Swedes in the Great War 1914-1919

One evening I was working with my research, and was looking for some names with a kind of Scandinavian connection, and just went back to cards that I had overlooked before. I then discovered a casualty card with the name John Norman, 1st Lt in the 165th Infantry, 42nd Division, called “the Rainbow Division”, American Expeditionary Force. (AEF)

The unit spent March 1918 under French command to gain experience about Trench warfare.

According to the card John was killed in action March 7th, 1918, as I though was quite early in the period for the AEF in France. I decide to look it up and found information about a story I havent heard about before. John was killed at an age of 47.

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According to some sources John is born in Säffle in Sweden, which is in Värmlands län, in the western part of Sweden, just west of the big lake Värnern. It is told that he is born March 25th, 1870, and I am now trying to find more information that can confirm this, which for the moment is a bit hard. In this case I am looking through church book from that region, but I think Säffle can come from the fact that his brothers adress is Säffle on the casualty card, and that type of information has the tendence to “walk around” and become a fact that may not be connected to the person itself. I am also looking into other dates of birth.

The story about when he lost his life at the Western Front is very sad to read, and as I understand now, it is quite many stories written about this situation. Below you cand find some word from one of the stories. It was the first week at the battlefield for the personnel in the New York National Guard 69th Infantry, called “Fighting sixty-Ninth”, a unit with Irish heritage, the name was given to the unit in the American Civil War, by Robert E Lee.

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“At about 3:20 p.m. the enemy launched a barrage of shells in the 2nd Battalion’s position for about an hour,” wrote Richard Demeter in his 2002 history of “The Fighting 69th.” With the majority of troops below ground in hardened dugouts for protection, tragedy struck when a German shell landed on and collapsed the dugout where 1st Lt. John Norman, a regular Army officer and his two dozen Soldiers of 1st Platoon were stationed.

The dugout was some 40 feet below ground, with timbers to protect the Soldiers, and numerous turns down a stairwell to the entrance.

“Tons of earth and stone cascaded,” recalled Pvt. Alf Helmer, a native of Norway and one of the few survivors of the barrage, explained in the 2008 Stephen Harris book “Duffy’s War.”

“I remember only the crash,” Helmer recalled. “Thoughts ceased. I only know that I found myself in the doorway of the forward entrance, hands extended over my head.”

Maj. William Donovan, commander of the regiment’s 1st Battalion, was visiting the 2nd Battalion command post after the relief in place when the barrage struck. Donovan volunteered to make an assessment and assist in the rescue efforts of the imperiled 1st Platoon.

Initial efforts were able to recover seven Soldiers, two alive and five dead. Donovan and a rescue team could still hear other survivors, including Lt. Norman, from the crater of earth and timber.

Not all of the New York Soldiers perished in the initial blast that collapsed the dugout, Helmer would later recall in the Harris book’s account. Half the platoon had survived, but with little space for air and tons of earth and debris, Helmer expected everyone to die as he frantically used his own helmet to scoop away dirt and create space to breath.

“Choking dust and gas stench filled the suffocating darkness,” Helmer’s son recalled for an interview for the Harris book. “I gave myself to prayer and making my peace with God, I was no longer afraid.”

Under intense German artillery fire, including a gas attack, the frantic efforts to dig into the crater and save their fellow Soldiers continued, assisted by the regiment’s engineers of the Pioneer Platoon. Sgt. Abram Blaustein, one of the estimated 60 – 80 Jewish Soldiers serving in the Irish regiment, helped to lead the rescue efforts.

“The Pioneers were called out to try to rescue these men,” recalled Al Ettinger in his account to his son in the 1992 book “A Doughboy with the Fighting 69th.”

“All night long we labored. Two lieutenants have general direction but it was Abe Blaustein who really took charge and led by example. The men worked in relays, but Blaustein always took the most dangerous position,” Ettinger said.

For his heroic actions, Sgt. Blaustein received the French Croix de Guerre and the moniker “Blaustein of the Irish.”

Donovan also received the Croix de Guerre for his actions in leading rescue efforts under fire.

The trauma of the loss and the determination to act even touched the survivors. Pvt. Helmer, once rescued, moved on to the medical aid station and the battalion command post to report on the tragedy. Then, according to Harris in “Duffy’s War,” he requested permission to return to the site to assist with rescue efforts.

“I knew that unless I saw the thing through,” Helmer said, “I would never again be able to look my comrades in the face.”

As rescue efforts the following morning became too dangerous under the German artillery barrage, and no further sounds came from the dugout, it was decided to halt work and leave the remaining 14 Soldiers and 1st Lt. Norman where they were buried. The regiment placed a marker and moved on.”

Text from army.mil.

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The story has also been the base for a movie “The Fighting 69th”. A small clip on Youtube here:

I will now try to search further on in the archives, trying to find information that confirms that he is born in Sweden. The confirmation is an important part in my research.

Last evening I was working with my database over those Swedes who were born in Sweden, fought at the Western Front in The Great War, fell at the Western Front and are buried and Commemorated at the Western Front.

I looked over the different archives again, looking for more names, trying to find more soldiers which I dont have in my database, but I have now looked through “all” the facts, and I think to myself; Have I find them all now? Those who fits inot my criterias? I dont know, I will still continue to go over all the facts again, but I have now looked through the US, CAN, AUS, UK, FR and GER archives, and in the database I now have 285 soldiers.

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Of those 285 I have confirmed the birth in Sweden for 239 of them. I have developed my tools in looking up the background of those I still havent confirmed, and I will continue with that. When I say confirm, I mean finding the page in the Church book where their birth are noted, so there are little doubt about that they are born in Sweden, but I want to confirm it anyway.

But there are of course more than 285 soldiers who fall into my criterias, but we know that some archives are destroyed, and probably contained more facts about Swedish soldiers who fought in WW1, like for Germany, which is one of the countries that I have very little information from.

But right now the database contain those 285. You find the soldiers list in the main menu above, where you can see the names, where they are buried and also when they were born and died.

The disposition is right now as follows, and this is based on the the soldiers that I have found at the moment. The chart shows in which country armies they fought.

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I will during the upcoming days look throug the american files again, and maybe I will reach about 300 before I go into next phase, which means trying to find more information about each soldier.

I really hope I soon can go down to Belgium and France to start to take photos of the different sites, where the soldiers fell and where they are buried and commemorated.

Earlier last week my article about my research describing the method how to do research about Swedes in the Great war at the Western Front and use digital archives, was released at the UK blog Great War Reflections. It was very nice to get the opportunity to be a guest writer and read my own word at another project page.

Below you will find my article, as the link where it was originally posted, seems to be removed.

This article describes methods and angles of attack regarding digital research on the Swedes who participated in the First World War where I have chosen to confine myself to describing methods of research on the Swedes who participated in battles on the Western Front and who fell in the battles and are buried and remembered in Belgium and France.

Introduction

A little bit about myself as a person and why I do what I do.

My name is Joacim Hallberg, but no one says Joacim anymore, I am mostly called Jocke. I am working as an Army officer, my rank is Major, in the Swedish Armed Forces. I have a background in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), but my current task is to coordinate battle training and exercises for the units in my Regiment, Swedish Engineer regiment ´Göta Ingenjörregemente´. I have served in several missions abroad in Bosnia, Afghanistan and in Mali, both in the Infantry and EOD branches. I am 53 years old later this year, I have two kids, one daughter who is 19 and a son who is 13. You can easily see on them that the time goes too fast. As soon as the snow is gone, and when the roads are dry again, I will take my motorbike out, which is my other great passion.

During the latest years I have developed a huge passion for The Great War and have visited the battlefields in Belgium and in France many times. When I went to the Swedish Staff Officer Course at the Swedish National Defense College, I wrote a small essay about the South African units in the battle of Delville Wood connected to courage and moral factors in offensive and defensive operations.

I consider that to be the starting point for my great passion for the Great War.

One evening, some years ago in Ypres in West Flanders, Belgium, I discovered some Swedish names at Menin Gate Memorial, and then I decided to highlight their efforts to the Swedish citizens as this is a kind of a blind spot in our Swedish history. I did not realize back then that I would find many more soldiers with Swedish background.

The core in my project is to connect the individuals to the terrain but also broaden the perspective of the individuals by connect the places in Sweden, where they came from and if possible, also some information about their history.  If everything goes well, you will maybe find a guidebook that makes it possible to follow in the footsteps of the Swedes who fought in the Great War at the Western Front. You can follow my development at my project page westernfront.se.

Angle of attack

In these times when it may not be possible to visit archives on site, partly due to the pandemic that currently prevails, but also because some archives are some distance from where you live, a lot of research is done through digital archives. The information you find in these digital archives is largely sufficient to find the basic information that you are looking for.

In my own project, I have chosen to follow up on the Swedes who fell in the battles on the Western Front and have therefore assumed to try to find these among the archives that have information about the individuals who were injured or died in the fighting’s.

Most Swedes who fought in the First World War did so for the new countries to which they emigrated. I consider this to be the case for those who emigrated to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Cautiously, I consider right now that most Swedes who fought in World War I on the Western Front did so for the American forces followed by the Canadian and Australian forces.

From the information I have found so far, I believe that the Swedes who chose to fight for the German and French sides did so more as volunteers, although there were certainly those who also voluntarily joined the Canadian and American forces. In my research, I have found a few Swedes, born in Sweden, who fought for Great Britain, but my assessment is that they were British citizens at the time they joined the British Expeditionary Forces (BEF). So far, I have not found anyone who fought for any other countries on the Western Front, which are buried on the Western Front, although there were Swedish individuals who, for example, fought for south African forces in the BEF, which in one of these cases is buried in the Great Britain.

Sources

One method to find information about the Swedes who fought in the Great War is to start with the archives from The Commonwealth Grave Commission, and search for “Sweden”. You will get quite a lot of hits, but you must sort the individuals out from those who belonged to the navy, most of them commemorated at Tower Hill Memorial in London, but also those Swedes who are buried at home in their new countries. You also must sort out those who for example has ´sweden´ as a word in their address, like ´Sweden Grove´ or ´Sweden Street´ in Liverpool, UK.

I then continued to search among those casualty cards that you can find in some archives. I started to search in Library and Archives Canada, among their circumstances of death collection. They are sorted in alphabetical order, but only to the letter S, as the other parts have been destroyed of some reason. I then must search through their other search engine in the same archive, but then get all those who fought, even those who survived.

I then start to find the common Swedish names like Anderson, Svenson, Johansson and so on, but of course I must look through all the cards to really find the others who does not have those common names but are from Sweden as well. It is a huge work, but remarkably interesting at the same time.

One key word to look for in these cards is also religion, where most Scandinavian individuals were stated as Lutherans, but not everyone.

Next source to search in is the National Archives of Australia (NAA). This approach is a bit harder, but I have found a method where I use the search text ´POB Sweden´ which gives me quite a number of hits, but the results are different from time to time for some reason which makes it harder to sort it out and really find everyone you are looking for.

When searching the American archives such as the National Archives Catalogue, I also use the method of searching through casualty cards, which are also sorted in alphabetical order. I have not yet been able to find a method to search this archive by entering keywords, but here I proceed in the same way as in the Canadian archives, which is extremely time consuming, but at the same time remarkably interesting. Who said it would be easy?

Here the cards are revised gradually, when new information has been found, e.g., clearer address to Next of Kin (NOK) which helps me along the way. However, sometimes I must go through all the “Anderson” and so on, to even find those who do not have a clear NOK, to really find the ones I am looking for. Another help in this search is to look at stamps found on the cards. If it says “Over”, they are buried in the USA, and are not included in my project, even if they are Swedes. Here I have concentrated on those who were born in Sweden and had or have relatives left in Sweden.

When I search for swedes who fought for Great Britain, I use Ancestry which gives me some names to look through, but they are quite few. As I mentioned earlier, I think those individuals already lived in GB when they went out on the battlefields. I will try to find another angle of approach and search for those again, to see if the results reflect how it was, or if there is more information out there.

I have also tried to investigate the German Archives, as well as the French. I have also investigated German Volksbund archives but as we know a huge part of those archives were destroyed in second world war. It makes it harder to find swedes from that database. Those I have found, I have found through books and other literature, and then been able to search more about them from there.

When it comes to those who were fighting for France, most of the swedes were connected to the French Foreign Legion at that time. Right now, I have 16 Swedes who fought and fell at the western front for France in my database.

There are other ways to find information about swedes who fought in the Great War, like searching in old newspaper archives from especially USA and Canada. At that time, they had columns with names of those who fell in the Great War, and those findings can also lead me to individuals that I have not found before. It was through twitter I received this tip to search through old, digitized newspapers, so I am grateful for the network you build up through different types of social media these times.

Next step is to verify the information that I have about all those individuals that I have found, by finding information in other sources like unit diaries. Then you also can connect individuals to correct units and locations. Most developed archives to find diaries in are the Canadian, Australian and the British ones. There are diaries to find in the French archives as well, but as I only speak English and German besides Swedish, it is a bit harder for me to search in those archives.

It is especially important for me to verify that the swedes that I have in my project were born in Sweden. I do this through the eminent Swedish archive Riksarkivet. In this archive I also find a lot more information about where and how they lived, how they moved around and finally when they emigrated. This will later be the source when developing my guidebook, whenever that is finished.

The Great Challenge

The most challenging part of my research is to find the correct individuals in the archives, due to that they changed their names for some reason when they emigrated to their new countries. Anders became Andrew, Johan became John, Carl became Charlie and so on. Gustaf becomes often Gust. At least it seems to be consistent. Due to that it takes time to really find the correct individual in the Swedish archives especially when they call themselves Andrew Johnson, that can be Anders Jonsson, Jönsson, Johansson, Jansson and so on. Quite common names at that time, and still are, in Sweden. I have now learned how to search with these parameters in mind.

The Scandinavian countries often use the same surnames and common names in both Sweden, Norway and Denmark is Olson, that becomes Olsen in Norway and Denmark. Common forenames in these times in Sweden were Arthur and Alfred, but it does not mean that you have found a Swede if you find Arthur Anderson, it was also quite common names in UK at that time, and maybe further back related to Sweden?

Putting the pieces together

When I put things together in documents and in geographical tools such as Google Earth Project, I can see that some patterns occur, for example Swedes who fought for Canada seems to have been in the area of Lens in France, and they fell during specific periods which makes me able to draw conclusions that I did not see before, when the information just were there by itself. That makes it possible to look deeper into specific things and develop new conclusions.

It is also possible to group information together such as those Swedes who fought in the Meuse Argonne Offensive that makes it possible to do a specific research about that.

The project continues.

The next step after my fact-finding phase is to travel down to the battlefields to visit those places where the individuals fell and are buried, take photos of the places, to make the project complete as it was thought in the beginning.

At this moment, february 2021, I am working with about 195 swedes that are born in Sweden and right now 164 of those are found in church books in the Swedish archives.

I am sure this project will continue for a long time as this piece of history is a kind of forgotten part in Swedish history as we tend to focus more on the second world war and the specific history connected to 16^th century and our battles against Denmark and Germany, which are important as well of course.

Even if we as a country did not participate in either first or second world war, we had citizens from our country who ended up in those hard battles, either for their new country or for the cause they believed in at that time, or a combination of both.

I have as a person decided to take the role, to emphasize what our Swedish ancestors did back at this time, in the fighting within the Great War, at the Western Front. We will remember them.

Photo sources:

Picture 1 – Authors private photo

Picture 2 – Library and Archives Canada https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/

Picture 3 – National Archives of Australia https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/

Picture 4 – National Archives https://catalog.archives.gov

Picture 5 – https://www.memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr

Picture 6,7 – National Archives https://catalog.archives.gov

Picture 8 – Riksarkivet https://sok.riksarkivet.se/