CHAPTER 12
The horse field ambulance in Tampere in 1918
Swedish Red Star women and the Finnish Civil War
During the Finnish Civil War, a group of women volunteers from the Swedish Red Star animal relief organization helped set up and run a field ambulance—a mobile field hospital—for military horses in Tampere, behind White lines. Primary source material that shows women’s participation in war is a rare occurrence. Even in modern times, when the issue of women’s agency in armed conflict has been studied more thoroughly, sources that deal specifically with women in the theatre of war are not exactly abundant.1 It is for this reason the journal kept by the Swedish veterinary orderly Stina Linderdahl during the Finnish Civil War, the records of the Swedish Red Star field ambulance in Tampere, and the articles written by Linderdahl’s colleague Signe Fryberg for the conservative daily newspapers in Stockholm in the spring of 1918 are so important in fully understanding both Swedish support for the Whites in the Finnish Civil War and, more specifically, the contribution made by women. Both Linderdahl and Fryberg worked at the Tampere horse field ambulance from April to June 1918, and their own accounts and the hospital’s records are the chief sources used here.2
In view of the fact that the red star even then was strongly connected to the imagery of the Russian Revolution, it is important to note that the name of the Swedish animal welfare organization was chosen in 1917 to echo that of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and also to demonstrate its affiliation with L’Étoile Rouge, the international organization that had been founded in 1914 to bring together the various national equine relief organizations. In 1941 the Swedish Red Star changed its name to the Swedish Blue Star.3
Finland in 1918
Finland’s short and bloody civil war, which began by the end of January 1918 when Russia was still a combatant in the First World War, was a consequence of the continuing war. The Russian Revolution had been triggered by the chain reaction to the Russian losses against Germany, and the rising chaos of Tsarist Russia contributed to the escalation of the military conflict in the Grand Duchy of Finland, then part of the Russian Empire. Other contributing factors were the struggles between the workers’ movement and the conservative Establishment during a period of soaring unemployment, poverty, and starvation.4
Once the Russian Revolution had begun, the Russian Empire effectively collapsed, while the troops that had belonged to the Tsarist army remained in Finland. Before the outbreak of Finnish Civil War, Finland’s conservative ‘Whites’ had started recruiting volunteers for various local militia groups (the so-called Protection Corps, or White Guard), while the radical wing of the Social Democrats set about forming the ‘Red Guards’. The Whites drew their support from trade, industry, and agriculture, the Reds from workers and crofters. During the strikes and unrest in Finland in the summer of 1917, an arms race developed between the Whites and the Reds, while the Finnish declaration of independence on 6 December 1917 was a result of bourgeois, right-wing fears that the Russian Revolution would spread into Finland. When the Bolshevik government agreed to Finnish independence in late 1917 it was indeed to speed up the revolution in the country. In the middle of January 1918, the Finnish Senate (the government) decided to reinforce law and order using the White Guard. The Reds interpreted this as an attempt to halt the revolution; even the reformist Social Democrats saw confrontation as the only solution, according to the Finnish historian Henrik Meinander, as it was known that the Whites could expect military support from Germany. At the beginning of April 1918, German troops arrived in the south of Finland and by the end of April it was clear that the Whites had won the Civil War. In May, the White Finnish general Gustaf Mannerheim held a victory parade in Helsinki.5 Meinander has calculated that the total number of dead in the Civil War came to 38,500, of whom some 11,000 were killed in the actual fighting. Immediately after the war at least 11,800 people were killed by the Whites, while 80,000 were placed in camps where 13,500 died from hunger and disease.6
Compulsory military service, which was introduced by law in February, provided the White army with crucial reinforcements; by contrast, only a small number of Russian troops took part on the Red side (approximately 10,000 out of 75,000 soldiers, and of these 10,000 only a minor group actually took part in the fighting), a fact compounded by the separate peace negotiations between Germany and Russia in Brest-Litovsk in March 1918, when the Russians agreed to evacuate their troops from Finland and stop all propaganda against the Finnish government.7
Historians such as Heikki Ylikangas and Aapo Roselius have pointed out that the Finnish Civil War to a great degree was prompted by a determination to rout Finland’s workers’ movement.8 Further, it had been embarked on in the expectation of a German expansion eastwards. After the expected collapse of the Russian Revolution, the victors of the Finnish Civil War were planning to expand the borders of Finland to include East Karelia. The understanding was that this would be under political subordination to Germany, including the election of a German prince as king of Finland. When Germany was defeated in the First World War, this plan was scrapped along with the Whites’ loyalty to Germany. In the newly Entente-friendly Finland, now also a buffer zone against Communist Russia, general elections were held in 1919 and reforms passed: crofters were given some land rights, and compulsory school attendance was introduced, along with freedom of expression and religion. In 1919 the Social Democrats were the largest party in the Eduskunta (Parliament); however, the centre parties determined policy.9
For several decades, academic circles in Finland were heavily influenced by the Whites’ view of the Civil War, which resulted in a research tradition that held it to be a struggle for liberty from Russia. Later research, mainly in the 1960s and onwards, tends to draw on other points of view, as Ylikangas has noted.10
Swedish support for the Whites in 1918
In January 1918, the Swedish organization Finlands vänner (Friends of Finland) was founded in Stockholm with the support of the Establishment and the business sector. Over a thousand Swedes, many of them career officers, NCOs, and other ranks, volunteered to fight for the white side in Finland, some in regular White units and most of them in the resultant Swedish Brigade as part of the White Guard.11 Swedish businessmen raised money for the Swedish Brigade—and also to pay for a horse field ambulance.12
The Swedish supporters of the Whites in 1918 have been described as a relatively small group who enjoyed huge influence over the press.13 Certainly, the horse field ambulance was followed with interest in the Swedish dailies. In her study of Swedish public opinion and representations of the First World War, Lina Sturfelt describes how depictions of horses as victims of war came to illustrate the war as a death machine in the Swedish press. In addition to dead soldiers, ruined churches, graveyards, and crucifixes, the images of ‘massacred, rotting, blown-up horse carcasses on the battlefields’ were used to illustrate civilian collapse.14 From the Finnish Civil War came similar reports and images.
Horses in the First World War
Despite the motorization of the military and civilian society alike during the early 1900s, horses were still very important in warfare, and were used by cavalry forces as well as for transport. The military historian Martin van Creveld has pointed out that mechanization in itself led to an increase in the transport of materiel such as artillery, and consequently to a dramatic increase in the numbers of horses needed for draught and transportation, which in turn increased the amount of fodder needed to keep the army transports moving.15 For the belligerent powers of the First World War, the conflict led to permanent shortages in the agricultural sector, compounded by the problem of finding enough horses for their armies.16
Although the Finnish Civil War was fought mainly along the railway lines, and even though the decisive battle was fought in and around the industrial city of Tampere, horses were used in large numbers, just as in the First World War in general.17 During the Civil War, the Whites raised several cavalry units, from which developed the Nyland Dragoon Regiment and the Karelian Light Cavalry Regiment—and later the Tavastland Cavalry Regiment— commanded by Jäger officers, who had been trained in Germany. The units were included in the Finnish Cavalry Brigade from 1920.18 Even in infantry regiments, horses were needed as mounts for the officers and for draught. In the Vasa Grenadier Regiment, raised by the Whites during the Civil War from Swedish-speaking volunteers from the Ostrobothnian region, a battalion of some 600 soldiers required at least 50 horses.19
Ylikangas describes a military organization where the officers rode horses and the majority of the soldiers marched on foot— and where the horses’ training did not always keep pace with arms technology. He has a vivid account of a dashing White officer on a horse in the village of Länkipohja, an important objective for the White forces bent on taking Tampere. When the Red machine gun fire started, the officer was abruptly thrown off and the horse ran off to the nearby woods with the saddle hanging under its belly. Ylikangas confirms that the Red officers also liked fine horses: ‘An impressive horse belonged to the equipment of every Red officer with any self-respect.’20 He also gives a glimpse into the situation of the horses’ civilian owners during the Civil War: as the conflict drew closer, the rural population hid their horses in barns in order to avoid them being seized by the warring parties.21
In this context, the organizing of a veterinary field hospital was important not only in order to keep military units operational through to the end of the Civil War, but also to build a functioning new army for an independent Finland. White Finland’s political projects sat well with the Swedish armed forces’ interest in military animal health care in a war situation. The Swedish Ministry of Defence and the Swedish Red Star were independently interested in collecting information about veterinary care of horses during war, and since the Swedish military did not have the capability to meet the full demand for veterinary care on the ground, volunteer organizations became a part of the Swedish mobilization plan for military veterinary services.22
Swedish patriotic women and Finland
The Swedish women volunteers and their understanding of the Finnish Civil War have been less researched than volunteers in the Swedish Brigade or Swedes in other Finnish White military units. The Swedish literature on the Finnish Civil War, consisting largely of memoirs written after the war, honours the Swedish Brigade and embraces the view that the military input of the Swedes in general was of great importance in the outcome of the conflict (a notion that has later been disputed).23
The Swedish officer corps, according to Gunnar Artéus, was at the time of the First World War noted for their conservatism, royalism, and keenness on re-armament against Russia. The military might of Germany was considered a role model to copy.24 The song of the Swedish Brigade alluded to the grand ideals and memories of the past, looking back a couple of centuries to when Finland was still part of Sweden and Sweden was regarded as a great military nation. Some groupings among Finlands vänner (Friends of Finland) nursed hopes of a Swedish–Finnish reunification—or at least a reunification of Sweden and the Finnish Åland Islands.25
As Pia Olsson has pointed out, Finnish women who actively supported the Whites during the Civil War went on to become the core of the Lotta Svärd, the voluntary auxiliary force that was founded after the Civil War.26 In 1928 the Lotta Svärd put together Vita boken (‘The White Book’), a collection of stories of the Civil War from Finnish White women, with descriptions of the Whites’ struggle for independence from Russia, firstly from the Tsarist Empire and later from the Bolsheviks. Relations with working-class and Red women were mostly cool.27
In comparison, the Swedish women who joined the volunteer organizations that served as auxiliaries to Swedish armed forces generally argued for the breaking down of boundaries between the classes and sexes, notwithstanding their conservatism as evident in their hawkishness, Russophobia, anti-liberalism, and elitism, combined with an admiration for Germany and a belief that war was inevitable and even purifying.28 The historian Charlotte Tornbjer also points to the differences between the patriotic women’s organizations such as the Red Cross, whose concerns were welfare and nursing, and the other, more ideological groups.29
The historian Madelene Lidestad has described the genesis of the Swedish Red Star in some detail. It was the voluntary association Kvinnlig Krigsberedskap (Women’s War Preparedness) that took the initiative in 1917 in founding the Swedish Red Star: similar animal relief organizations already existed in France and the UK, and it was felt that Sweden needed a similar body that could work behind the lines in wartime. A number of other organizations with similar goals joined the Swedish Red Star when it was formed. The Swedish Red Star existed to care for military horses and to nurse animals wounded in battle, and to provide stand-ins for farmers or farmhands who had been called up for military service. The new organization was part of a public sphere where state appointments and voluntary activity interfaced. Women made up the majority of its members but only a minority of its governing body, which was composed of military officers, trade and industry representatives, the director of Veterinärhögskolan (the Veterinary College of Sweden), representatives from Djurskyddsföreningen (the Swedish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), the director of Fältveterinärbyrån (the Army Veterinary Corps), as well as the women representatives.30
Research on women, gender, and war emphasizes the fact that war can both promote emancipation and reinforce traditional gender structures—the reason why the exercise of traditional gender roles in times of war can work as a strategy for women’s organizations and activists intent on positioning themselves as advantageously as possible.31 However, Lidestad points out that the process of integrating women into the war machinery could also serve to reinforce segregation, with women’s gender roles again defined so that their work could be done separately, distinct from men’s.32
Horse healthcare in Finland in 1918 was thus loaded with various meanings. One can study not only the course of the Civil War through the logistics of the Tampere horse field ambulance, but also the political (and possibly civilizing) significance of animal relief, as well as the emancipatory and gendered aspects of the Red Star movement’s activities, where the process of defining what tasks and duties women should perform as veterinary orderlies was still a matter of some debate.
The horse field ambulance in Tampere
As soon as the Finnish Civil War began, the Swedish Red Star’s central office looked into the possibilities of sending aid to Finland.33 The resultant mobile field hospital—an ambulance in the original sense of the word—was financed by contributions from the business world, sanctioned by the Swedish armed forces and the Finnish government, and coordinated by the Swedish Red Star. The budget was 30,000 kronor, equating to 570,000 kronor in today’s money, and ran to nursing equipment, stable kit, medical supplies, provisions, uniforms, and weapons and ammunition.34 Ten members of the Red Star were recruited as veterinary orderlies. Some of them had been on preparatory courses in equine nursing run by the Red Star in 1917. A blacksmith and five grooms were also employed.35 The decision regarding the field ambulance was taken on 20 March 1918, and the expedition arrived on 18 April in Tampere, which had been held by the Whites since 6 April.36
When the Whites had conquered Tampere the existing horse hospital had been destroyed, and equipment and surgical instruments were lacking. The new field ambulance was set up in an old sausage factory in the Karju area, not far from the centre of Tampere and in the vicinity of the Kalevankangas cemetery (where the Reds were buried in mass graves). At the time of arrival there were 64 horses waiting for immediate treatment and care. The Swedes had access to Red prisoners-of-war as extra hands, and work was led by two veterinary surgeons, Gerhard Forsell of the Swedish Veterinary College and Gustaf Danelius from Båstad.37
Quite apart from their wounds, the horses were generally in terrible shape when they arrived at the field ambulance.38 The demand for draught horses and the overuse of horses seen during the Civil War was nothing unusual in wartime. The average life span of a horse used in artillery regiments was ten days in Germany and Serbia. In Tampere, horses went four days and nights without food and on the fifth day received a little fodder, after which they were used until they died, according to Stina Linderdahl in her diary.39 And when the horses finally received veterinary attention, there was in particular one problem that was hard to address: starvation. It is clear from the records that even the field ambulance found it difficult to find enough fodder for its horses. The vets asked for more fodder for the horses that were completely emaciated; however, some were beyond saving, and had to be shot because of starvation, despite having spent several weeks at the ambulance.40
In an early article by a member in the Finnish Red Star (which was formed in 1918), the Russians’ care of their animals is described as having been miserable to the point of cruelty even before the Revolution.41 Yet conditions during the Finnish Civil War show that the mistreatment to army horses was not limited to any one side. A Swedish officer of the Vasa Grenadiers describes in his diary how on 18 April 1918 the Nyland Dragoons’ horses had not received fodder for three days. He had also had to put his own horse to use as a draught horse during a forced march, during which several horses died. Roughly a week later he had to shoot the horse because it had been run into the ground. He considered the smaller suomenhevonen (Finnhorse) as having superior staying power, noting that the ones he had seen were ‘wonders of strength and tenacity’.42
Apart from undernourishment, the common wounds and diseases amongst the field ambulance’s patients were various types of tack injury, bullet wounds, blast and crushing injuries, colic, and equine distemper. Unusual bullet wounds were described in more detail—a horse with a bullet wound through the nasal bone, another where the bullet grazed a vertebra without damaging the horse’s mobility—and the veterinary reports frequently note gunshot wounds to the horses’ jaws or fragments of bullets embedded in the horses’ muscles, while infected and open pressure wounds from saddles or harnesses were detailed at length.43
Between April and June 1918, 332 horses were treated, of which 220 were considered cured and 33 horses were put down. In May and June they faced an epidemic of glanders, a highly contagious disease, now rare, that attacks the respiratory mucous membranes.44 All in all 157 operations were performed at the field ambulance, and about a third of them required anaesthesia.45 For the more serious operations the staff had to lay the horses down on their sides before anaesthetizing them, a complicated procedure that demanded a high degree of cooperation and skill from the stable hands and veterinary orderlies.46 Reading the material one finds a hierarchy among the diseases. The horses with scabies were treated by the Finnish vet. The scabies stable lay in the same camp where Red prisoners-of-war were held, in the former Russian barracks nearby.47 On various occasions the Swedish vets said that they would not deal with horses with scabies at the field ambulance unless they also had war wounds. The fact that they continued to repeat this makes it clear that their priority was the treatment of horses wounded or damaged in the actual fighting. They even threatened that they would not treat any horses from units (the Nyland Dragoons and the Åbo battery) that had sent them horses with scabies, although in the event they never actually turned any away.48
Case records were kept of each horse that arrived at the ambulance, with a note of the sender, a description of the horse, the diagnosis, and sometimes even the horse’s age and race. The source material from the ambulance is on the other hand very economical with information about where the horses came from. Many were brought in from White units, and some of these horses were logged as ‘war loot’ in the ambulance’s records. It is striking just how old many of these looted horses were. On some occasions the vets pointed out to the units that brought in the horses that the documentation was unclear. Gustaf Danelius wrote in a report: ‘At the time of discharge from the horse hospital a transfer chit is sent [with the horse], and, likewise, careful attention is paid to ensure that the unit concerned receives its horses back’. He also noted that horses without a known owner would be delivered to new Remontstyrelsen (the Remount Corps).49 This did not seem to improve matters.
Some of the photographs of horses in Tampere included in Stina Linderdahl’s diary look like workhorses—sturdy Finnhorses. Photographs from the Civil War often show Red guardsmen on horseback, usually more solid horses but also on slighter ones that had probably been Russian officers’ horses previously.50 The field ambulance’s commissary, Dage Tenow, wrote in his account from 1919 that most of the horses were war loot from the Reds, who in turn had stolen them from rural farms.51 A large proportion of the horses that were described more closely in the source material were branded in various ways, indicating that they came from stud farms. Presumably these were horses that had belonged to the Russian troops who in the spring of 1918 were on their way home. In the autumn of 1917 there had been a Russian force some 100,000 strong in Finland; at the turn of the year there were only 40,000 left.52
Ylikangas reckons that perhaps as few as a thousand Russian soldiers actually took part in the fighting on the Reds’ side at the beginning of the Civil War—a tiny proportion of the Russian presence.53 It is safe to infer that there must have been any amount of Russian materiel and horses going unused, and most likely easy to come by for either side—that much was confirmed by the Vasa Grenadier Regiment quartermaster, Mauritz Pettersson, who noted that vast numbers of horses were taken from the Reds.54 He also remarked on the condition of the horses in the former Russian barracks outside Tampere, where the Whites found a couple of hundred horses when they entered the city.
At the Russian stables, to the east of Tampere, there were several hundred horses. Most of them in pitiable state. Suffering from starvation and covered in scabies. It was common amongst the Russians for their horses to be badly treated and cared for.55
Pettersson’s account reveals just how desirable horses were to both Whites and Reds during the Finnish Civil War, and that ownership constantly shifted depending on fortunes of war.56 For example, he tells the story of an unfortunate White NCO who managed to make off with a beautiful horse from another military unit—only to discover that it was a White general’s mount.57 Pettersson also tells us who specifically were to become the new owners of the Russian horses found in the Tampere.
Finland is rich in horses, but surely this war has depleted the country’s herd. Saddle horses are rare. The horses that were taken from Russians were given to Nyland Dragoons. I myself had a former Russian officer’s horse taken at Vasa.58
It is a plausible conclusion that the branded horses had previously belonged to the Russian army—and that both Reds and Whites used the Russian army horses alongside their own Finnhorses. As mentioned, the vets from time to time returned to the problem with ownership when in contact with different military units: the horses’ identity papers were often incomplete, and the vets pointed out that it would be better if ownership were stated more clearly.59 Similarly, Stina Linderdahl mentioned in her diary that people came to the field ambulance ‘all the time looking for their stolen horses.’60
The vets and staff seem to have tried to share out the cured horses as fairly as possible between the military units. The horses were either handed over to the units that had brought them in in the first place, or were passed on to the White’s Remount Corps, which farmed out any horses that were surplus to requirements to farmers who had none. In 1919 the field ambulance’s commissary Dage Tenow was to write that ‘the larger part of the horses went to serve peaceful ends and not the bloody deeds of war.’61 The question of who benefited from the horses when they were finally discharged can be traced from the records in several instances. Horses that were well could not be given back to their previous owners unless they had been checked by the newly created Remount Corps as well as by the equally new security police, the Central Detective Police (then a military outfit under White army HQ, later to become the civilian State Police). About Ten owners had their horses returned to them once they had been checked by the Central Detective Police, according to the field ambulance’s records.62
One problem that had to be dealt with was the interest from White officers in obtaining functioning horses from the ambulance. One week before the military parade on 15 May, when Mannerheim and the White troops marched in triumph through Helsinki, it was noted that a Captain Lundkvist had been informed that his brown-black horse had already been given to the Remount Corps to be used in Helsinki. On another occasion a White officer, Artillery Captain Seth Grönhagen, tried to claim a horse and dogcart without having permission to do so, and was met by stiff resistance from the staff who thought the horse and wagon was for their needs first. When one of the female veterinary orderlies challenged him, saying he did not have permission, he nevertheless rode off without paying the slightest heed to their objections.63 The vet wrote a letter of protest to the commander of Grönhagen’s regiment and made the field ambulance’s stance very clear: the captain had exceeded his authority. A day or so later it was noted that a Swedish officer, Colonel Hamilton, had duly reprimanded Grönhagen.64
This highlights the difficult position in which the women veterinary orderlies found themselves when it came to the chain of command: they were both part of the military hierarchy and outside it. This was mirrored in the almost dual judgement on the contributions made by the women of the field ambulance. The Red Star orderlies’ womanly compassion, nursing skills, and sense of duty to their patients was essential for the horses’ proper treatment and care, according to Major Otto Zethelius of the Swedish Red Star’s board,65 a view very much in line with the carefully expressed emancipatory ambitions to be found in later texts and articles concerning the Swedish Red Star’s operations in Tampere in 1918.66 Yet all the same, traditional military aspects of the women’s work were also appreciated, albeit in a more confidential manner in the field ambulance’s records. Apparently those nurses who were calm in stressful situations and had a good hand with the animals, and who could concentrate and work independently, were considered to have good leadership qualities. Those who did not possess these traits, in particular those who had no discipline, ended up at the bottom of the list.67 The ability to handle horses with as little fuss as possible was occasionally more important than the division into strictly manly or womanly attributes that was a condition of the women’s presence in Tampere. This point of view, however, was never mentioned in the Red Star’s printed material.
Another perspective that became increasingly unimportant in the Swedish Red Star propaganda after 1918 was chauvinist patriotism, ‘Grand Swedishness’, of the old school. The Red Star orderly Signe Fryberg, who wrote articles about the Tampere field ambulance in Svenska Dagbladet and Stockholms Dagblad (both conservative dailies), liked to elaborate on the courage of the Swedish officers, and how ‘slender and elegant’ and so very gentlemanly to the Swedish female veterinary orderlies they were (one of the paragons was quoted as saying, ‘If one could only be a horse’).68
Fryberg’s description of Finland in 1918 thus echoes the general political stance of the Swedish women who had volunteered for the auxiliary organizations. It could even be said she viewed the Finnish Civil War with a wishful hope that Sweden would regain its former position as a great military nation. Fryberg also reported gruesome propaganda stories, for example that it was forbidden to wear muffs in Tampere for fear of Reds using them to conceal weapons. She also told the story of the waitress who shot White soldiers by hiding a gun under her tray.69
Interestingly, Fryberg’s interpretation of the Red Star’s efforts in Finland did not really chime with the organization’s self-understanding, even in 1918. Sturfelt and others have pointed out that the chaos of the world war elicited a new Swedish self-awareness about Swedish neutrality, one connected to modernity and progressive thinking,70 and this is certainly something that can be traced in Red Star publications from the 1920s and 1930s. However, the notion that Sweden was a force to be reckoned with, leading the way in modernity and progress, had already become important for the Red Star’s self-image back in 1918.71
Tenow, Zethelius, and the vets all leaned more towards a modernized version of ‘Grand Swedishness’, where neutral Sweden was understood as leading the way in modernization and humanitarianism, and an example to the belligerent countries, particularly when it came to organizing hospital care for the sick and wounded horses—where women could take part, using their motherly and feminine qualities to best advantage. Thus veterinary care and humane methods in treating animals were ways of instilling the modern virtues, and Sweden was the guiding light. As the modernization of Finland beckoned, Sweden stepped in to support the sensible, commendably civic elements in a not always so organized process. Tenow regarded the Swedish input as a way of educating the Finns in how to run their own country: ‘The authorities were most obliging, but often their attempts were frustrated by their own and other governing bodies’ loose organization and lack of ability.’72
Linderdahl’s diary is more difficult to place. She was the only one at the horse field ambulance whose private thoughts on what she saw and heard about the persecution of the Reds have come down to us. However, she was mostly rather accepting of White propaganda. She recounted going with some of the other orderlies to visit the prisoner-of-war camp in the former Russian barracks in the vicinity when they heard gunfire and a little while later saw Red prisoners lying dead. She recorded a conversation with a Finnish White guard who explained how to execute prisoners. She saw the prisoners digging their own graves. She noticed that many coffins were too big for the dead; that later the bigger coffins were burned and smaller coffins were used; that a dead woman in one of the open coffins was dressed only in her underwear; that in another coffin a woman lay with her mouth open as if in the middle of a scream.73
The Swedes’ immediate reaction was to deplore the Reds. But they were also considered responsible for the Civil War and the horrors it brought. Only with time did the veterinary orderlies begin to feel empathy for the prisoners and their situation in the camps, probably because they came into daily contact with a group of Red prisoners who worked as stable hands. The veterinary orderlies sometimes gave them extra food, and cut their hair on occasion. They also demanded to keep two stable hands who were about to be moved.74 None of this did much to change the fact that the men and women of the field ambulance were convinced that the Whites had society’s best interest at heart. Although, that said, during April and May 1918 Linderdahl became more and more irritated with the Swedish White officers who behaved violently, and even in some cases turned out to be crooks and opportunists.75
Conclusion
Within the framework of veterinary care during the Finnish Civil War, several causes can be said to have co-existed. A civilian insistence on viewing horses as animals to be protected was combined with antipathy towards the Reds (with horses as their victims), enthusiasm for female emancipation, and Swedish chauvinism of both the older, hawkish variety and the condescendingly humanitarian variety. Veterinary care for horses became important in the White propaganda produced by Finns and Swedes alike—the Reds mistreated their horses, which were subsequently saved by the Whites.
In Signe Fryberg’s account of the mobile field hospital set up by the Swedish Red Star in Tampere, one can detect a romantic nostalgia for Sweden’s past as a leading military power. Dage Tenow and Otto Zethelius placed the wounded horses in another context, and it was their view that came to dominate the Red Star’s account of its own history. Tenow tended to what Sturfelt has called progressive and forward-thinking Swedish neutrality, which in this context can be labelled as a more modern form of ‘Grand Swedishness’, where the maintenance of peace, not war, is central. Tenow clearly saw a possibility for a more prominent Swedish role, especially when it came to veterinary care. Stina Linderdahl, meanwhile, wrote in far greater detail about the devastation of the city of Tampere, and her diary, with its acute observations, is more difficult to define in the context of Grand Swedish narratives. Possibly her account could be read as a counter-narrative on the destructiveness of war in general.
In its own historiography, the Swedish Red Star developed an understanding of its horse field ambulance expedition to Finland that set it firmly in the narrative of Sweden as the role model for the new Finland, while it proved women’s ability to work as veterinary orderlies. In an article from 1929, Otto Zethelius concluded that when it came to the protection of animals, Sweden was a pioneering country, and a cultivated one to boot.76 Thus it is interesting to note that this standpoint had already been spelled out as early as 1918.77
Notes
1 Maria Sjöberg, Kvinnor i fält: 1550–1850 (Möklinta: Gidlunds, 2008), 11–12, 21-24.
2 The records of the activities of the Swedish Red Star (from 1941, the Swedish Blue Star) in Finland in April–June 1918 are held in Krigsarkivet (the Military Archives of Sweden) in Stockholm. The organization’s archive also contains collections of press cuttings and various other sources concerning the horse ambulance and the Finnish Civil War in 1918. See Krigsarkivet (KrA), Svenska blå stjärnan (SBS), Centralstyrelsens förvaltningsberättelse för 1917, volym 1, serie B2; ibid., ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, volym 1, serie F1 (Finlandsambulansen 1918); ibid., serie Ö1 (press cuttings). See also Stina Linderdahl, Stina Linderdahls dagbok från finska kriget 1918 (Sundborn: Linderdahlska stiftelsen, 1993); Dage Tenow, Med Svenska Röda Stjärnan bland krigsskadade hästar i Finland (Stockholm: Djurens rätt, 1919), Djurens rätt being the organ of Nordiska samfundet för bekämpande av det vetenskapliga djurplågeriet (the Nordic Association Against the Scientific Maltreatment of Animals); and KrA, Avdelningen för enskilda arkiv, Mauritz Petterssons.
3 Leif Törnquist, Stjärna i förändring. SBS blå stjärna och dess historia (Stockholm: Svenska blå stjärnan, 1997), 7–8, 10–11.
4 Heikki Ylikangas, Vägen till Tammerfors (Stockholm: Atlantis, 1995), 24–5, 30.
5 Henrik Meinander, Finlands historia: linjer, strukturer, vändpunkter (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2006), 151–5.
6 Meinander 2006, 151–5.
7 John W. Wheeler-Bennet, Brest-Litovsk. The Forgotten Peace, March 1918 (London: Macmillan, 1938), 256, 407.
8 Ylikangas 1995, 477–8; Aapo Roselius, I bödlarnas fotspår – massavrättningar och terror i finska inbördeskriget 1918 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009), 227, 40–3.
9 Meinander 2006, 155–7; Matti Klinge, Blick på Finlands historia (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2001), 119, 120–1, 126.
10 Ylikangas 1995, 11–12.
11 Ingvar Flink, ‘Svenska krigsförluster i Finland år 1918’, in Lars Westerlund (ed.), Norden och krigen i Finland och Baltikum åren 1918–1919 (Helsinki: Statsrådets kansli, 2004), 41.
12 According to the anonymous author of the preface to the edition of Linderdahl’s diary (Linderdahl 1993, 4).
13 Carl Göran Andrae, Revolt eller reform. Sverige inför revolutionerna i Europa 1917–1918 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 1998), 166.
14 Lina Sturfelt, Eldens återsken. Första världskriget i svensk föreställningsvärld (diss.; Lund: Sekel, 2008), 154.
15 Martin van Creveld, Supplying war: logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), 111.
16 William Hardy McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since AD 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 339–40.
17 See, for example, the Swedish transportation officer Mauritz Pettersson’s notes from the Finnish Civil War (KrA, Avdelningen för enskilda arkiv, Mauritz Pettersons arkiv, volym 1, ‘Dagboksanteckningar från mitt deltagande i Finlands frihetskrig mot ryssar och rödgardister 1918’.)
18 Uppslagsverket Finland, <www.uppslagsverket.fi>, s.v. ‘Nylands dragoner’ and ‘Tavastlands ryttarregemente’, accessed 13 November 2011; Ylikangas 1995, 111.
19 KrA, Avdelningen för enskilda arkiv, Mauritz Petterssons arkiv, volym 1, Sixten Öberg, ‘Wasabataljonens tillkomst och insats i Finska frihetskriget 1918 i stora drag’, 2, 11.
20 Ylikangas 1995, 114.
21 Ibid. 113.
22 Madelene Lidestad, Uppbåd, uppgifter, undantag. Om genusarbetsdelning i Sverige under första världskriget (diss.; Stockholm Studies in History, 79; Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 2005), 167–72; Tenow 1919, 2.
23 Lars Westerlund, ‘Norden och krigen i Finland och Baltikum åren 1918–19. Litteraturöversikt och forskningsläge’, in Westerlund 2004, 14; Ylikangas 1995, 322; Rainer Andersson, Vad gjorde du i Finland far, Helsinki 1999, 110-112.
24 Gunnar Artéus, ‘Den svenska officerskårens politiska uppfattning år 1914’, in Johan Engström & Lars Ericson (eds.), Mellan björnen och örnen. Sverige och Östersjön under det första världskriget 1914–1918 (Acta Visbyensia, 9; Visby: Gotlands fornsal, 1994), 81–85.
25 Flink 2004, 31; Andrae 1998, 157. For the words of the Swedish Brigade’s march, see Riksarkivet, Stockholm (National Archives of Sweden), <www.ra.se>, s.v. ‘Svenska brigaden i Finland 1918’, accessed 13 March 2012.
26 Pia Olsson, Eteen vapahan valkean Suomen: kansatieteellinen tutkimus lottatoiminnasta paikallisella tasolla vuoteen 1939 [For Finland—white and free: an ethnological study of the Lotta Svärd women’s auxiliaries at local level up to 1939] (diss.; Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 1999), with an English summary, 275–280.
27 Helmi Anneberg-Pentti, Jenny af Forselles & Fanni Luukkonen, ‘Ofärdsåren’, in Lotta Svärd (ed.), Vita boken (Helsinki: Lotta Svärd, centralstyrelsen, 1928), 3.
28 Sif Bokholm, I otakt med tiden: om rösträttsmotstånd, antipacifism och nazism bland svenska kvinnor (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2008), 141, 206.
29 Charlotte Tornbjer, Den nationella modern: moderskap i konstruktioner av svensk nationell gemenskap under 1900-talets första hälft (diss.; Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2002), 203–204.
30 Lidestad 2005, 167–72.
31 Joyce P. Kaufman & Kristen P. Williams, Women and war: gender identity and activism in times of conflict (Sterling, Va.: Kumarian Press, 2010), 6; Susan R. Grayzel, Women’s identities at war: gender, motherhood, and politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 3. Grayzel also points out (ibid. 5) that women’s increasing participation in the war effort created concern for the social order. Kronsell and Svedberg also emphazise that nation-building and militarization are closely connected and strongly gendered (Annica Kronsell & Erika Svedberg (eds.), Making gender, making war: violence, military and peacekeeping practices (New York: Routledge, 2012), 3, 7.
32 Lidestad 2005, 191.
33 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Finlandsambulansen 1918’, excerpt from Svenska Röda Stjärnans jubileumsskrift 1937.
34 According to the anonymous author of the preface to the edition of Linderdahl’s diary (Linderdahl 1993, 4-5).
35 The Red Star veterinary assistants were Signe Fryberg, Greta Barthelson, Margit Beckman, Irène Fryberg, Selma Guldbrand, Margit Hellsten, Anna Kindahl, Stina Linderdahl, Margit Seth, and Ellen Wesström. The grooms were Johan Johansson, P. Petersson, G. Johansson, J. Andersson, Augusti Persson, and G. Berg (blacksmith) (see ‘Finlandsambulansen 1918’, Svenska Röda Stjärnans jubileumsskrift 1937, 54; KrA, SBS arkiv, Centralstyrelsen för Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Förvaltningsberättelse för 1918, bilaga 9, 86; KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, Handlingar rörande Röda Stjärnans första år).
36 ‘Finlandsambulansen 1918’, Svenska Röda Stjärnans jubileumsskrift 1937, 54.
37 According to the anonymous author of the preface to the edition of Linderdahl’s diary (Linderdahl 1993, 4–5).
38 Ibid. 20.
39 Ibid. 8.
40 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, Gustaf Danelius entries 16 & 22 May 1918.
41 KrA, SBS arkiv, serie Ö1, T. K. Frostén, ‘Djuren i kriget. Några anmärkningar av T. K. Frostén, Helsingfors 1918’ (Finska Röda stjärnans skriftserie, 1; Helsinki, 1918), 7–8, 23.
42 KrA, Avdelningen för enskilda arkiv, Mauritz Petterssons arkiv, 64, 72–73. The most common type of horse at the time in Finland was the so-called Finnhorse or Finnish horse: in the 1910s there were some 200,000 in Finland. They were used both for riding and for draught, by Finns and the Russian military alike. See Sällskapet Nordiskt Kallblod (Society for the Nordic work horse) ‘Bekanta dig med finnhästen’, available at <www.nordisktkallblod.se> and <http://www.suomenhevonen.info/hippos/sh2007/pdf/Shruotsi_nettiin.pdf>, accessed 15 August 2012; see Lantmannens uppslagsbok (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1923), available at <http://runeberg.org/lantuppsl/0276.html>, s.v. ‘finsk häst’, accessed 13 November 2011; see also KrA, Generalstaben, Utrikesavdelningen, serie E1a, volym 1, Meddelande från 1. byrån nr 14:51 till utrikesavdelningen 2. detaljen, 27 May 1914, an unsigned note, probably from the Swedish military attaché in Saint Petersburg.
43 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, Gustaf Danelius, ‘Rapport över Svenska Röda Stjärnans Finlandsambulans verksamhet under tiden 22/4–16/5 1918’.
44 Tenow 1919, 11.
45 Ibid. 12.
46 The horse that was going to be operated on was put next to the operating table and cords were secured around the joints just above the hooves. Cords were also placed around the horse’s abdomen. Four people would then pull the horse up onto the table, while those who stood at the hooves would at the same time lift them up from the ground. One person stood at the head and another by the tail (Tenow 1919, 6–8).
47 According to the anonymous author of the preface to the edition of Linderdahl’s diary (Linderdahl 1993, 5).
48 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, Gustaf Danelius, rapport, 7–8 May 1918.
49 Ibid. 22 April–16 May.
50 Pertti Haapala & Tuomas Hoppu (eds.), Tampere 1918: A town in the Civil War (Tampere: Tampereen Museot, 2010), 64, 89.
51 Tenow 1919, 12
52 Lars Westerlund, Massakern i Jakobstad: klubbliv, jägarprotest och privatjustis (Helsinki: Åbo akademi & Folkkontraktet i Finland, 1993), 8–9.
53 Ylikangas 1995, 60.
54 KrA, Avdelningen för enskilda arkiv, Mauritz Pettersons arkiv, Pettersson 1918, volym 1, 59–60, 76.
55 Ibid. 59–60.
56 The Bolsheviks protested to Germany in the late spring of 1918 about German military landing parties and Finnish White Guards having seized Russian materiel in Northern Finland, thus violating the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (see Wheeler-Bennet 1938, 330).
57 KrA, Avdelningen för enskilda arkiv, Mauritz Petterssons arkiv, Pettersson 1918, volym 1, 60.
58 Ibid.
59 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, Danelius, rapport 22 April–16 May 1918, entries 7 & 21 May and 14 June 1918; Linderdahl 1993, 20.
60 Linderdahl 1993, 9, 21.
61 Tenow 1919, 12.
62 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, Danelius, entries 11/5–12/5, 23/5 1918; see also Uppslagsverket Finland, ‘Detektiva centralpolisen’, http://www.uppslagsverket.fi/bin/view/Uppslagsverket/DetektivaCentralpolisen?template=highlightsearch&search=detektiva%20polisen, accessed 20 September 2012.
63 Linderdahl 1993, 20.
64 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, Danelius, notations 5/5–6/5 1918, including a copy of letter of protest.
65 Otto Zethelius, Svenska Röda stjärnan och dess fredsverksamhet: fredsarbetets bärande grundvalar och Röda stjärnans betydelse för den veterinära sjukvården (Stockholm: Svenska Röda stjärnans centralbyrå, 1919); see also KrA, SBS arkiv, Ö1, ‘Till svenska Röda Stjärnans veterinärambulans’ by O.Z., the poem read at the homecoming celebration of the Swedish Red Star group on their return to Stockholm on 30 June 1918.
66 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, ‘Finlandsambulansen 1918’, excerpt from Svenska Röda Stjärnans jubileumsskrift 1937.
67 KrA, SBS arkiv, F1, volym 1, ‘Svenska Röda Stjärnan, Finlandsambulansen 1918, Diarium, Konceptbok’, Gustaf Danelius, ‘Konfidentiellt. Personalkritik’, 10/7 1918.
68 See, for example, Signe Fryberg, ‘Röda stjärnsystrarna framme vid målet’, Stockholms Dagblad, 21 April 1918; KrA, SBS arkiv, Ö1, ‘Kungens död’, n.d.
69 Fryberg 1918.
70 Sturfelt 2008, 253.
71 Quelq’une, ‘Svenska Röda stjärnans finska barmhärtighetsverk. Ledaren dr Forsell anser resultatet högst tillfreddställande’, May 1918, ‘Röda Stjärnans Finlandsambulans återkommen til Stockholm’, Stockholms Dagblad, 1 July 1918; Quelq’une, ‘Hur det känns att vara sjuksköterska för krigshästar’, Stockholms Dagblad, 11 June 1918; KrA, SBS arkiv, Ö1.
72 Tenow 1919, 1, 9–10.
73 Linderdahl 1993, 8.
74 Ibid. 11.
75 Ibid. 25–6.
76 Otto Zethelius, ‘Några ord om Svenska Röda Stjärnans verksamhet’, in Svenska Röda Stjärnan (Stockholm: Röda stjärnornas klubb, 1929).
77 Translations by Pamela Robertson-Pearce and Charlotte Merton.