CHAPTER 11
The Scandinavian Diggers
Foreign-born soldiers in the Australian Imperial Force, 1914–19181
Kolding, Denmark, 20 July, 1915. … It is with deep regret that we have received a message from [the] High Commissioner’s Offices 72 Victoria Street Westminster London S.W. dated 29th June, that our son, E[dvard] J. M. Anderson, No.752 B. Company 4. Battalion AIF Egypt, is [sic] killed at the Dardanelles in the middle of June. I would respectfully request that all my son’s belongings of which he was possessed at his death be forwarded me, his watch and everything he had. These articles will be our only memories of our oldest son. … I am, yours obediently, A. M. Andersen, Fabrikant, Bella-Vista, Kolding, Danmark.2
The quote is taken from one of several letters written to the Australian authorities by Edvard Andersen’s father, as he searched for more information regarding the death of his son at Gallipoli in 1915.3 The young Edvard had gone to Australia from America searching for work in 1899, having ‘no clothing other than that which he stood in and his boots were of his feet’, as a fellow Dane described him.4 He soon found work as a labourer in New South Wales, but when war was declared in August 1914 he joined the Australian expeditionary force and was part of the Allied landings at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. He was reported killed in action ten days later, but his final resting place remains unknown, as his body was never recovered from the battlefield. Today he is remembered on the Lone Pine memorial at Gallipoli alongside 4,900 other missing soldiers from Australia and New Zealand.5
The story of Edvard Andersen is not unique and it exemplifies the war experiences of thousands of emigrated Scandinavians who fought in the armed forces of a newly adopted country during the First World War. A cursory search reveals the existence of large contingents of Scandinavian immigrants in the armies of Canada, the US, and the UK in addition to smaller groups in France, Germany, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand.6 Who were these men, why did they enlist, and what did they experience as foreign-born soldiers in a war that was so bound up with exclusive nationalism? This chapter intends to explore these questions using a case study of around 1,100 first-generation Scandinavian immigrants who served in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) between 1914 and 1919.
In Scandinavia, migrants have traditionally been understood as people who left their homeland in order to settle permanently in another part of the world.7 For thousands of families this story rings true and much research has been devoted to the subject. There was, however, another large group that emigrated from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden with no firm plan of settling permanently abroad. This group of young, single Scandinavian men who left their families to travel the world in search of employment throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries often came from an impoverished background, having received little or no education, and their gateway to the world was a career as a sailor. The large merchant fleets of the three Scandinavian countries acted as an international superhighway, allowing crews to travel and reach almost any corner of the world. The places they visited offered many alluring opportunities, which encouraged them to leave their ship, legally or illegally, in order to explore. They became immigrants in a new country, finding temporary employment doing a variety of menial tasks in various industries. Their status as immigrants could often be of a temporary nature, however. A slump in the local economic climate, the prospect of other lucrative offers, or personal choice might easily make these single men move on and seek out a new country. At the outbreak of war in 1914, however, the choices for these transient Scandinavian men became severely restricted, as sea travel became both more limited and dangerous.
Foreigners in Australia at the outbreak of war
The Commonwealth of Australia entered the war on 4 August 1914, with Prime Minister Andrew Fisher affirming the dominion’s determination to ‘stand beside the mother country’ and ‘defend her to our last man and our last shilling’.8 These were sentiments that resonated well in a society primarily consisting of British-Australians and dominated by a public discourse of loyalty to Great Britain and the Empire. ‘A spirit of imperial enthusiasm’ was sweeping through the Commonwealth, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, as Victoria Barracks in Sydney and other recruiting offices across the country were inundated with offers from Australians eager to enlist for military service.9 These displays of enthusiasm and outbursts of jingoism, however, were counterbalanced by less noticeable expressions of concern, pessimism, scepticism, and down-right opposition to the war in some layers of Australian society.10 Even The Argus, a conservative and pro-imperialist newspaper, observed that there was little enthusiasm and more ‘strained expectancy’ among the crowds that waited on news about the war outside its offices in Melbourne.11
The Australian society that entered the war in 1914 was not a united one, as labour troubles and racial and class conflicts had caused deep and bitter divisions in the only recently unified Commonwealth.12 There were many and complex reasons for these confrontations, but a contributing factor was a sharp increase in non-British immigration to the continent. Australia had traditionally been the destination for migrants from the British Isles, and their descendants dominated all sectors of public life from politics, the military, and the Church to newspapers. This state of affairs was then challenged by an influx of non-British immigrants towards the latter half of the nineteenth century. Scandinavians belonged to this increased inflow, but comprised only a small fraction of the total number, as only 14,806 first-generation Scandinavians were registered in 1911.13
Australian immigration statistics reveal the transitory nature of the Scandinavians presence. While some 6,000 Scandinavians arrived in Australia between 1913 and 1917, more than 5,000 left the continent in the same period. In other words, it would seem that few Scandinavians were actually settling permanently, and that most stayed for a while before moving on to other parts of the world. The story of Jens Edvard Valdemar Karl Ingvarson, or Jack Ingvarson as he was to be known, typifies the arrival story of many Scandinavian immigrants. Ingvarson, a Danish sailor, came to Fremantle from Montevideo in 1913, working on a ship carrying sand and stone. Unable to sell their cargo in Australia and with dissatisfaction mounting among the crew, Ingvarson jumped ship at the first opportunity. He found work on a local farm where he lived until he enlisted in 1915.14 Not everyone found employment as quickly as Ingvarson, and working conditions could be far from easy for immigrants. Western Australia, for example, had seen the arrival of many Scandinavian immigrants attempting to profit from the gold rushes at the end of the nineteenth century. By the early 1900s the slum quarters of Perth and Fremantle were growing rapidly.15 Conditions were not much better in other states, a common feature of all frontier societies. In 1910, the Danish and Swedish authorities went so far as to publicly warn their citizens from travelling to Australia in search of work, as the risk of failure and impoverishment was overwhelming.16
The arrival of these new immigrant groups were causing the composition of Australian society to change, albeit slowly, and challenging, in the eyes of homogenous Anglo-Australians, the natural order. This perceived challenge by the ‘foreigner’, matched with expressions of imperialism and loyalty to Britain, strengthened the public discourse of insiders and outsiders. The traditionally close political, cultural, and economic ties with Britain became important to all layers of British-Australian society and resulted in an abiding suspicion of those non-British immigrants who failed to do the same. Times of crisis, such as the Second Boer War (1899–1901), and the Commonwealth’s physical distance from the mother country contributed to increased suspicion of the ‘foreigner’, for Australians considered themselves an isolated outpost of the British Empire in danger of being invaded.17 These fears were often turned into hostility towards specific ethnic groups, especially those of German, Russian, and Eastern European descent, and Scandinavians, who could be mistaken for belonging to such groups, were made to feel the rising level of distrust towards outsiders.
The outbreak of war only accentuated existing attitudes towards the ‘foreigner’. First-generation German, Austrian, and Italian immigrants were forced to register with the authorities, and thousands of them were placed in internment camps for the duration of the war.18 Other non-naturalized citizens had to register and were required to carry a certificate of registration to prove that they could legally stay in Australia. Being classified as a ‘friendly alien’ did not shield Scandinavians from harassment and suspicion, however. The ‘spy mania’ that gripped most European countries found its way to Australia, and the authorities in all six states received information from concerned citizens about suspect activity among ‘foreigners’.19 Scandinavians were frequently mistaken for Germans and did not escape persecution. A Dane by the name of Charles Duus complained to The Argus of having been accused of being ‘a German spy’ and threatened with ‘immediate personal injury’.20 The Scandinavian newspaper Norden was made to feel the rising hostility against anything non-British when copies of the paper had to be submitted to military censors, and there were demands for it to be printed in English only. It was not until the editor informed the authorities that he had two sons at the front that permission to continue to use the Scandinavian languages was granted.21 Among the immigrants there was an increased reluctance to use their native tongues, and there was a significant shift towards the use of English among Scandinavians during the war years.22 The distrust of ‘foreigners’ extended to employment, as immigrants found fewer opportunities in a deteriorating Australian economy.
Australia’s dependence on trade with Britain and the rest of Europe was exposed as a colossal disadvantage at the outbreak of war in 1914, and caused a minor collapse in the colony’s economy. National unemployment leapt from 5.7 per cent to 11.0 per cent in the last six months of 1914.23 Many of the Scandinavians who had settled faced hardship, but this paled in comparison to the challenges confronting the transitory and unskilled immigrants. With no permanent residency, a lack of connections to immigrant communities, and deficient language skills, they were hit extra hard by the recession, as they were met with the added challenge of many businesses being less than eager to hire ‘suspect foreigners’.
There are few clues to the motives for enlistment among the Scandinavians. There were certainly those who displayed an eagerness to defeat Germany, especially among the Danish immigrants who had historical reasons for wanting to join the fight. ‘God Bless England’ was the title of a letter published in one newspaper, written by a Dane who had been born in Holstein while it was still part of Denmark. ‘The terrible atrocities’ that were now being inflicted by Germany on the rest of Europe filled him with ‘horror and loathing, and must be punished’.24 Sentiments of this kind were, however, primarily confined to those Scandinavians who had settled permanently in Australia. For the transitory immigrants the evidence is sketchier, but it could be argued that in a society that was showing increasing hostility towards ‘foreigners’ and had rising unemployment and far fewer job opportunities for outsiders, enlistment might offer employment, adventure, and a way of proving one’s loyalty. Thus, military service would appeal especially to transient Scandinavians who lacked sufficient language skills, personal contacts, and cultural understanding to navigate the challenges brought by war.
Enlisting for service in the AIF
The Australian military contribution to the war was to be organized as an expeditionary force called the Australian Imperial Force. It was entirely a volunteer force, and the authorities had few difficulties in recruiting in the early stages of the war, as thousands of Australians rushed to enlist. At the end of 1914, more than 50,000 thousand men had enlisted in the AIF and by war’s end more than 400,000 soldiers had been recruited.25 This was an extraordinary number when one considers that the Australian population numbered only 5 million people. In fact, it turned out to be the highest ratio of soldiers per head of population within the British Empire.26 Among these volunteers were about 1,100 Scandinavian immigrants, a number that pales into insignificance next to the overall numbers. Yet it is still a significant number when seen from the perspective of the size of the Scandinavian immigrant population in Australia, which in 1911 was close to 15,000.27 Scandinavians in Australia did not enlist en masse, nor were there, as in Canada, separate battalions in which Scandinavians could serve together.28 Instead, they enlisted alone or in the company of a few friends.
The scene recounted in the Sydney Morning Herald at a local recruiting office in 1915 is probably representative of the way in which many Scandinavians joined the AIF.
Three Scandinavians, big and blonde, wanted to join the forces. They were all sailors, and had their discharges with them. They were told that they would have to go and get naturalised before they could offer their services. This seemed to dampen their ardour for a moment, then, as soon as the recruiting sergeant told them that if they brought up their papers they would be taken on, they were immensely pleased, because the recruiting sergeant told them that they were just the class of men wanted.29
The paper could inform its readers the next day that ‘these fine men were among the first batch … and proudly produced their papers to show that they had thrown in their lot with the Australians.’30 It has not been possible to ascertain the motives of the Scandinavian recruits, but economic depression, unemployment, and stigmatization of the ‘foreigner’ were all factors that are likely to have played an important role in their choice to enlist. An effective propaganda campaign directed at encouraging specific groups in society to enlist must also be considered a prime reason for Scandinavian recruitment. Scandinavian men who were married and settled might have escaped these recruitment drives, but single men became a favourite target of several official and unofficial recruitment campaigns. Privately initiated ‘patriotic groups’, such as the All-British Association in Western Australia, exerted pressure through public meetings in order to shame single men into service.31 On an official level, several spectacular recruitment marches were organized, receiving much attention in the press. One such march was the ‘Kangaroo march’ from Wagga Wagga to Sydney in December 1915.32 An unknown young Norwegian joined the march during its stop in Binalong, where the Kangaroo marchers had paraded through town with school children forming an honour guard and ‘singing patriotic songs’.33 Single, ‘foreign’, civilian males were thus coming under increased pressure to enlist, and would have presented an obvious target for such marches.
FIGURE 1: Kangaroo marchers on their way to Sydney, 1915. (Australian War Memorial)
While there were many motives for enlistment in the AIF, the act was in itself clearly construed as the ultimate test of loyalty to Australia, as seen in the case of the Norden editor. Enlistment, however, required British citizenship, and for many volunteers who had lived in Australia for any length of time it meant renouncing their Scandinavian citizenship. The outbreak of war and the wish to enlist seem to have forced many into becoming naturalized citizens, especially among the single Scandinavians, who might otherwise have preferred to retain their Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish citizenship. The rising demand for fresh troops during the recruitment crisis of 1916 and 1917 led the Australian authorities to relax their stand on the need for naturalization, which meant that friendly aliens such as Scandinavians were allowed to enlist before they had become British citizens.34 This change in recruitment policy was reflected in the numerous declarations written by consulates of all three Scandinavian countries, which furnished volunteers with confirmation of their Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish citizenship and that there were no apparent reservations on the part of the Scandinavian authorities to their enlistment for military service in the AIF. This latter statement, at least in the case of Norwegian volunteers, echoed a similar official sanction for those volunteering for the French Foreign Legion, which had allowed several hundred Norwegians to serve in the French forces.35
Their service records reveals that most Scandinavian volunteers fell into a grey area when it came to their national identity, something mirrored in the various bonds retained with Scandinavia. The name of a parent or sibling still residing in Scandinavia was often listed as next of kin or as beneficiaries in wills, and gives further evidence to their status as temporary residents in Australia with no large personal network. While there were some recruits who clearly had settled in Australia, often giving the name of a wife, they were in the minority. The records also paint a detailed socioeconomic picture of the Scandinavian volunteers, and lends support to claims that the majority were unskilled, transitory workers, often with experience of the merchant fleet. ‘Lumper’, ‘miner’, ‘sheet metalworker’, ‘railway packer’ and ‘labourer’ are just a few of the occupations listed, and medical examinations give further evidence of the number of former sailors, as the documentation on ‘Distinctive Marks’ often was filled with detailed descriptions of numerous tattoos.36
Having been accepted for service there is little evidence of Scandinavians being ill-treated or harassed because of their origins. That said, there are a handful of examples of soldiers being discharged from duty due to language difficulties. A Norwegian, Hans Johnson, had lived for some time in Australia and was a naturalized citizen when he enlisted in 1915, but was treated with ‘suspicion’ and became the subject of a ‘certain amount of persecution’ by his fellow soldiers due to his foreign accent.37 It can only be assumed that his Norwegian accent caused him to be suspected of being German. The officer in charge of the field hospital where he worked stated that the request for discharge came from Johnson himself and that he was ‘the best worker in our unit.’38 The majority of Scandinavian volunteers, however, were accepted and soon on their way to the front.
FIGURE 2: Former sailor Hans Peter Rasmussen, c. May 1915. He was killed at the Battle of the Somme in 1916. (Australian War Memorial)
Service in the AIF
The Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire was to be the first test of the newly established forces of Australia and New Zealand, which were brought together as the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). The troops made up the larger proportion of an Allied landing force whose ultimate aim was to open up a decisive Mediterranean front.39 The majority of Australian troops had been training and preparing in Egypt since the beginning of 1915, and in April that year about 21,000 ANZAC troops set sail for the peninsula.40 On Sunday 25 April, the first Australian soldiers landed on the beaches of Gallipoli and were met with fierce resistance from the Turkish defenders. The promises of an easy victory proved to be false and intense fighting continued until January 1916, at which time the invasion attempt was abandoned and the troops were evacuated. The campaign was a bloody baptism of fire for the untried Australian troops, with more than 8,000 killed and close to 18,000 wounded.41 In Australia, the news of the intense fighting and heavy casualties on the peninsula brought home the terrifying realities of modern warfare, leaving a lasting impression on the Australian society.42
The campaign saw the first casualties among the Scandinavian soldiers and the first death notifications were dispatched to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. These telegrams offered bereaved relatives some details of the death of the soldier and were often followed by a package of his personal possessions, as was the case with Danish-born Edvard Andersen already mentioned. The process of locating the relatives of a fallen soldier was often a drawn-out process, especially in the case of immigrants. Poorly maintained records, language confusion, and the anglicization of Scandinavian names often left forms illegible, which resulted in delays. Charles Syversen, a former Norwegian master mariner, was reported as missing, presumed dead, during the fighting on Gallipoli in August 1915. A ‘Charles Syversen of Horton, Norway’ was listed as his next of kin and the Australian authorities sent several inquiries to different locations in Norway through official channels before they received a satisfactory reply. The answer came from a Syver Iversen in Horten who stated that he had a son by the name of Karl Andreas Syversen who had left his family ‘for the sea’ twenty years before.43 He included the last letter the family had received from him and a picture in his reply to AIF Headquarters. The information was enough to confirm that Charles and Karl were one and the same, and a package containing a felt hat, a shaving brush, and a hairbrush could be returned to his family. At least another ten Scandinavian soldiers were killed and an unknown number injured during the campaign before the last troops were finally evacuated from Gallipoli in early January 1916, bringing to an end the first major military operation by Australian troops.
FIGURE 3: The advice of delivery slip that accompanied the package of Lauritz Hojem’s personal effects, signed by his mother in Vadsø.
The Gallipoli Campaign had drained the AIF of soldiers, but fresh replacements were already being trained to join the rest of the Australian troops who had been sent to fight in France. The enlistment papers show that Scandinavians were joining the AIF at an ever-increasing rate after Gallipoli. These new recruits entered service in 1916 and 1917, as Australian forces took part in some of the bloodiest engagements of the war. All this constant action exacted a heavy toll on the Australian forces and led to concerns about Australia’s ability to find enough fresh troops for service. The Imperial High Command threatened to amalgamate Australian units with existing British regiments if not enough recruits were found. The shortage of recruits led the Australian government to contemplate the introduction of conscription, and two plebiscites were held on the issue, one in 1916 and another in 1917.44 The result in both was no, but the ferocious debates between the ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ campaigns strengthened the hostility and suspicion among Anglo-Australians towards the ‘foreigner’.45
War exhaustion began to tell, putting a strain on the troops themselves, and casualty rates climbed at an alarming rate. Louise Drange, a Gallipoli veteran, was wounded a second time in August 1916, as Australian units attempted to gain an advantage at Pozières in the Somme valley. A letter was sent by the Australian authorities to his father in Bergen that he was ‘lying seriously ill at the 13th Stationary Hospital, Boulogne’.46 This letter was probably the last sign of life that his family received from him. Louise recovered from his wound and was discharged back to Australia in 1917. An inquiry sent by the Norwegian Consulate on behalf of his father in 1924 returned no answer as to his whereabouts, which indicates that they had lost touch in the meantime. The Scandinavian consulates in Australia were not the only ones to handle communications between the Australian authorities and soldiers’ relatives, as similar services were provided by the consulates in London. Waldemar Eckell, a secretary at the Norwegian consulate, handled the death notifications of several Norwegian soldiers and attempted to help in locating relatives back in Norway.47
In the wake of the heavy fighting of 1916–17, packages similar to those of the soldiers killed at Gallipoli were delivered throughout Scandinavia and charted a horrific map of the many battles that the Scandinavian soldiers fought in. In early October 1917, the Australians were part of the attacks at Passchendaele, a battle that was made all the more difficult by the muddy fields through which the soldiers had to advance. Johannes Rostgaard Rasmussen had arrived in Belgium only a month before the attack. He was reported missing, presumed killed, on 13 October. In his will he stated that all his personal belongings were to go to his sister in Denmark, but the Australian authorities were unable to locate her. Two years later, the Danish Consulate in Melbourne was still making inquiries with regards to the state of his case.48 These scenes were repeated throughout the years of 1916 and 1917, as Allied forces attempted to break the deadlock on the Western Front. Many Scandinavians took part in these attacks and a heavy toll was inflicted on those who survived the fighting, both physically and psychologically. Kristian Engstrom, from Uppsala, arrived in France in late November 1916 and was part of the Australian raids on German trenches during the harsh winter of 1916–17. In early January 1917, he was admitted to hospital ‘suffering from shell shock, classed as Battle casualty’ and later discharged back to Australia in November.49
The Scandinavians serving with Australian units continued to see heavy action in 1918 as Allied forces attempted to gain an advantage. While private anguish followed in the wake of this fighting, as a new wave of death notifications reached Scandinavia, the last year of the war also witnessed the first Scandinavian newspaper articles about the volunteers.50 These stories were only a small part of a broader narrative of battlefield experiences articulated by the larger community of expatriate Scandinavians, finding its way home as information started to flow with greater ease between Scandinavian countries and the rest of the world towards the end of the war.51 In Norway, the growing realization among government officials of the participation of its own citizens in the war prompted an official response, as the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs published guidelines on how widows and families could claim compensation from the Australian authorities.52
Going home
On the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 an armistice came into effect between the Allies and Germany. The exact number of Scandinavians killed and wounded remains to be determined, but their casualty rates were probably little different from the rest of the AIF. The final tally for Australia was 215,585 killed or wounded—a casualty rate of 64.98 per cent, the highest of any Imperial contingent.53 The surviving Australian troops, the majority stationed in Europe, were demobilized, but due to the large number of soldiers this process would take time and many of them remained stationed in Europe throughout 1918–19. Scandinavian soldiers who did not immediately return home to Australia were granted special dispensation to visit family and friends in their home countries. Hjalmar Nilsen, a former Norwegian sailor, was granted leave to visit his family in Fredrikshald in December 1919.54 While some soldiers decided return to their home country, the majority of the Scandinavian soldiers, however, seem initially to have returned to Australia, although the transient nature of their lives was again to manifest itself after demobilization, as a number of them seem to have immigrated to other parts of the world in the years after 1919.
Australian society, like many others, struggled to give sufficient aid to returning soldiers. Many soldiers were still recovering from their wounds and deeply traumatized by their war experiences. Their war pensions were insufficient to live on, and work was difficult to find for those with permanent injuries, as even trade unions were reluctant to hire disabled ex-servicemen.55 The psychological effects of the war were also emerging and different forms of substance abuse became a form of escape for many soldiers, including some Scandinavians. Jørgen Christian Jensen was one of them. He had led an attack on a sheltered German machine gun defended by forty-five enemy soldiers in 1917 and been awarded the Victoria Cross, promoted to sergeant, and become a celebrated hero.56 Later the same year he was seriously wounded, receiving a gunshot to the head, and spent the remainder of the war in a series of hospitals.57 The experiences of the war seem to have haunted him after his return home to Australia and he became an alcoholic.58 He died a few years after his return in 1922, aged only 31.59 Cases of ‘shell-shock’ and similar disorders were found among other returned Scandinavians, such as Sigurd Christoffersen who continued to suffer from his war experiences after 1918 and was admitted to Callan Park Mental Hospital, Sydney, which was known for its treatment of ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers.60 Only a few months later he died, probably as a result of what would today be considered posttraumatic stress disorder. Arthur Butler concluded in his official history of the Australian Medical Services that the problem of a ‘nervous breakdown … is only 20 per cent. a war problem and 80 per cent. a problem of war’s aftermath’.61 Recognition of these forms of casualty was only emerging at the end of the First World War and treatment was often rudimentary.
When the war was over, the search for missing Scandinavian soldiers continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In 1921, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a list in Aftenposten of the names of several fallen AIF soldiers whose Norwegian relatives had not been traced.62 One of the last requests for information regarding missing soldiers was lodged with the Australian Military Headquarters in Melbourne as late as 1939.63 Requests made their way through a host of different channels ranging from the Salvation Army to incidental encounters. In 1933, an Australian timber merchant informed the authorities of his recent visit to Norway where he had met ‘an old lady who was anxiously enquiring about her son, who had immigrated to Australia some years before the war’.64 The woman’s son had enlisted in the AIF in 1917, but a German gas attack in the closing months of the war had left him with serious injuries. He had visited his mother in Norway while convalescing in Britain, but there seems to have been no further contact between them after 1919.
The Scandinavian foreign ministries acted as hubs in most of these cases, relaying information between relatives and the Australian authorities in a number of different ways. These searches were often made difficult due to the fact that several returned soldiers had returned to their pre-war profession as sailors. Erling Pedersen lodged an inquiry with the Norwegian authorities with regards to the whereabouts of his brother, Alfred Pedersen, who was presumed to have served in the AIF. The Norwegian Consulate General was able to identify him as a returned soldier, but a permanent address was not forthcoming since ‘he follows the occupation of a seaman [and] it would be very difficult to trace his whereabouts at the present time’.65 While a number of enquiries were sent to Australia, there was also many sent from Australia, as the military authorities attempted to trace the next of kin of the fallen. Incomplete or out-of-date information made the task difficult, however, and cases accumulated in the archives of the Scandinavian foreign ministries as a testament to the challenges.
Conclusions
In this chapter it has only been possible to scratch the surface of the topic of Scandinavian immigrants who served in the First World War. However, by exploring the experiences of the Scandinavian AIF soldiers before, during, and after the war, it is possible to offer some reflections on who they were, why they enlisted, and what they experienced during the war.
From their attestation papers it seems clear the Scandinavian immigrants who served in the AIF can be divided into two groups: those who had chosen to settle permanently in Australia, and those for whom Australia was a port of call. The majority of AIF Scandinavians belonged to the latter group of transient immigrants—single men, with little or no education, who used the global reach of the merchant fleets to traverse the world in search of employment and adventure. Australia, with its frontier economy, provided these transitory, unskilled workers a temporary stay and a host of opportunities. The geographical isolation of Australia and her society’s firm anchoring in British culture meant that loyalty to Britain and the Empire were important values and defined society’s insiders and outsiders. Increased immigration at the turn of twentieth century, combined with the perceived risk of a foreign invasion, created an atmosphere in which non-British individuals often were considered a threat. Suspicion towards ‘foreigners’ only increased at the outbreak of war in 1914, and was aided by the subsequent economic downturn, which left many transient immigrants under ever-increasing pressure to prove their loyalty. Cut off from Europe, with few personal connections, growing hostility directed at suspect ‘foreigners’, and difficulty in finding employment, Scandinavians faced a series of problems that might have prompted many of them to enlist in the Australian war effort. Hardship and opportunism are offered here as the likely explanations for military service, rather than the traditional nationalistic motives.
The war experiences of the Scandinavian volunteers seem not to have differed much from those of other AIF soldiers. What the stories of dead and missing Scandinavian soldiers do reveal, though, are the previously unknown connections between Scandinavian society and the war. The death notifications delivered to next of kin in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have made it possible to sketch a crude, incomplete map of the bonds between Scandinavian soldiers and the communities of their birth. The process of informing next of kin shows the degree of involvement by official institutions, newspapers, and private individuals in the Scandinavian countries, lending substance to the bare record and hinting at the impression they might have made. Further research should make it possible to trace more material in the form of private letters, diaries, and other personal documents to shed light on the soldiers’ direct contacts with Scandinavian society. An investigation into the cases of those granted ‘Scandinavian leave’ might offer fruitful insights and provide more tangible evidence. In the end, the history of the Scandinavian soldiers in the AIF offers additional nuances to the current narrative of Scandinavia and the First World War, and raises the question of whether it is possible to fully understand the repercussions of the First World War on Scandinavia if the war experiences of Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian expatriates are missing from the story.
Notes
1 ‘Digger’ is a generic term or nickname given to soldiers from Australia or New Zealand, similar to the British ‘Tommy Atkins’ or American ‘Doughboy’.
2 National Archives of Australia (NAA), B2455, Anderson, E. J. M., letter from A. M. Andersen to the Department of Defence, Melbourne, original translation from the Danish by the Australian military authorities: ‘Med dyb Sorg har vi modtaget Efterretning fra High Commissionaer’s Offices 72 Victoria Street Westminster, London S.W. den 29 Juni om at vor Søn E. J. Andersen, No 752 B. Compagni 4. Batalion AIF Egypt er Dræbt I Kampen ved Dardanellerne midt I Juni Maaned; jeg tillader mig høfligst at anmode Dem om at tilsende mig alt der har tilhørd min Søn jeg beder Dem spesielt hvis det er Dem muligt at sende mig alt han var i Bsidelse av ved hans Død, hans Uhr. samd alle hans Efterladenskaber, som for os er et kært Minde om vor kære ældste Søn … Erbødigst A. M. Andersen, Fabrikant, Bella-Vista, Kolding, Danmark’ (I have kept given names and surnames as they appear in the original material).
3 His father received two packages containing personal belongings, but the watch was never found.
4 NAA, B2455, Anderson, E. J. M., letter from Hans Martin Sørensen to Officer-in-Charge, Base Records, 17 May 1920; A1, 1914/10125, Edward Jorgen Martin Anderson, Naturalization.
5 NAA, B2455, Anderson, E. J. M., Casualty Form—Active Service.
6 For examples of Scandinavians in the Canadian services, see Aftenposten, 11 June 1917; for the American case, see Aftenposten, 7 July 1920.
7 On Scandinavian migration, see Leslie Moch, Moving Europeans: migration in Western Europe since 1650, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992; Ingrid Semmingsen, Norway to America: a history of the migration, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1978.
8 Charles W. E. Bean, The Official history of Australia in the war of 1914–1918, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1938, 16.
9 Sydney Morning Herald, 6 August 1914.
10 Bobbie Oliver, War and peace in Western Australia : the social and political impact of the Great War, 1914–1926, Nedlands, W.A., University of Western Australia Press, 1995; James Bennett, Rats and revolutionaries: the labour movement in Australia and New Zealand 1890–1940, Dunedin, University of Otago Press, 2003.
11 The Argus, 6 August 1914.
12 The Commonwealth of Australia was created in 1901 by federation of the six colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania, see Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia: Vol. 4, 1902–1942 the Succeeding Age, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, 45.
13 Olavi Koivukangas and John Stanley Martin, The Scandinavians in Australia, Melbourne, AE Press, 1986, 110.
14 Koivukangas and Martin, 146–147.
15 Oliver, 39.
16 The Brisbane Courier, 10 February 1910.
17 John Williams, German Anzacs and the First World War, Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2003, 19; Neville Meaney, A history of Australian defence and foreign policy, 1901-23, Sydney, Sydney University Press, 2009.
18 Similar actions were taken in Canada and the US.
19 For ‘spy mania’, see Nik. Brandal & Ola Teige and Claes Ahlund in this volume.
20 The Argus, 21 January 1916.
21 Koivukangas and Martin, 138.
22 Koivukangas and Martin, 113.
23 Raymond Evans, Loyalty and disloyalty: social conflict on the Queensland homefront, 1914-18, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1987, 23.
24 The Advertiser, 20 May 1915.
25 Bean, 871–72.
26 Jeffrey Grey, A military history of Australia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, 120.
27 Koivukangas and Martin, 110.
28 In Canada, Endre J. Cleven, from Skudenes, organized the 197th battalion ‘The Vikings of Canada’ as part of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), but Scandinavians were found throughout the battalions of the CEF; for expressions of Danish identity within the German army, see Claus Bundgård Christensen in the present volume.
29 Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 1915.
30 Sydney Morning Herald, 17 June 1915.
31 Oliver, 72.
32 Sherry Morris and Harold Fife, The Kangaroo March: from Wagga Wagga to the Western Front, Wagga Wagga N.S.W., S. Morris, 2006.
33 Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 1915.
34 Western Argus, 26 June 1917; however, ‘aboriginal natives’ were still not allowed to serve in the AIF.
35 Newspaper reports of Norwegian volunteers serving with the French Foreign Legion had already begun to appear in August 1914 (see Aftenposten, 15 August 1914).
36 See for example, NAA, B2455, Berentsen, Anton Severin.
37 NAA, B2455, Johnson, Hans, letter from O.C. Field Hospital to Head Quarters, 29 September 1915.
38 NAA, B2455, Johnson, Hans.
39 The campaign is often considered, in the popular mind, to be a purely ANZAC endeavour, but some 40,000 troops from Britain and France also took part.
40 Michael McKernan, Australia, two Centuries of war & peace, Australian War Memorial, Canberra in association with Allen & Unwin, Australia, 1988, 160.
41 Great Britain, War Office, Statistics of the military effort of the British Empire during the great war, 1914–1920, London, H.M. Stationery Office, [1922].
42 25 April is a national day of remembrance in both Australia and New Zealand, akin to Remembrance Day in Europe.
43 NAA, B2455, Syversen, Charles.
44 Frederick Perry, The Commonwealth armies: manpower and organisation in two world wars, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1988, 156; Grey, 112–114.
45 On the eve of the first referendum in 1916 a crowd of 2,000 civilians and soldiers destroyed several Greek-owned businesses in Perth, see Oliver, 103.
46 NAA, B2455, Drange, L., letter from Royal Norwegian Consulate to the Officer-in-charge, Base Records, Victoria Barracks, Melbourne, 6 March 1924.
47 See, for example, NAA B2455, Pedersen, Nils Christian.
48 NAA, B2455, Rasmussen, Johannes Rostgaard.
49 NAA, B2455, Engstrom, Kristian.
50 For Norwegian examples, see Aftenposten, 1 and 15 August 1918.
51 Eirik Brazier, ‘The Search for a Norwegian Identity in the Trenches, in Conflict in Memory: Interpersonal and Intergenerational Remembering of War. Conflict and Transition’, paper given at the Matchpoints Seminar, 10–12 May 2012, Aarhus University, Denmark.
52 Aftenposten, 6 June 1918.
53 Arthur G. Butler, The Australian army medical services in the war of 1914– 1918, Melbourne, Australian War Memorial, 1938, 56.
54 NAA, B2455, Nilsen, Hjalmar.
55 Evans, 110.
56 NAA, B2455, Jensen, Jorgan Christian.
57 NAA, B2455, Jensen, Jorgan Christian.
58 Koivukangas and Martin, 112.
59 The Advertiser, 1 June 1922.
60 NAA, B2455, Christoffersen, Sigurd.
61 Butler, 142.
62 Aftenposten, 17 November 1921.
63 NAA, B2455, Johnsen, Peter.
64 NAA, B2455, Larsen, Bernhard Johan.
65 NAA, B2455, Pedersen, Alfred, letter from Officer-in-Charge of Base Records to The Norwegian Consul General, 25 July 1921.