Watching news coverage from the disaster in Japan, I remember when I was involved with something similar.

It reminds me of when I and 24 other guys did rescue work after a natural disaster in Sweden six years ago; how 25 young boys who after a week found a whole new way to look at life.

To be honest, Sweden doesn’t have any natural disasters like the tsunami in Japan. We have no earthquakes, no volcanoes and no tornados. What we have is an occasional storm or hurricane, and when that happens, that’s the big thing.

In January 2005 our most recent big thing occurred. Hurricane Gudrun hit Sweden over night, and besides the blackout, it was hard to see what really happened. Until afterwards.

Millions of acres of forest had vanished; 300,000 people were without power and telephone. And 18 people died.

It was now time for my entrance into the real world and adulthood. At the time, I was in the army, doing boring exercises in the boring fields outside the boring town of Skövde. Most things sucked. But now, instead of doing the regular polishing-the-weapon-until-you-can-see-your-face-in-the-bolt drill, we got mobilized to do some real stuff.

Many people in Sweden live out in the woods, and no one knew how they had managed the hurricane. It was time for the army to do its thing.

Our mission was to visit every building in the county of Växjö; one of the counties affected the worst, to see if everyone there was fine. We were there for a week. And it was the best week in the army.

Instead of crawling in dirty ditches, we visited people who treated us with warmth. Instead of hitting our heads on the ceiling in bumpy panzer vehicles, we drove around in comfortable, automatically geared cars. Instead of hearing drill sergeants scream angry commands, we listened to sweet music in the car stereo.

But more important than anything: Instead of doing pointless training, we actually did something for real, something that mattered to other people.

We discovered this in every house we visited. People were so grateful that we came, and everyone gave us coffee and cookies. Man, how much coffee we drank that week.

Some places we visited were severely hit by the hurricane. To access one of the houses we had to climb over logs and fallen trees for half an hour, without ever touching the ground. But the people in the middle of the fallen forest were doing well, given the circumstances.

Most people we visited were okay. “Yes, we are all fine,” they said. “We have enough vodka to last for two more weeks!”

In one house they had chopped up the wooden floor to use as firewood to keep warm.

But all people were in good spirits, and thanked the green-clothed saviors who came out to see them and make sure they were doing well.

This made us guys look at things differently. We had all joined the army for a variety of reasons. For some it was because it was mandatory. Some looked for a future career, and some did it for fun.

I did it because I thought it was a good thing to do for my fellow countrymen in case something would happen. At least that was what I kept telling myself when I enlisted, but I knew that would never mean anything.

Because Sweden is a place safe from war and disasters. I figured it would be a nice year between high school and college. I would never have to see any action.

Well, I didn’t see any action, but I did see the consequences. So did our entire platoon, and it moved us. No matter what reason people had for joining the army, now we were all doing something important with our one-year military experience. We had helped people survive and brought them a feeling of being seen and that they matter. A feeling none of us knows when we will feel again.

The January 2005 hurricane destroyed a lot of things. But it also built up other things, like the spirit of 25 young boys who after this week found a whole new way to look at life.