I am now home from the trip that was planned with the purpose to follow up some of the Swedish born soldiers who fought for the American Expeditionary Forces in WW1, some of the Swedish born soldiers who fought for the Commonwealth, but also to visit places, related to WW1, that I always have wanted to visit.
It became an amazing trip in the company of Wendy Maddocks, who supported me through all the activities that we planned. We saw almost everything we wanted, and it became quite hectic, but very interesting.
We started the trip by flying to Brussels, and then take the rental car down to the Somme region in France. We spent a few days in the Somme region before heading south to Belleau Wood region. We continued later on east through the Champagne region towards the southern Ardenne region and looked into the areas of Argonne and Verdun. Later on we turned back west back to the Somme through Champagne and ended up in Cambrai before we went to Brussels again, to start our trip back home. Before we went home we spent a day i Le Quesnoy to commemorate the New Zealanders liberation of the town . All this in 10 days with nice weather most of the time.
Below you will find some photos from the different places. They are not marked with any specific locations but please don’t hesitate to comment, and I will explain more about them, if needed.
I am very glad that I was able to do this trip, which also gave me a lot of info and understanding about where the Swedish soldiers fought and where they ended up to have their final resting place. I will definitely do this again, and in spring 2025 I will have a guided tour to some of the places in the photos. More about that later on.
