A second man in post-war Danish diving history deserves a mention: Filip Nielsen (above). A rough translation of his story at
Filip Nielsen var blandt de ni første frømænd: Hvis vi viste et eneste tegn på svaghed, blev vi valgt fra:
Filip Nielsen was among the first nine frogmen: If we showed a single sign of weakness, we were deselected. Sixty years have elapsed since the first contingent completed initial training. Filip Nielsen was one of the nine who did so.
By Flora Juul Holst. June 17, 2017.
All was blackness while Filip Nielsen swam forward in the void. The sole beacon was the compass direction towards the port they would be attacking.
No one saw him. All he could feel was the cold and his diving suit tightening against his body.
- Nothing is visible until you bump your head into the wharf. You must not ascend to the surface; you must descend instead to the bottom of the harbour. Someone is breaking it, says Filip Nielsen.
This is what a night exercise could look like to a frogman being trained in 1957.
This training meant students enduring a half-year of sleepless nights, endless hours in the water and a cessation of private life. An endless ordeal testing their physical and mental limits.
1 minute and 23 seconds
The majority gave up or were deselected. But not Filip Nielsen. Yesterday sixty years have elapsed since he had his first day of training. A time he has since called a half-year in hell.
Anyone going pale was shown the door
Something had to happen. The year was 1957 and 19-year-old Filip Nielsen had then been part of the military for two years. He was posted to a fort where he was bored. When he heard about the new special training, he rushed to sign up.
- I didn't know what it was all about, but it didn’t matter. It had something to do with water. I've always been fond of water, so it was fine by me. The joy of it went away pretty quickly, however, when I started, he says.
In the outset, the training budget was very tight. The students had to patch their own diving suits, which often got holes in them. (Photo: Filip Nielsen © Langelandsfort)
230 boys applied. The candidates quickly reduced in number, however. Filip remembers one day in particular during the admission days.
The boys were shown into a gym and stood where there was a large leak. Their bodies were unclothed apart for their lower limbs.
Two nurses walked into the room with a long syringe, which the boys were told to stick in their rear-ends. A few faces in the row turned pale. That was enough for them to be pulled out.
- If we showed a single sign of weakness, we were deselected, says Filip Nielsen.
After many days of health examinations, psychological tests and physical checks, thirteen boys were finally sent to Kongsøre by the Isefjord.
Marine spies
Frogman training has always been shrouded in mystery. Only a few know the duties of a frogman.
They have hidden names. Secret destinations. Unknown targets. An overview is possible, however.
Today, frogmen must be able to operate both nationally and internationally on land, at sea and in the air. But more often than not near water. One day they are elite soldiers in the wilderness, the next they are bodyguards. The whole world is their potential workplace.
Each day, the students slammed the sides of their hands down on to boards, which had been sprinkled with sand and gravel. This hardened the skin on their hands so they could more easily be used to crack the neck of an enemy in close combat. (Photo: Filip Nielsen © Langelandsfort)
In 1957, during training, the frogmen spent more time underwater than they do today. And the Cold War, which was still in its glacial period, helped shape the earliest training framework.
- We had to keep an eye on what eastern-bloc frogmen did. If they attacked, we should strike back. But primarily we were trained in espionage, says Filip Nielsen.
He will not say whether he has ever spied or been sent on a mission.
Blue stripes and crotch protectors
They lived in a red-painted scout hut, which the Armed Forces had taken over from Frederiksberg Municipality.
When they slept once in a while, it was in the same dormitory. A tiled stove in the middle of the room struggled to keep the place warm, but frogmen froze anyway.
The programme began every day between six and seven in the morning and continued into the evening. Each day began with a training run and then they were taught everything they had to know about diving, sabotage or weaponry.
Then they would be in the water for three to four hours. No matter what season.
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When they dived, they wore camel wool underwear beneath their diving suits to keep warm. But this didn’t help. The cold penetrated both the suit and the wool.
They wore nothing over their hands or over their mouths. The icy water made it hard to bite the mouthpieces attached to their oxygen bottles. Meanwhile, the suits squeezed hard against the body.
- Black and blue stripes appeared in the long haul after the suit had tightened. They could come in the strangest places, some more criminal than others. Jockstraps were necessary, says Filip Nielsen.
Twice a week they had night training exercises. Sunday was their only day off.
The day they burned Maren on the fire
Another integral part of the frogman’s everyday life was a 300-kilogram heavy oak beam they called Maren.
- I hated her like the plague. We carried it everywhere we went. Uphill and downhill, through forests, even in the sea, we had to swim with it, says Filip.
The oak beam tested the frogmen’s ability to cooperate under pressure without creating conflicts. But whenever somebody dropped out of training, Maren became heavier and heavier to carry for those who remained.
Today Maren is still a regular part of initial training. (Photo: Filip Nielsen © Langelandsfort)
The boys’ frustration about a heavy piece of wood making their lives a misery led them to carry out a plan on their final day of training.
- We lit a fire and laid Maren on it. Each time she burned in half we reassembled the parts over the fire so she could burn even faster. But we ended up bitterly regretting what we did, he says.
The trainer was stunned when he heard about the charred remains. The students were required to buy a new Maren for the Defence forces. It didn’t come cheap.
Diver for life
Nine ended up completing training that first year. Filip Nielsen was one of them. He spent the next six months living in Kongsøre as a trainer for the new students.
But even when Filip Nielsen left the army, he still benefited from being a frogman. He earned his living as a professional diver until the day he retired.
Today, Filip Nielsen is 80 years old.
Sources: Peer Henrik Hansen, museum director at the Cold War Museum Langelandsfort www.forsvaret.dk
That's enough for today. I'll be back in a few days' time with a review of the underwater swimming masks made by Denmark's own diving equipment manufacturer.
