eastern neighbour. There were fears of Sweden too being attacked. Sweden wasn’t a war zone in the proper sense but the Zeitgeist was war and nothing but war. This came through both implicitly and explicitly. This is an anecdote of Arno’s encounter with the war spirit:

One day in late March he stood in the kitchen tent guarding the fire in the cooking stove. The tent was three by four metres, supported at one end by the field-kitchen proper, the floor covered with planks. Arno himself was bare-headed and wore an apron over his grey uniform. At a nearby workbench a Private stood peeling and chopping onions for pea soup. By a mess table a Platoon Leader sat talking with a visiting Sergeant Major who had been in Finland, having taken part in the action of the Winter War. They were drinking warm currant juice and eating flatbread with whey-cheese.

Arno didn’t hear everything the two said but he overheard this line from the Sergeant: This is no hands up-war. Arno immediately understood what he meant, condensed into this wisdom: in the combat zone, shoot to kill. That was the reality of the World War II combat zone. Arno made a mental note of this.

Another anecdote of the warlike Zeitgeist is this. At some time during the Preparedness Duty, in February, Arno’s Company had been lined up for inspection. It was before an exercise with live ammunition. The head of the Company, Captain Rapp, had scolded the Company. What the hell is this?!? he said. You look like lambs on the way to the slaughter. Shape up, damn it. You’re soldiers, so look the part!

After this and a series of attention, at ease and general barking the Captain had whipped up the team spirit. Arno remembered this: when you’re a soldier, at least try to look the part. You have to will to be a soldier, wanting to fight, whenever you fight. You need that fire in your eye - the Eye of the Tiger. That was how Swedish battles like Narva, Lund and Holowczyn had been fought and won; the Swedish soldiers going out into these battles hadn’t looked like frightened sheep, they had looked like warriors.

+++

In March 1940 the Finnish Winter War ended. Finland had to cede substantial parts of its eastern regions to Russia. Sweden, for its part, had followed the war closely. It even had a Volunteer Brigade of 10,000 men taking part in the action, the largest volunteer unit any country sent. With the imminent threat seemingly over, the Swedish Army cut down on the level of preparedness. For example, Arno’s Battalion was disbanded at the beginning of April and the men sent home. At virtually the same time the Germans occupied Norway, meaning that war was nearby still. Nonetheless, Arno could return to his chef’s job at the Karlstad hotel. Now he was head chef, a position entailing planning the lunch menu for the week, making purchases for this and for the à la carte, and leading the workforce of one cook, one apprentice and the cold cut lady. The evening menu, that is, the à la carte menu, for its part, was always virtually the same: herring appetiser, various fish from Lake Vänern and beef with parsley butter and red wine sauce, served with pommes gratinés.

+++

In the summer of 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Arno felt the urge to join in the struggle. If there was a chance of defeating and disposing of murderous Bolshevism he was up for it; to defeat the sworn enemy of tradition and faith, this was a noble task to Arno. He had seen the ravages of the red hordes in eastern Finland in a pamphlet. What struck him was the devastation of churches. Arno really wasn’t a church attender, but he liked to have temples around. They must be defended against Bolshevik nihilism, he thought.

This made Arno ready for war in the east. Also, he wanted to test his strength in earnest – to endure hardships, experience hostile fire, see the whites of the enemy’s eyes, meet the elephant as they say. Go and see if he could make it through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Arno wanted to go to war.

Around the same time the German Waffen-SS began recruiting in Sweden. Arno heard about acquaintances who joined the German war effort this way. He considered joining up that way, but in the end Arno didn’t choose that path. But he also heard that to enlist in the Waffen-SS you could go to Oslo, Norway and he made a mental note of this way of reaching Das Reich. Arno wanted to go to war.

Then, in September, 1941, a thought came on a whim: maybe he could enlist in the Finnish Army? At this time a Swedish Volunteer Battalion grouped at Hanko, was fighting against the Russian occupation of this peninsula next to the Finnish capital, Helsinki. Nothing came of this either, but Arno still wanted to go to war.

Finally, fate decided the matter for him. One day in early December 1941, Arno received a brown letter, graced with a German eagle gripping a swastika. It was a call-up to the German Army, Deutsches Heer, Standort Hanover, Waterlooplatz 8, reporting date January 29. It was, as he had more or less expected, because of his dual citizenship. Arno’s father hadn’t withdrawn his German citizenship when he moved to Sweden, so his son automatically received German citizenship, running alongside with Swedish citizenship.

The whole thing was a bureaucratic grey area, but the gist of it all was that the German Army considered itself entitled to call him up. So Arno inquired with the Swedish Army authority about what he should do. It was war and he was currently on standby; the Swedish Army was on a war footing and he could at any time be called up into the ranks of his Field Regiment.

Ever since September 3, 1939 the alert level of Attention had been operational for armed forces personnel and Arno knew it. So he phoned the Military District HQ in Skövde and asked what he should do regarding his pending German military service. The response from the officer on duty was to forbid him to go to Germany and enlist.

But Arno ignored the order and went anyway. He resigned from his hotel job, quit his lodgings and carried his personal belongings to his parents’ home. Then he took leave of his parents, Tora and Horst. He packed the essentials in a suitcase of pressed cardboard, took his passport and German call-up papers and boarded a train to Norway. By this time, Norway had been occupied by the Germans; there was a German military authority where he could report and get further transport.

The Norway trip took place on January 20, 1942. The border crossing went well. Arno played the Imperial German to the customs officer, adopting a haughty attitude, waving his call-up papers and saying that he had orders to report to the German Army. Kommandosache!

This made an impression on the young customs officer, a submissive rookie. Once in Oslo, Arno reported to the office of the local Military Commander. Soon he was lying in a berth in a troop ship bound for Hamburg, and thence to be forwarded inland to Hanover.

2

Stalingrad

Arno travelled to Germany in the bosom of the German Wehrmacht. By this time, January 1942, the fighting on the Eastern Front had been raging for over six months. Germany had tried to conquer Russia with an all-out, armoured drive to the east. But by November and early December the offensive ground to a halt before the gates of Moscow. Hitler’s ambition to crush the Soviet Union in 1941 was thwarted. A Russian counterstrike drove off the German units from the outskirts of Moscow – and the city was never threatened again during the entire war. In 1942, Hitler therefore planned to attack to the south, heading for Stalingrad and the Caucasus. 

This had happened in Germany’s war with Russia as Arno Greif began training to be a Deutsches Heer infantryman in Hanover in January 1942. Arno told the Army authorities that he had done Swedish military service, specifically, as Ration Team Leader. They noted this. But for some reason he didn’t continue his career as a supply soldier. And the fact that he had been Team Leader was completely ignored.

The fact was that his spoken German was lousy. He wasn’t used to speaking the language; he could read and understand rather advanced texts but when it came to expressing himself verbally on the spot, he did poorly.

So he became a Private. This he could endure. To serve in an army at war was a momentous task in itself, even though he had long lived with the war sentiment and knew the soldier’s life from his Swedish military service. But now it was more serious. Now it was expressly about life and death, and so a start from scratch could be a good place to begin.

The battle was raging in the East. Arno took part in the fighting soon enough. It was a bitter war, this was no tea party. No quarter was asked or given. Arno acknowledged the realities of the war and acted accordingly: when in the combat zone, combat. This was his motto during the whole war and it kept him alive. This was no hands-up war.

+++

In Hanover Arno was placed in a barracks at Waterloo Platz, a city square completely surrounded by barracks. The different elements of the training essentially offered nothing new to him. But, as already noted, he had to learn the language properly: Gewehr, Maschinenpistole, Granatenwerfer and a thousand other words. And German syntax, to be able to speak the language fluently and form error-free sentences. After a while he got along pretty well, because he was talented. And as a reader he knew the language, having read some German books. And now, on a daily basis, he practiced German by forming sentences, so he eventually got a good grasp of it all. The goal was to master it almost perfectly. Otherwise you could never advance above the level of a Private, a mere Schütze. This he realised. Even the simplest Squad Leader must have a reasonably good command of the language, of the relevant phrases and commands and be able to lecture his troop on the art of shooting, laying mines and so on. Arno’s initially poor mastery of the language became a reason for the others to tease him. For instance, about a week after beginning his military service he was out on the town, he and some friends having some hours leave. In a Kneipp they drank beer and chatted up the girls. One of Arno’s comrades, a certain Ludwig Hofer, in jest said to the two women:

This is Arno, a half German. But he doesn’t speak any German at all.

Arno quickly played along, saying:

"Das strimmt, ich kann nicht Deutsch sprechen. Aber Sie vielleicht können es mich lernen...?" (= That’s right, I can’t speak German. But maybe you can teach me...?)

Na ja, warum nicht, (= well, why not) said one of the ladies, a brunette with haggard features. Aber is will nicht kostenlos sein (But it won’t be for free.)

Then they started haggling over the price. In sum, Arno knew the language and sometimes he got along quite well enough with words, but sometimes he didn’t. That’s why he had to settle being a Private before he could think of advancing.

Arno’s German soldier training was completed in June. Then he was sent East. After a period as a garrison soldier in Kiev, Arno was transferred to his field unit: 3rd Battalion of Battle Group Kossmann. It was at the time – the autumn of 1942 – stationed in Stalingrad.

As intimated above, Hitler decided in the spring of 1942 to attack to the south. AG Süd would take Stalingrad on the Volga. Maybe this, in the long run, could break the backbone of the Red Army. Indeed, the operation went ahead and both Stalingrad and the Caucasus range were reached. But in taking Stalingrad the Germans created a long, exposed north flank. The Russian commander, Zhukov, saw this and planned an envelopment of Stalingrad. The attack was two-pronged: one column advanced from bridgeheads south of the Don and further south, another one swept over the Kalmuck steppe to the west-northwest. Eventually the two pincers met and the encirclement was complete. 6th Army was trapped. 

But Arno and his comrades knew nothing about the impending encirclement when they fought in Stalingrad in October and November. 6th Army Command by this time had orders to take the whole city. In the operation was included the capture of an industrial complex in the northern part of the city. The strongpoint of the Russian defence was the so-called Tractor Factory.

Protecting the flank of the Tractor Factory, the Russians held a certain house, a two-story brick building that had been an office. The Company in which Arno was serving was ordered to take it. Arno had no illusions by this time. He was finally at the front, a goal in his life was reached; finally, he would test his strength as a soldier. He was prepared to die. This, he knew, was the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 

Much can be said about Arno’s integration into the German army, his grey-green woolen tunic, his marching boots, his black lacquered steel helmet M/35, his transportation to the East, his arrival at Stalingrad and so on. Let it suffice to say that he was full of fighting spirit. He knew that Stalingrad was a hard place, he knew that the battle wasn’t yet won and he wasn’t naive. But he had some reserves of willpower in him and he said to himself: I will fight and I will fight well. 

He was guided by willpower. This was a lesson from the Swedish Army, the episode during the War Preparedness Duty when the Company Commander had disliked the look of the men, disapproving of their despondent and sad impression. When you’re a soldier, try to look the part. Shape up and evoke that spark in the eye, the Eye of the Tiger. By the time he arrived at the Eastern Front, Arno had internalised this wisdom. He said to himself: I Am. And so he was ready for anything.

+++

The Company was thrown into the push to take the Tractor Factory. Before his first battle Arno listened to the commands of his Squad Leader, kept his head down and made sure not to shoot any stray rounds from his 7.92 mm Kar 98k. At dawn on November 24 they advanced on the target, the two-story house just being 100 metres away. The goal was to break into the west end and clear the ground floor first. 

This operation, despite its limited target, was complex. On the day, November 24, Arno was included in the advance patrol, led by Sergeant Lober. His squad would break into the house. This they did. Then another squad, led by Corporal Hofbauer, would follow and assist in the