It Would Rather Go Well It Gets Serious 2 Books in 1 Max Manus
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It would rather go well It gets serious 2 books in 1 Max Manus DISCLAIMER: This is a non-professional translation, done purely for the love of the subject matter. Some strange wording is to be expected, since sentence structure is not always alike in English or Norwegian. I'm also not a military nut after 1500, so some officer ranks, division names and the like may be different than expected because of my perhaps too-literal translation. Any notes of my own will be marked in red. Persons and places named in the books by cover names and codes: Uncle: Consul E.R.M Nielsen | Auntie: Ida Lindebrække Karl Johan: Gregers Gram | Tollef: Max Manus Nr. 12: Max Manus | August: Ole Borge Petter: Ulv Johns | Bobben: James Lorentzen Olav: Olav Ringdal jr. | Torpedo Hans: Hans Breien The partisan general: Farmer Martinsen | Mrs. Collet: Gudrun Collet Egil: Egil Halle | Vesla: Vesla Halle Kolbein: Kolbein Lauring | Kari: Kari Lauring Halvor: Halvor Haddeland | Einar: Einar Juden Rolf: William Houlder | Roy: Roy Nilsen Nr. 24: Gunnar Sønsteby | Kjakan: Gunnar Sønsteby Erling Fjeld: Gunnar Sønsteby | Nr. 28: Per Mørland Nr. 30: Arne Diesen | Ivar: Martin Siem Viggo: Viggo Axelsen | Kåre: Birger Rasmussen Lady Barbara: Ellen Trondsen | The Angel: Normann Gabrielsen Ingar: Ingar Dobloung | Derby: The Max Manus group Bundle: Gregers Gram & Max Manus’ operational name Alf: Alf Borgen | Sverre: Sverre Ellingsen Erik: Erik Christensen | The office: Skeppargatan 32, Stockholm Nr. 26: Company Linge training facility Forest Lodge in Scotland It would rather go well Foreword Dear Reader! I would like to explain why I dare to try writing something approximating a book. I'm sitting hidden away in a friend’s flat at Røa, with the same strange feeling in my stomach that I always had before a job, the fear of hidden dangers. This time worse than ever, because the job I’m embarking on now is one I do not have the slightest idea of how to do. I feel like a guilty schoolboy, and would like to be excused from the task. The motives are not so noble as one would like to think, and few readers would believe. The book’s only justification is that it is true and self-experienced, and that it ties into a time where much strange stuff happened, and where joyous destiny allowed me to be part of some of it. I have been dabbling in war and terribleness for 5 years, and am beginning to feel old. It is not a historical document that I present here, but a portrayal of what some of those many thousands that actively fought for the Norwegian cause met on their way. Many have asked me to retell my experiences in a book, and since for the moment I have nothing else to do, I dare the leap, after all. After working with the material for a while, and written some of it down, I see that I have to split it into two volumes. The next one, which I hope to get out in the beginning of 1946, will mostly be about the bigger sabotage actions, amongst others our work in blowing up the “Donau”, “Monte Rosa”, the airplane factory in the municipal transport hall, torpedoing the destroyer in the Moss straits, the actions against the A. T. offices, and about the comprehensive propaganda campaign that we organized, not least among the German soldiers. My work in the later phases of the war and just after the peace will naturally be in the last volume. Røa, the summer of 1945 Max Manus Chapter 1 “Heil Hitler” in the jungles of Chile We were two guys deep in the jungles of Chile. We had been following the river for 5 days. For some reason, the bank was now full of bamboo. We had been toiling all day through the cursed bamboo forest, and of course we had forgotten our machetes. I tire deep in my soul whenever I think back to that forest and that toil. My travelling companion was a German named Werner; I cannot remember his last name. He was now on his back, smoking his ration of tobacco. Ahead of us, we had two months of toil through mountains, jungle and the Argentinian pampas. behind us we had a long list of incredible adventures. Werner had traipsed through every Lilliput-republic in Central America, and had met me at a giant facility, Lagyna Verde, at Valparaiso in Chile. He was as sympathetic as a German can be. Of profession, he was a diesel engine engineer, as a human he was OK as long as there were no other Germans around. One German can be OK, two Germans are bad, if there are three Germans together in a room, there can be neither hearing nor space for any other nationality. We were having a good time, wondrously tired from all the hard work. We spoke together in a strange self-made language made up of German, Norwegian and English. So far, we had had a wondrous journey. We had spent a lot of time getting to the end station of the railway, Puerto Mont, with quick stops and small detours up to Scandinavians who had wine farms. We always had a great welcome, and usually we swam in the best wine they had for a few days, before we drifted back to the railway, with ever-lessening amounts of equipment. It had a tendency to disappear with the wine. The route we had planned to take over the Andes disappeared with the wine too. The fact was that we were now two men in the Chilean jungle, with an equipment consisting of a few kilos of rice, coffee, sugar and tobacco. We had 2 Colt .45 revolvers and a shotgun with no shells. We had pilfered a few shotgun shells from a trading post, and with these I had shot a few ducks which were now puttering along in some rice. The conversation turned to the Chileans; I liked the degoes well. They were kind and courteous and never did you a bad turn unless they could profit from it. I remember my good workmate José, who hadn’t shown up for work in a couple of days, and whom in my lunch break swim, I found floating in the inlet, his belly slit open and without clothes. All his mates agreed that it was a bad thing – to kill a man just for his clothes. José had not had any money on him, and his clothes were not worth the life of a good man, especially since his pants were in a poor state, and he had only worn rubber sandals on his feet. It was another thing with my friend Jesus Maria, who gunned down Pedro because he had robbed him in a poker game, and would not pay him back, even when Jesus Maria asked very nicely, while he swung a pistol in front of his nose. I was just arriving in camp when I heard the gunshot and saw Pedro come staggering out of the cabin and sink to his knees clutching his belly. Nobody helped him, and I went over to my own cabin. It was common custom not to interfere with the dead or dying. (That reminds me of Oslo in its day, to never ever get mixed up in anything.) If you stood by a corpse when the police arrived, it was not their duty to prove that you had killed a person, but your own duty to prove that you had not. Alongside Jesus Maria at the facility. There were many strange episodes, like the time I was arrested for murder and barely escaped. At the time, I was foreman of the formwork carpenters and had a run-in with one of the dego-carpenters who stole too much. I went down to the office and got him fired, but when I told him this, he came at me with a big hammer and tried to knock some sense into my head. I thought his method was wrong, and gave him a smack. When I got going, I was more and more enraged – I thought it was poorly done, a hammer even, and such a large one. I was so indignant that I forgot that the man could not hear me after he had lost consciousness. Enough about that – it was a grand scandal with writings in the newspapers, and I ended up in prison despite public sympathy for me, and my boss, Nergård, thought it well done. 6 days in a Chilean prison is absolutely an experience that is worth having in life. I joined class 1 A, that is to say prison aristocracy. I was a bit embarrassed when I had to confess that I was not a real murderer, as the man was not dead, but they accepted me as one of their own after looking at my hands. They were so horribly swollen and bad-looking that everyone was impressed. When I got some money, I could even rent a field bed, complete with woollen blanket, lice and the works. After 6 days I got out on bail, when the hospital reported that the man would survive. Though he stayed in the hospital for a further 26 days. My colleagues in the cell – 8 men in all – embraced me and kissed me with their garlic-perfumed lips and wished me joy and happiness going forward in life, and hoped that I would remember everything they had taught me, especially to not stick the knife in too far up, if I ever had the need to slit open a man’s belly.