SOLDIER

After graduation I was drafted to the artillery in Århus.
I could not believe that human beings could treat each other like they did in the military. You were free to insult in the rudest way anybody who was just one degree below in the hierarchy. It was laughable, but being at the very bottom of the ladder somewhat ruined the comical effect.
My two best friends were the tallest guys in the company and I was only 5’7”. We always managed to form the front row when we were marching, me in the middle with a towering guy on each side. The officers didn’t like the looks of it but there seemed to be no rule against it, so it couldn’t be stopped. Otherwise there were rules for most occurrences and the game was to bend the rules or break them without getting caught. Because I was an engineer I was potential officer material, but I think they sensed that it would not work. The lieutenant colonel also needed some people with the smarts to calculate the directions of the canons. With my friend Svend I became calculator for the two batteries as a whole, which meant that no shot could be fired before we had verified the calculations for each battery. That gave us a measure of power.
The lieutenant colonel recommended Svend and me to the colonel for coloring a stack of plates showing the interior parts of the rifle. We were given a room next to the colonel’s office where he worked on his hobby as sculptor. When he came into our room he would be like a kind old uncle; he gave us treats and lauded our work. Then sometimes, we heard him through the door dress down our superior officers without mincing words, and now our situation made us appreciate the comic effect. In order to make the coloring even, we had to put it on in many, many thin layers and we managed to make the job last the rest of our time as soldiers. Every time something unpleasant was on the program we retired to our peaceful refuge.
My most daring rule breaking occurred once after I was at the infirmary with the flu. I discovered that when you were discharged you were given a form with the date and the doctor’s signature that you had to show to your commanding officer. In the interval from you left the infirmary till you arrived at the barracks you were beyond military control. If I stretched that interval who would know? All I needed was another form with a later date. As I was good at forging it would not be a problem to fill in a blank form with the doctor’s signature and a new date. In an unguarded moment I took a blank form from the doctors office and when I was discharged I took the train home to Copenhagen where I enjoyed a couple of days of freedom. On the train back I saw one of our officers, but I bent down when he passed and he didn’t see me. When I arrived back everybody was upset because the lieutenant colonel had asked for me and said he would visit me at the infirmary. The danger had passed, but I had a moment of anguish when I was told to give the form to the doctor next morning. He was the one person that surely would become aware of the forgery. I decided to ‘forget’ to give him the form, and nobody ever noticed.