Military Service

1975 I was living and working in Norway, staying in my Dad’s basement apartment and working offshore on the oil rigs in the North Sea. Ever since turning 18 in high school I had been getting these letters from the Danish military regularly, urging me to report and do my National Service (NS). 

Since I was studying at university 1971-1973, and then living abroad after that, I kept applying for and getting extensions. For a while I considered just staying abroad and maybe postpone the NS like forever, but on second thought I decided to go and get it over with. I figured I wasn’t getting any younger, if I never did NS it might be a bit difficult for me later to move back to Denmark, I didn’t want to slam that door shut behind me. Anyway, I knew how to shoot a gun and I liked the outdoors, military life didn’t seem that terrible to me. The next time the letter from the military came, I replied back that I would report. I was told to meet at Skive camp in Jutland 1 April 1976.

So I resigned from Schlumberger and packed up my stuff from my father’s house. I will forever be grateful to him and his wife Ingrid as well as my three small half-siblings for how they all accepted me into their household and their lives during my stay in Norway. One early morning in March I drove my old Opel station-wagon out of Sandnes some 220 km to the Ferry from Kristiansand down to Denmark.  The car was heavily over-loaded with all my books and bookshelves and stuff, the roads in Norway were covered in ice and I barely made it down on my bald old tires.

I put up in my mother’s house for a week or two before I bought my own place in Sølystgade in Aarhus and moved in there. In Be Financially Free I mention that transaction! I traded in my old Opel, it didn’t have much value anyway and drove on Norwegian number plates, and bought a second hand Ford Capri Mark 1 V4 2.0 manual. Using the same designer, Ford meant this model to be the ‘European Mustang’, and I had a lot of fun with that car. There were no traffic jams in Denmark then and you could park wherever you wanted to for free, including in the street below my apartment in town.  

I did three months of Basic Military Training at Skrive camp. You know, just getting used to the military way of life, the basic commands and the personal equipment. Back in high school, when I first went for my initial medical screening and IQ test, the military asked me politely which branch I would like to serve in. I didn’t expect ever to go to war; but if I did, I thought that the field artillery might be a good place to be. You are some 15 km behind the front lines and just lob grenades at the bad guys from some undetected position. Besides, I knew a bit about land surveying, I loved maps and was somewhat interested in ballistics, the study of projectile flight paths. The military guys are not unreasonable, they want a happy crew and they put me where I requested to be. Skive at the time was home to the Northern Jutland Artillery Regiment, so that it where I was assigned to serve.  

The mandated service time for conscripts at the time was nine months. I was never much of a jock in school, and I never really did organized sports apart from some recreational soccer playing. But I loved to bicycle and hike throughout my youth, and I guess I was in a pretty good shape. Rather than resist the physical training the army puts you through, I decided to embrace it and build up my endurance and my strength. To this day I am grateful to the military for giving me this opportunity and encouragement. I started doing runs, push-ups and chin-ups all the time for fun, and I have been doing a few chin-ups every single day since! 

Towards the end of BMT, we – the new recruits – were given an option to continue training at the army Sergeant Academy. The Danish army at the time did not use the rank of corporal, there was only sergeant as NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) and above that the commissioned officers starting with second lieutenant. All officers - commissioned or not - first had to make it through the sergeant academy. I didn’t apply for the academy. I didn’t mind the army life, but I knew that this would never be my carrier. I wanted to get back to the oil rigs as soon as my stint was over. 

When the day came towards the end of June, the list of names selected for sergeant training was put up on the regiment notice board, and my name was on it. I accepted that, I started at the academy in another town in Jutland, Varde, further south towards the German border around 1 July. The training was six months. The training at the academic was tougher than BMT; we – the cadets - were in the top 10 percentile of our cohort so the overall expectations were somewhat higher, but I loved it. I could run 5 km in 18 minutes by then and didn’t mind all the outdoor stuff one bit. 

Much of our training was basic infantry skills, but along the way we specialized in operating the 155mm towed Howitzer. As NCOs we were schooled in all the positions around the battery, but my specific job was to calculate the co-ordinates we fired from. There were no satellites or GPS tools available then of course, we used detailed topographic maps, fixed trigonometric points in the terrain and calculated the co-ordinates from there using a battery-powered gyroscope, a good-old measuring tape and logarithmic tables. Arriving at a new location anywhere in Jutland, my team could give you the co-ordinates within 20 minutes, even in the dark of if the rain was pouring down – which it sometimes did!   

After six months of this, at the NCO graduation ceremony towards the end of December 1976 we were all told to line up and get our diplomas; the whole academy, cadets, officers and staff was there. We started with the bronze medals; I had one of those in first aid. Then the silver, I had one of those in M75 rifle shooting, I missed the gold by one hit (=three points), and to this day I regret not getting the gold, no one else did, but a few got the silver. Then combat swimming, an extra evening activity that I had volunteered for as I love water, three of us got the gold in that one. Finally 9mm machine pistol shooting; I was good at that and was the only one who got the gold, so I was called up on my own by the head of the school, a coronel, and handed my medal. Then, much to my surprise, the colonel ordered me to stand at attention and turn about right, facing the crowd. The colonel then addressed the congregation and told them to look closely at this exemplary young solder, let him be a role model to you all etc. I was flabbergasted and somewhat confused, so when the colonel ordered me to turn about right to face him again, I turned left – a complete no-no!! Well, nobody seemed to notice and I was dismissed and re-joined the ranks, the highest decorated cadet that year. 

But unfortunately I was hardly the army role model I was made out to be. Yes, I joined the officers’ school after the sergeant academy, but not for long. This one I actually volunteered for. New sergeant graduates were given the options of becoming commissioned officers through a quick 4-months compressed course that would make you a second lieutenant of the reserves. I figured, ‘why not’ – better pay and you get to eat in the officer’s mess, what is there to lose? So I was selected, together with three others out of the 30+ graduates from my class; two more joined us from another camp near Copenhagen, so we were six in that privileged class.  

It was a small elitist school with good teachers, all had ranks of premier lieutenant or captain, there were no more drill sergeants ordering us around, we were now sergeants ourselves and officer cadets! I was second in the group; there was one kid who was brighter than me and better at Physical Education as well! But you know how it is, you can’t please everyone; I got along well with everyone in camp – except the person who really mattered: The captain who organized our training didn’t like me, and I didn’t really like him either. He thought I was undisciplined and arrogant, not sincere about our mission. I thought he was one of those by-the-book NATO-brainwashed warmongers who couldn’t see right from wrong. 

Remember, this was in 1977, at the peak of the cold war. During my student days I had been a member of a leftist student movement; my mother was at that time a somewhat famous Danish politician, chair of the parliamentary group in the Socialist People’s Party. We all have our views, and we all try to get them right, some change over the years as we learn and experience more. My attitude to war was that I was not a pacifist. Growing up shortly after the Second World War, I would ask myself: Should the Soviet Union have rolled over, when the Germans attached them in June 1941? No, of course not: The Red Army ended up defeating the Nazi menace and liberating most of Europe. In fact, I believed that Denmark should have put up more of a fight in April 1940, when the Germans attached us; instead we just rolled over and even co-operated with them! In 1977, I didn’t view the Soviets as a threat to us (= the West); during strategy classes in officer school I openly expressed that view. I didn’t see either the Russians, or the Chinese, ever attacking us; of course I was right, they never did. I believed in co-operation and neutrality, not in aggressive posturing and military pacts. I have changed my views on many things since my student days, but not in this: To this day I think we should all be friends! 

One day half way into the training program, the captain said in class: “I just learned that you guys (the six of us, the officer cadets) haven’t been security checked. That was a mistake, it should have been done earlier, but we will do it now; anyway, that should just be a formality.” But it wasn’t a formality for me. The next week I was called into the major’s office and told that I would have to leave the officer’s school. The major was an elderly gentleman and very apologetic about it, I was the only cadet ever to be expelled from that program. This was Friday at 3 pm, I had to be out of camp by 5 and report back to Skive camp Monday morning to serve the rest of my service as sergeant in the artillery regiment I came from, there were seven months left of my stint. 

I was a bit disappointed but accepted this, I told the major not to feel bad about it; I understood and I would be alright. And I was. NATO is cleansing out dissidents from the rank of officers, I guess every army would do that. And the army was right. I considered myself a patriot; at the time I would have fought with the other guys for our country, had anyone rolled in and attached us. But I would NEVER had accepted participating in those unlawful regime-change wars that the Danish armed forces later was talked into conducting in countries far from Europe, against peoples who have never been a threat to us. Bombing Serbia in 1999, destroying Iraq in 2003 – then Syria, Libya etc … you know the list. And the Danish poppy dog NATO governments sent troops there every time. Those wars were and are illegal, immoral and despicable, and I would rather have disobeyed orders than be part of war crimes and genocides. The NATO officers were right in their judgment of me after all!

So, that was about the extent of my glorious military career. I served out my time and actually enjoyed it. My fellow NCOs and friends at Skive camp were great, so where the officers I reported to. I never had any problems with them. I joined the regiment shooting team and participated in the Danish military regional and national championships. In the nationals I only came in at 28 out of 60 participants, in a combined score of M1 Garand .30-06 cal (7.62/63mm) rifle, 9mm machine pistol and 9mm pistol combined. But I was the highest ranked conscript in my cohort; the 27 officers better than me that year were all career solders and trained snipers with many years of shooting experience. 

In general I loved army life, especially the last seven months when I worked with my own little survey team, I had a driver and three guys to help me do the measurements and calculations, I trained them all myself. I taught shooting skills of course, as well as non-armed combat; in PE the obstacle course was my favorite teaching tool, and as an instructor I loved doing it with the recruits, I held the regiment record of 4 minutes, 20 seconds for a while. I could take a 12.7mm heavy machinegun apart and put it back blindfolded. 

There were also some troubled times. At the sergeant academy I got tossed head-first out of our Unimog truck once, when the driver was speeding and hit a rock in a turn; I was lucky to escape unharmed. I was not so lucky during a soccer game when I twisted a knee and had to limp around on crutches for a week. Well, when you are young you recover fast, and I was soon up and running again. 

On Fridays nights I would sometimes have a few too many. I could drink 20 beers then - plus half a bottle of whiskey – I wasn’t completely sober that day when I passed my truck-driver’s test, in fact I was struggling to walk straight. But instead of sending me to jail, the police inspector praised my driving; no, I am not kidding, that really happened! I always had a case of canned beers behind the driver’s seat in my Ford Capri, within easy reach. I spent most of the week at camp where I had my own room as an NCO, but weekends I would drive 100+ km back to my apartment in Århus. Two of my friends were from there as well and would often hitch a ride with me. Until one evening, it was winter, there was heavy snow, I was going too fast and tried to overtake a truck. I lost traction and was almost hit by another truck coming dead against me. The next week my friends told me that they would take the train home instead, they would no longer drive with me; that hurt my feelings a bit. 

The last day of September 1977, my time in the army was up: It had been 3 + 6 + 2 + 7 = 18 months of compulsory national service. Some of my NCO friends stayed on and signed a contract with the army. I didn’t. I packed down my room, said goodbye to everyone and drove – alone – back to my home. That was a bit weird, somewhat abrupt. I never visited that camp again; I never saw a single one of my army buddies once after that. I started a brand new chapter of my life with a clean sheet.