MY SNIPER LIFE IN THE DANISH MILITARY

I don’t know if you can actually call it “my life” in the Danish Armed Forces, as it was only a span of three years. I’m not really sure how the Danish National Guard (Hjemmevaernet = Home Guard) is looked upon in the overall strategic Danish military picture, but I remember a lot of giggling and finger-pointing by the ‘real’ (actually drafted) military personnel when we showed up on maneuvers. But we didn’t care – really. 

For your information, Denmark was not attacked by any major powers during those three years; I must have done a good job – don’t you think?

Not to confuse you, but I did not have grandiose illusions of trying to be a Rambo kind of hero by ‘joining up’, as it was solely a cold and calculated action by me to avoid being drafted into the military. Yes, I know – a rather ironic situation…

I have always been against any kind of wars. The idea that we have to kill each other to solve issues, has never appealed to me. When explaining to my two sons back then that “nothing can be solved with violence”, they would just look at me and say two words (to shut me up, I guess): “Why wars?” I have never been able to come up with a logical explanation.

So in this feeble effort of mine, trying to avoid the draft and possible military duty, I thought: ‘Hey, Peter, join the National Guard and perhaps they’ll let you off come draft-time’; at least that was the general plan.

It was 1965 and I was an apprentice in a small department store in Holbaek. One of the department managers was a member of the local National Guard so he helped me sign up. At the first meeting I was issued what seemed like a lot of left-over equipment from World War II, but since I had always had a huge interest in that war, the helmet, the uniform, boots, bags and other equipment, was actually really cool. 

I cannot remember the precise model of the carbine riffle I started out with, but it was something like an 1889 8mm, bolt action. (Issued in 1940, I believe). I had never ever held any kind of real weapon in my sweaty hands before, other than the occasional pointed stick while imitating King Arthur; so this big and heavy rifle was a first – a big time first. 

The following weekend was spent on a shooting-range near Frederikssund; my first chance to gear up and in the mirror I almost looked like a real warrior. We were issued live ammo and down in the dirt we went, looking at a target seemingly a million miles away (that’s 1.6 million kilometers). There was no way I would ever hit that little piece of square paper down the range.

We were instructed how to load, aim and pull. They also said something about breathing correctly and some other stuff, but I don’t think I listened as I was so eager to fire that first shot. I adjusted the sight, though I had no idea how to; I lined up the target as well as I could – by pointing the weapon somewhat in the general direction. Then I closed my eyes as I slowly squeezed the trigger. The noise was deafening as my right shoulder was torn off – at least the violent recoil made it feel like it was totally gone.

Returning to consciousness, the instructor was hopping up and down next to me, pointing down range, where a small white plate was swirled around the middle of the target. ‘I missed’ I thought, but no, I had hit bulls-eye smack in the middle.

The instructor looked at me with a smirk: “you can’t do that again – like in never”. I loaded another bullet, aimed at the target, closed my eyes (not really, I did keep the shooting eye open – just in case), softly squeezed the trigger and the instructor did some more hopping as the plate-thing twirled around yet again – bulls-eye.

I quickly found that I liked shooting, as I was rather good at it. Why? I have no idea. Some months later we were equipped with a Springfield M1 Garand and I wondered if it would perform as well as the first one; it did even better. I had to fire a few hundred rounds to adjust, but soon settled in and the bulls-eye results continued.

At a competition (which I won, (he brags)) I was approached by some high-ranking dude with a lot of salad on his chest (isn’t that what you call medals and things?) He sternly informed me, that I needed to sign up for sniper-training. As I was a stupid kid I eagerly said “Yes Sir”. My life in the Danish Military changed – a lot.

A month later I was equipped with all kinds of even cooler stuff. The ‘sniper’ uniform was different, and a bunch of additional equipment made me go: ‘na na na na na na’ in front of my band-of-fighting-brothers, who were consistently teasing me about the sniper-thing; ‘big shot’ was often mentioned, no matter how lame it sounded – because I was a ‘big-shot’. But the real evolution was the new weapon I was issued; an M16 rifle with a scope. 

When I received the M16 (brand new and out of a cool box), the much lighter weight compared to the Garand, made me look for a hole to pour water into (the ‘water-pistol’ syndrome), but found none – so it was actually a real weapon. 

As part of becoming familiar with this new wonder, I was ordered to take it apart and reassemble it many times over. I became an expert in the ‘taking apart’ bit, but reassembling back to its correct working condition was only attempted with several leftover parts, parts I was sure had something to do with the weapon’s functionality. 

My ‘sniper-group’ consisted of a navigator (to find the way into the target and especially to get the Hell out of there) as well as a supporter (someone had to carry the beer, duh). Egon, the navigator was a real nerd; I mean the dude actually knew how to use one of those compass things, which I could never figure out how to do. If you left me in the middle of a forest (anything bigger than 12 trees) with a vast selection of compasses, the only way for me to get out, would be by screaming: “MOM?” really loud…

But I was superb in taking the weapon apart and Egon reassembled it in no time, for the most part with his eyes closed, for some challenging reason. We never had a problem in that department, as we never had to do that exercise in the field, ever.

Though I was an ace on the range and dead targets (not moving much), being on maneuvers, crawling around looking like a bush, hunting down actual war-game targets, was another story all together. The first major test of that was a week in sniper school. No, not like summer-camp, very far from. This was hard-core training and the stupid smirk on my face from being a big-shot-shooter on the range disappeared the second we arrived at the train-station. From that very moment till I was home in my own bed in a fetal position, sucking my thumb and finally stopped shaking, it was Hell – as they say. That moment I decided that being drafted would have been a much easier way of serving my time in the Danish Military after all – how ignorant I had been.

The things we were going through that week were horrendous compared to my normal everyday life. I had considered the sniper-thing fun and games, but the drill sergeants didn’t see it that way. All the stuff we had to do in a very short time made my body extremely sore in places I didn’t even know I had.

After 48 hours of punishing drills and exercises, with only a total of 8 hours of sleep (‘coma’ comes to mind) we were issued a map, a day’s food ration, a canister of water and then we were sent into a large forest (a lot more than 12 trees).

The order was to eliminate 8 different targets; we had 4 days and 4 nights to accomplish that. I then realized that I had to sleep outside and not in a cozy bed and when the little bit of rations were gone, we had to survive on ‘what kind of worms again?’ And off we went.

It was Hell in this Danish jungle, but Egon guided us securely from one target to the next and we nailed all 8 of them – within 4 days and 4 nights. But it was all the stuff in between, surviving on our wits and the fortunate load of food products Egon had smuggled into his back-pack (Thank you, Egon). Personal hygiene was zero, except tooth brushing. We literally spent most of the time crawling. The long periods of inactivity just waiting for those right moments to make our moves, were tedious and extremely boring. But the boredom was certainly broken by the acceleration and utter excitement when we stealthily had located the targets, eliminated them and safely got the Hell out. 

We were a very good team and were not spotted even once by any of the many observers or any of the other sniper teams (we won, by the way – but you knew that, huh?) But all the stuff in between targets was a huge uncomfortable ordeal. We often talked about what many (real) soldiers had gone through in real wars – and we were always in total awe – how could we even dare compare our misery with theirs… I survived sniper school; we did it a few times more and it got somewhat easier – except the part of sleeping outside, but we did make food-smuggling an art-form.

After three years in the National Guard I was finally called in to face the draft-board. As my plan had been to completely avoid drafted military time, by serving time in the National Guard instead, I was sure they would dismiss me. 

Wearing only my underwear and a confident smirk, I finally faced the draft-persons. They looked me over, made some notes and one asked: 

“You are flat-footed, aren’t you?” You had to be blind or in advanced Rigor mortis not to notice that my feet were as flat as could be. 

“Yes, Sir” I answered - in Danish. 

“You are dismissed…” he said. “Cannot use flat-footed soldiers…”

At that very moment I realized that I had spent three years and a lot of weekends for nothing? No matter how ironic (pathetic?) it was that I had joined one military faction to avoid another, I was still a bit hurt and disappointed as they never gave me a chance to tell them about my life as a sniper in the Danish military – oh, well, I also survived that one.