An axe to the knee

When I was in the army, half my life ago, I led three good men in a grenade-rifle group. They thought I was strange because I was ”one of those people who read books”, and they were all pretty lazy. The weekend before our final nine-day exercise, one of them (I won’t tell you his name because this is so friggin’ stupid) whacked himself over the knee with a frying pan so he wouldn’t have to participate. As it turned out, they wouldn’t let him off the hook that easy. They made him come on the exercise anyway, but he didn’t have to carry anything, which meant I had to carry his crap.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you this thrilling story is that I just found out from my aunt Minette that the very first known Harr did the exact same thing – except with an axe.

His name was Per Ersson and was a foot soldier in the Swedish army between 1794 and 1807. By that time he was sick of army life and took an axe to one of his knees so he would be discharged. Which he was.

What a knucklehead. And a relative of mine. I couldn’t be more proud.