Thomas Rathsack in cooperation with Dennis Drejer: Elitesoldat. ©2009 Vigmostad/Bjoerke. Translated into Norwegian by Morten Gaustad and Kurt Hanssen ISBN 978-82-419-0636-7. Hard backed, 297 pages with plenty of full-colour illustrations. Original in Danish Jaeger – i krig med eliten ©2009 People’s press This autobiography by a Danish SOF soldier was written in cooperation with a journalist. He describes his life from childhood, through selection into and training with Danish Special Forces in the early 1990s. Hopefully, the Danish Army has abandoned its selection procedures as of those times; Systematic humiliation and mental breakdown to the described degree is long since deemed non-productive. Whether certain events have been thrown into the description of HAHO/HALO training to add excitement is unknown, but they are totally out of place. The Combat Survival course is realistically described; however reason for changing unimportant details remains confusing. After retiring from active service in 1993, the author travels to South America for various jobs and goes on to be recruited to perform mine clearing for a civilian organisation in Chechnya, and later transferred to similar duties in Afghanistan. Serving there he develops disgust for Islamic law and Taliban. He is actually in Afghanistan on the 11th of September 2001 and confident in the Afghan environment and an explosives expert, he very naturally rejoins the Danish Special Forces to deploy with them to Kandahar in January 2002. Up to this point the story is badly told and hard to concentrate on. Long strings of events are listed with very little feeling , completely devoid of humour and reflection. (Unfortunately the translation into Norwegian is also really poor and hopefully the original Danish version is in better language.) Upon reentering Afghanistan as part of Task Force K-bar however, his story picks up considerably, events are described in a gripping manner, connecting with true human qualities. Even if the personal characters are sketched like embarrassing clichés as in any cheap novel, this part of the book is a tight and pure, convincing story. It conveys some of the real nerve of this sort of ops and describes the extraordinary comradeship with genuinuity. Likewise, his description of leadership and (lack of) formal hierarchy in the unit is very accurate. The tale continues when the author goes to Iraq as a civilian, Danish Defence tasked, body guard to Danish diplomats in Baghdad. At this point the story immediately loses its sting and reverts to a boring list of facts and events. He then returns to Denmark for training with the SOF, the description of which is superficial and neither exciting nor very informative. Going out to Basra in the summer of 2007 with his SOF unit and taking part in two insertions, the story springs to life again. Reviewer has never been to Iraq and is therefore unable to evaluate authenticity, but events seem well told, with feeling and intensity. Upon returning to Denmark author resigns from the Armed Forces permanently, without revealing a convincing explanation for this. Reviewer searched the book with scrutiny, eager to find the reason for the turbulence its issuing caused in Denmark in the autumn of 2009: The Government tried to stop it and the Defence Minister as well as the Supreme Commander resigned. At this point most of the text was already available on the Internet and the Copenhagen Court decided that the book was not unlawful to release. In the book some details of tactics and weapon systems capacities have actually been changed, but the whole story is so full of inaccuracies and errors that it’s hard to say whether this is deliberate or not. The most obvious reason for the Danish government’s resentment is the covert ops described in chapter 14. If the possibility that the author is inventing or grossly exaggerating is left out and these ops really were performed as described, they undoubtedly represent a violation of the Geneva Convention. If the author participated in these without authorisation, he is in trouble. If they were performed under the authorisation of the Danish government, they are in trouble. Either way the author should have been advised to leave this section out. His breach of the Secrecy Act is also obvious. Conclusion The book is all through disturbed by incongruence and annoying inaccuracies and errors, as if there wasn’t enough time to review the manuscript before sending it to print. The author is incredibly proud to be a Danish SOF soldier, and self-sufficient to a degree that gets rather embarrassing. A touch of humbleness would have been appropriate. The introduction into Afghanistan’s complicated history in chapter 6 is one of the best the reviewer has ever read. Likewise excellent are the descriptions in chapter 13 of relations Iraq/Iran and the abbreviated history of Iraq. For the experienced military reader, only the history sections, chapters 9 through 11 on SOF ops in Afghanistan and 17 through 19 on SOF ops in Iraq are worth reading. (For a valid introduction to SOF ops one of the brilliant British sources should be preferred, for example Eye Of The Storm by Peter Ratcliffe.) Chapter 14 should have been left out. Reviewer however believes the book has a mission to fulfill for the average Scandinavian citizen. Despite illogic and errors, it tells a rather unique story of military operations in extreme conditions. It represents an open description of the battle the democratic world is struggling, to defeat terror. Stories like Rathsack’s may have the potential to open the eyes of the public, remind them of what society the soldiers are fighting on behalf of, and influence public understanding of and support for their soldiers. But the book would really have deserved a thorough revision! To reviewer’s knowledge the book has so far not been translated into English.
Great review mate. Gives a good description about the life of Rathsack. I'm looking forward to be reading it. It's also nice you cover the whole debate about this book, which finally lead to the resignation of the supreme commander and the minister of defence Søren Gade. It would seem the debate is far from over. One of the biggest tv channels in Denmark, TV2, created a programme in 2007 about the jaeger unit which was aired in 2009. This was just after the whole Rathsack case had calmed down again. The tv-programme caused much debate again, leading to major moral questions like, how far can a documentary go before it becomes dangerous for the unit or the safety of the country, and the press of course implied their right for freedom of speech. A courttrial should be on the way about this entire dilemma, where various leading danish reporters will have to witness about the entire thing. Seems like it could be a messy affair. Jakob
