Nineteen Swedish soldiers were killed in action in UN-service in Congo in the 1960s. The operation in which they died, ONUC, was officially a peacekeeping operation. One Swedish civilian died too, the Swedish UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, in a still somewhat mysterious incident.
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Several books have been written about the Swedes in Congo and I have most of them. However, it is always refreshing to read something about Swedish soldiers from another perspective. Therefore I was glad to hear there was a new Norwegian book that mentions the Swedes in several places. FN-tjeneste i Kongo ("UN-Service in Congo") by Svenn Willy Mikaelsen came out only this year, released by a publisher in Arctic Norway as the author is from Narvik.
Mikaelsen describes with many personal anecdotes - some very painful - his experiences in Congo as a Norwegian military policeman (then sergeant). He lets the reader join him on guard duty and patrols in a very exotic environment. I should think that quite a lot of what Mikaelsen writes about cultural differences is still valid today.
The extremely multinational nature of his MP-job has become very relevant for Nordic soldiers of today. It is good to read about Swedes from a Norwegian perspective. I reckon that the Swedish armoured cars Mikaelsen calls "rolling bath tubs" were m/42 KPs.
But how come Mikaelsen was armed with a German Walther pistol and even a MP 40 submachine gun in Congo, twenty years after WWII? Well that´s not strange at all, actually. The MP 40 was a weapon of the Norwegian armed forces until the late 1980s, finally being used only by the home guard.
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There is no photo in the book of Mikaelsen with his MP 40 - it has many other photos - but the above photo proves I am not kidding.
Still today in 2010 there is some Wehrmacht equipment in use by the Norwegian Army (no weapons though as far as I know). Perhaps not in Oslo but definately in more remote areas - I know this from a first-hand source.
BTW I recently wrote a piece about the MP 40 in Finland.
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For more information about the book and ordering see the publisher´s website.
P.S.
Writing about Congo I feel I must mention a Swedish soldier who was there, because his story is just amazing. Armed with a Carl Gustaf recoilless rifle Torsten Stålnacke took out an enemy armoured car (M8 Greyhound?) and several shooters but then he himself was hit - his jaw was virtually blown away. Although he almost suffocated from this he still somehow managed to save the lives of two comrades by dragging and carrying them to safety.