Swedes in the Great War 1914-1919

I have just looked through some printed documents that I found when cleaning out shelves and sorting in books in newly bought bookshelves.

I have earlier been concentrated in telling the stories of those who fought and fell in the Great War, and back in the days I put documents from those who participated but survived aside, however, I am now starting to realize that these stories is of course of great interest as well, as they become small movies in my head, when connecting the text to the terrain, especially in terrain where I have spent a lot of time.

This is the story about the Captain in the Swedish Army who chose to end his service, to apply for service in the German Army during the Great War.

This is the story about Knut Gustaf Stålhandske.

The first part is about the background of Knut Gustaf Stålhandske, and the later part is the text from his dairy. I have only been able to find a paper version of the text, which originally came from a webpage called www.gotlandsforsvarshistoria.se. The page cannot be reached for the moment, so I have translated the text into english.

I hope the text from the diary will be interesting, especially for those who have been in the specific terrain along the Ypres Salient mentioned in the diary. At least it gives me a very special feeling, and can certainly be compared to diaries from soldiers on “the other side”

Background

Knut was born on May 6th, 1872, in a house called the “Captain’s quarter” in Ludgo parish in Edeby, Nyköping, in Södermanland county.

He was the son of Laura Sofia Löfgren and Axel Daniel Stålhandske, and he was raised by his parents together with his seven siblings.

Knut became an officer in October, 1893, and initially became a sub lieutenant at Gotland Infantry regiment. In November 1894, Knut moved to Karlsborg Garrison parish, in Skaraborg county, in the landscape of Västergötland. He started his military career as a sub lieutenant in the Royal Logistic Corps, T 2, where he also became a lieutenant. He moved to Örebro in 1895, to serve with the Royal Logistic Corps, T 1.

In August 1898, he was granted permission to take a break from his Swedish military service, to spend three years in the Army of the Kongo State in Africa. He started his service in Boma area, in the Zambi Training Camp, to learn the way of Belgian Colonial military service, which he found, compared to the Swedish way, very old fashioned.

His activities in the camp took most of his time, and he found the environment quite hard to live in, with a lot of mosquitos and other hard circumstances. After two months in Zambi he got permission to go to “Province Orientale” in Upper Congo, to the city of Stanleyville. In Leopoldville he met a lot of Swedish merchant Captains and engineers, who had a very good reputation in the area at that time.

He quickly found out that his service against the opponents didn’t became as he expected, as the commander, Baron Dhanis didn’t had the resources when it came to ammunition and equipment. Knut experienced a lot in different places and positions, before he became ill and finally, after a long period in trying to be cured, cancelled his service in the State of Congo. He cancelled his service in Brussels and came back to Sweden in 1900.

In German Service

He came back to Sweden, to serve with the Royal Logistic Corps, T 2, in Karlsborg in 1902, and became a Captain at Boden-Karlsborg Artillery Regiment in October 1905.

Knut was married to Ida Helena Tillberg in December, 1906. Ida later died in Karlsborg 1915, from a heart failure. Knut married a second time in Berlin, in September, 1917, to Edith Berta Anna Elise von Bülow, who was born in Germany. She later died in Stockholm, 1973. Knut had four children in his both marriages.

In 1916 Knut Stålhandske asked for permission, as a Captain, to end his duty in the Swedish Army, to serve on the German side in the Great War. He was granted service in the Prussian “Artillery by foot” After training service in the city of Jüterbog, south of Berlin, he was ordered to the Eastern Front. There he became a commander, as a Captain in the reserves, of the 4th battery of the 17th Reserve Artillery Regiment, which was a unit in the 8th Army.

Knut served in fightings which was held in Dyna and by the river Aa, west of Riga. In those fightings he received the Iron Cross. 2nd Class.

Due to the Russian Revolution, which led to lower level of combat activities, he asked for permission to be moved to the Western Front.

He participated in the battles in the area of Arras during June to September, 1917 and with the &th German Army in the battles West and North of Lens, from September to November 1917. Knut became a Major in November 1917. During November and December, 1917, he participated in the fightings around Verdun, in the German 5th Army. Then he served in the 1st german Army in the area of Reims (Seize of the fort La Pompelle) from the beginning of December 1917, to end of February 1918. On February 28th, 1918, he received the Iron Cross 1st Class.

Between March 21st, to April 6th, 1918, he participated in the Offensive against Amiens, where he fought in the battle of St Quentin around La Fère and Noyon. He also served around Avre, Montdidier and between the rivers of Avre and Metz in June 1918.

From the Diary

In September 1918 he returned to his old regiment and participated in the fightings along the static front in the areas of Ypres, Tournai and Oudenarde.

In the diary the following text is to be read:

“The division’s defense area extended from Lake Zillebeke, located about 1 km east-southeast of Ypres, to the area south of St. Eloi, on both sides of the much-discussed Lys-Ypres-Yser canal. With great delight, I learned that no less than 14 batteries
(8 mortar, 4 howitzer and 2 heavy 10.5 gun batteries) were placed under my command, divided into two “Untergruppen”. After the troops had been received on 10 September, I made a longer orientation march the following day along the entire front of the division. We visited the support points close behind the infantry’s front line, namely “Höhe 60”, “Zillebeke” and “Doppelhöhe 60”, where four of my batteries had their fire control positions.

“Doppelhöhe 60” in particular offered an excellent overview of the entire area, also north and west of Ypres. On the front slope of this height lay no less than 9 large English tanks, shot to pieces and completely destroyed by rust. During an English attack in the spring, they had tried to climb the steep slope, at least 6 of which had been set on fire by a “Tankabwehr battery” with two field guns installed on the crest, which was particularly well installed.

The infantry had managed to take the rest with the long tank guns or with hand grenades. I did not neglect to photograph this strange sight of 9 “tank corpses” in one place, but unfortunately the photographs failed due to poor lighting. It rained almost all day. The entire terrain between Tembriel and the front was crisscrossed with old positions with several obstacle lines that had been taken and lost several times during the war. In addition, the ground was so riddled with shell holes that it was impossible to find any way north of Zandvoorde.

It was impossible to move straight forward in the terrain at all, there was a constant crossing between the shell craters. Almost every night during the next two weeks the English made minor attacks. Small trenches were occupied by the enemy from time to time, but were retaken without difficulty by our troops, with or without the participation of artillery. The trenches consisted mostly of so-called shell hole positions.

These were simply made so that the shell holes, more or less filled with ochre-green marsh water, were connected to a rifle range in which our infantry had a very unpleasant time. The difficulties were not inconsiderably increased by the dense autumn fogs in these marshes which required careful precautions to secure the connection. Extra fog posts had to be set up by both the infantry and the artillery, they were equipped with light guns, so-called signal lights, sirens or small megaphones.”

Further on in the diary the following text is found:

“On September 20, 1918, the two batteries of the mortar battalion and the howitzer battalion no. 406 were taken from us, after which I had only 8 batteries. After the 24th, a sudden calm set in with the enemy, not even patrol battles occurred anymore. This peace seemed highly suspicious to me. Vigilance was heightened even more. The spark telegraphs, of which each battalion had one, were always to be set to “reinforced reception”. The wavelength was usually 200. In order to determine whether the enemy had received reinforcements or the regiments opposing us had been relieved, our division made a minor attack on Vormezeele on the night of the 27th, during which, among other things, 5 prisoners were taken, belonging to a regiment that had not previously been deployed at Ypres.

In order not to neglect any precautionary measures, I ordered a technical combat exercise on the afternoon of the 27th. A major enemy attack south of Ypres was given as a condition. Everything went smoothly, all telephones, light signals, report drivers and smoke mail lines worked flawlessly. When the exercise was over at 6 o’clock I gave the order for a critique the following morning at 8 o’clock when a battalion commander and an officer or officer cadet from each battery were to report to me in Tembriel.

But the good Englishman spared me the trouble. During the night of Sunday the 28th the enemy began a major attack north of Ypres. The 12th Bavarian Division, our neighbor, became heavily involved in the fight. At 5.20 a.m. there was also loose fire against us and against our neighbor on our other flank, drum fire against our batteries and fire control positions and against the roads behind us. In about an hour the progressive artillery attack (the fire roll) followed.

This fire roll, which slowly approached at dawn, offered an unforgettable, stately and imposing battle scene. The wall of the demanding shells and the sky-high columns of smoke and mud that they caused, resembled almost a line of cloud pillars, a firing line of giants approaching to destroy us. But strangely enough, our batteries suffered little damage, well adapted to all the terrain folds as they were.

Everything indicated an upcoming “Grosskampftag” of the first order. About the first hours of the battle, my war diary says the following: At 7 a.m. our main support points were “Bastion” (a former fort in the Ypres fortress belt) on the Lys-Ypres canal. “Höhe 60” and “Doppelhöhe 60” despite the most tenacious defense in the hands of the enemy.

As a result, 6 of my batteries had lost their fire control positions with the commanders and telephone operators present there. My batteries, which had been firing barrage fire on the advancing British, were now ordered to shell the lost heights where the British lines were visible from time to time, when the smoke and fog were swept away by the wind. It was necessary to help our infantry to retake the heights through a counterattack. At 8 a.m. our telephone lines to the subgroups were destroyed.

The enemy’s incessant artillery fire made it difficult both to repair the lines and to maintain communications through reporting men on foot, horseback or bicycle. At 9:40 a.m. a message came from the distribution commander that the army corps reserve of the 36th West Prussian Infantry Division would arrive in Menin by rail at around 11 a.m. and be immediately deployed across Geluveld to retake the heights. Geluveld was a village on the main road from Menin (at Lys) to Ypres.

At about the same time, a report came that my most advanced battery, 3/Liw 65, which was 150 meters behind “Höhe 60”, had been surrounded by the enemy. The battery commander continued the fire regardless until his remaining 2 usable howitzers had sunk so deep into the marshland that they could no longer be loaded. Then he blew up the guns, spread the personnel into a firing line and, under incessant fighting with carbine fire and hand grenades, broke through and, taking with him six captured Englishmen, reported at 10.45 at his battalion commander’s fighting post, where the men asked for new guns.

Such was the spirit among these soldiers. At 10.20 the English slowly continued their advance towards Geluveld. My three batteries closest to this village also received new machine-gun fire but continued to fire tirelessly regardless. South of that, on the line west of Zandvoorde-Houtem, the combined fire of the field artillery and ours pinned him down. The mortar battery 1/140 (20th Foot Artillery Regiment) had fired no less than 850 rounds during the battle. Now the battery had only one usable mortar and it had almost disappeared into the marsh, although it had been re-erected three times.

The brave battery commander now went on the attack with carbines and hand grenades, spreading his unwounded 30 men in very thin firing line and stopped the enemy’s advance about 2 km west of Geluveld. Batteries 2, 4 and 5/Liw 65, which were surrounded shortly afterwards, had to blow up their guns sunk in the marshy ground, after which they fought their way through with small arms.

Saving the guns was impossible as the battalion lacked horses. The bravery of the 2nd battery deserves special praise. When the enemy had come a few hundred meters past the right wing of the battery, the battery commander ordered one of his two howitzers, which were still in combat condition, to face back and fire at the enemy in the rear, while the other continued to fire at its previous target, a field battery southeast of Ypres (the battery’s main observer had not been discovered by the enemy).

The English battery was forced to break up and flee with the two guns that we had not had time to destroy. The two howitzers were then rendered unusable, after which the commander spread the service in a firing line and after a hard fight managed to break through in a southeasterly direction across Houtem with a loss of only two young recruits, who died of exhaustion and were taken prisoner.“

In the end of diary he wrote the following text:

“Suddenly my command post (battle post) was again subjected to a fire attack by the heaviest artillery. The rain of shells came so suddenly that a telephone non-commissioned officer and two men, who were resting on the ground in front of the cavity, were seriously wounded by a shell that exploded in front of them. It was heartbreaking to hear their wails, the former had his lower abdomen torn open. They were immediately dressed as best they could, whereupon a report was made by telephone to the main dressing station in Wervik. Within 18 minutes an ambulance arrived, and in the blink of an eye the three wounded were loaded and taken away.

Thanks to the instantaneous connection and the rapid transport, as well as the proven skill of the German military doctor, all three were saved. When the regiment returned to Altona at the beginning of December, who stood at the railway yard and gave a tight salute if not my magnificent telephone sergeant.

At 11.50 the great counterattack over Geluveld was finally launched with the two first arriving regiments of the 36th Infantry Division. The enemy was partly thrown back, his attack was completely stopped in the line west Geluveld-Zandvoorde-west Houtem. Nowhere had the enemy advanced more than 2.5 km. Now he opened machine-gun fire from a height at Zandvoorde against my “Gefechtsstand”, at the same time a field battery began to take us under fire, although the result of all this waste of ammunition was 0.

We still expected that the now assembled 36th Infantry Division and our infantry would continue their attack with all their might to regain the lost heights. However, the enemy had managed to get so entrenched in the old gun emplacements in the terrain that the attack failed. In addition, the artillery support was too weak due to the lost batteries and the lack of ammunition.

A few hours of waiting and tension passed. Although I had received permission at 2 o’clock in the morning to move my staff due east to Getraudenhof, I remained in Tembrielen in the hope that our infantry would succeed in throwing the enemy back to his old positions. In the end, however, I had to move my staff back to my new combat post designated by the artillery commander. The spark station, all maps and documents had already been taken there and after a 20-minute unpleasant walk due east through the terrain we arrived at the former village of Geluveld, only a few small huts were standing. Here at 6.30 I again arranged my command post, in an underground room made of concrete, which was uninhabited at the time.

It is clear that the loss of so many brave artillerymen of all ranks and no less than 5 batteries of material hit me hard. However, no usable piece had fallen into the enemy’s hands. The greatest comfort in my grief was to be brought to me by my Bavarian friends. Hardly had everything been finished in Gestraudenhof before I received 2 10.5 cm cannon batteries from the Bavarian Foot Artillery Battalion No. 18, which since the beginning of the month had been in rest and repair quarters in Halluin, a village on the Lys south of Menin.

In addition, late in the evening I received news that my former howitzer battalion No. 406, which had been in rest quarters for some time, was again placed at my disposal. Finally, during the night, a battery 1Lkw. 65, which had been withdrawn from the front before the battle for new equipment, returned. This meant that my regiment at dawn counted one more battery than before the battle, 9 instead of 8.

Not even in the face of adversity did the German organizational ability fail. My reorganized regiment was now arranged with one group north, the other south of the small town of Menin on the Lys. Our infantry had regrouped during the night and occupied the so-called “Flanders position” in the line Gheluveld-Wervik-Lys. As soon as the batteries were ready in their new positions, liaison officers were again sent to the infantry. Everything was ready for a new battle. On the same day the Johanniter Order was awarded.”

It is not known why or which type of the Johanniter Order Medal he received, according to his text in the diary.

The diary also mention text about the siege of the Fort la Pompelle in the area of Reims, but this text I will save for another article.

Knut Gustaf Stålhandske died in Stockholm at hospital, at an age of 80, in October 1952, and left his wife Edith von Bülow, and his children.

He is buried at Skogskyrkogården in Enskede, Stockholm.

The Coat of Arms of the family of Stålhandske (Steel Glove)

One of my fellow contacts in the Great War Group community, Dr Rich Willis, wrote a message to me and told me about a very interesting database with German casualty lists from the Great War.

When I looked at the database I remembered that I had seen it before, but in another version. The collection includes, among other things, the names of soldiers, victims of war and violence from the following wars: the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14), the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), the Coalition Wars against France.

It also includes the Napoleonic Wars and the Wars of Liberation, the Schleswig-Holstein War of 1848-51, the Franco-Prussian War of 1866, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the Boxer Rebellion in China, the Herero Rebellion in German-Southwest Africa, World War I and World War II, victims of the division of Germany (in a separate section), as well as a number of members of the Bundeswehr (Federal Armed Forces) and the former National People’s Army of the GDR who died in the line of duty.

In this case I have concentrated on following up those who died in the Great War. It is possible to search through different options in the database, and I started to search within the Place of Birth (POB) and I used the German word for Sweden, Schweden, and then I got quite a lot of results, almost 50 hits.

Although, the place “Schwedenhöhe” was mentioned in lot of the results, which was a village in old Prussia, near the town of Bromberg, today the town of Bydgozcz, in Poland

When I sorted out those from the total result, I found around seven individuals who were born in Sweden. I have now looked them through and it turned out that five of the soldiers were born in Sweden, but with German parents, who at the time were living in Sweden. They does not fall within my criteria at the moment. Two of those seven soldiers were born in Swedish families.

Fusilier Julius Björnssen (Julius Björnsson)

Julius was born in Osby parish, Skåne county, in the southern part of Sweden, on April 8th, 1878, and was raised by his mother, the maid Anna Nilsdotter but without a father, as he was not known when Julius was born. However, I can see in the Swedish church book that Julius and his mother Anna lived at the same location as a specific Mr Björnsson and his family, so who knows, maybe he received his surname after this person.

Anna emigrated from Sweden to Rohlstorf, just east of Wismar in Germany, in 1885, and it looks like Julius emigrated later, in 1892, probably to his mother but I haven’t been able to confirm it. Julius fought within the 8th company, in the 35th Infantry Regiment .

He fought with his unit just north of Massiges in France, around Hill 199 (top yellow marker), when he became Missing in Action on February 12th, 1916. I have also marked the specific trench area of Main de Massiges which I have visited a couple of times. (middle yellow marker)

At the moment there is no known burial site for Julius, may he rest in peace, wherever he is.

Fusilier Karl Jonasson

Karl was born in Asarum parish, Blekinge county, in the southern part of Sweden, on September 5th, 1877. He was raised by his mother, the maid Christina Jonasdotter. Karl, as Julius, didn’t have a known father.

When I look in the Swedish church book I find that Karl’s mother emigrated to Germany already in 1877, and Karl may have done that as well. It is mentioned that she emigrated to the area of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany.

Karl Jonasson fought in the 11th company in the 85th Landwehr infantry Regiment. Karl was killed in action in the Aisne region in France on May27th, 1917.

He is today buried in the Laon “Bousson” cemetery, north-west of the city of Reims in France. I haven’t been able to find a photo of his headstone, but I will try to visit his burial site when I am in the area next time.

It is always interesting to find as large piece as possible when it comes to the history of those Swedish born soldiers who fought and fell in the Great War, but is always a greater challenge to find facts about the soldiers who fought in the German units.

The majority of the Swedish soldiers who fought in the German units in my research were Swedish officers who signed off from the Swedish Army. However, now I have found more Swedes who also were soldiers, and that is always interesting, as the information about the soldiers is a lot harder to find, from my perspective.