In July this year I tried to make my database in my research about the Swedish born soldiers to be more complete. In this case to add photographs of their final resting places, their headstones and the names on the memorials, where those Swedes who doesn’t have a known grave, are commemorated
This is the story about the fifth soldier I visited during my tour.
Paul Peter Wiklund
Paul Peter Wiklund was born as Petter Paulus Viklund on November 21st, 1890, in Skellefteå parish in the landscape of Västerbotten in Sweden. In his Canadian attestation papers it says that he was born in “S kellefotte” but as a Swede I can easily see that it must be the town of Skellefteå. It is always interesting from a research perspective to interpret all the different spellings of the Scandinavian names of places in the military documents connected to the individuals.
In Sweden he grew up together with his family, his mother Christina Charlotta Holmlund and his father Petter Viklund. Peter had two siblings in Sweden, Elin and Pontus, and the family grew with two more sons, Simon and Joseph, when they had emigrated to North America between 1893 and 1895. It looks like the father Petter went in advance, and the rest of the family left Sweden in 1895.
I have been able to find small notes from Swedish-American newspapers that Paul Peter’s father Petter died in Mutrie, Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1915, after have moved to North America, as it says, in 1893. I have also found American census documents from 1900, that states that the family arrived in 1893, which is noted both for Petter and Christina Charlotta, but on the passenger list regarding the emigration from Gothenburg it says July 1895, regarding Charlotta and her kids. (Ancestry)
Paul Peter was very young, around 4 years old, when he emigrated to North America with his family. In his Canadian attestation papers it says that he lived in Mutrie, Saskatchewan, Canada, as a farmer. He probably lived there with his family, as he stated his mother Christina Charlotta as his Next of Kin. Paul Peter signed his attestation papers in June, 1917, after his father’s death.
Looking at the small place of Mutrie today on Google Maps, it looks like a very remote area, but maybe it was more developed at that time.
Paul Peter belonged to 10th Canadian Medical Corps as I believe was connected to the 44th Battalion at the time when he was killed in action on March 27th, 1918. It seems that the unit were close to Villers-au-Bois and Loos-en Gohelle, north of Arras in France, when he was killed.
Paul Peter Wiklund is buried in Aux-Noulette Communal Cemetery Extension in France. When I came to his headstone there was a very weather torn frame with a photo leaning on his stone.
I tried to find any information on the back side of the frame and on the photo, but it was very fragile, and I left it as it was. I don’t know if this photo is connected to Paul Peter, but it felt it has been there on the cemetery for a very long time. It looks like a woman visiting a kind of small monument. The woman on the photo look relatively young, it can be a sister to Paul Peter, Ellen (Elin) Wicklund, born in April 1889 in Skellefteå, Sweden.
I haven’t up to this date been able to find any photo of his siblings to compare it with the photo. Ellen became almost 100 years old when she died in Maple Ridge, Vancouver, Canada, in April 1989.
I hope I one day will be able to confirm if there is any connection to Paul Peter on the photograph.
He is not forgotten.