‘The grey everyday of guard duty’: tracing military boredom in field reports of Swedish military chaplains 1940–45

Abstract

This article constitutes an addition to the scant literature on military boredom. It offers a close reading of field reports written by Swedish military chaplains during the Second World War and seeks to explore the lived experience of waiting for war. It analyses how the military inactivity of Swedish soldiers were depicted and how it was thought to impact morale and motivation. This article showcases how military boredom may be studied through archival research and how the study of boredom as a military phenomenon benefits from an exploration of various kinds of experiences, on as well as (far) off the battlefield.