Earlier, in 2021, I wrote a blog post about those Swedish born soldiers, who fell in the Great War, were brought home and reburied in Sweden. You can read that blog post here:
At that time I had only found nine of those 17 in total that I know about now. For a period of time I have been thinking that it can be more than those 17, but the other day I found an old article in an issue from the Magazine “American Legion” which on page 22 mention those soldiers from other countries than the USA, who were brought home to their countries of birth.
In this magazine it is mentioned that it was 17 soldiers who initially were buried in France or Belgium, who later were disinterred and transported to Sweden. Of those 17 soldiers 15 were born in Sweden, although two of them were born by Swedish parents in the USA. Those two were Albert M Benson (Albert Markus Eugen Bengtsson), born in Brooklyn, and Herman I Hermanson (Herman Irving Hermansson), born in New York.
As I now have 17 of them in my research, who I found by manually searching through the casualty cards of each soldier, I am now quite sure that it is only those 17 that were brought back to Sweden.
The reason for why the soldiers were brought to Sweden was probably that the descendants were asked in the 1920s if their sons or husbands should be brought back to US, remained buried in France or Belgium, or brought back to the country of birth.
Some of the relatives to these soldiers answered that they wanted them to be sent home to Sweden, and they got their wish granted. The reason for that was probably that the majority of the relatives lived in Sweden, and they wanted to be able to visit their fallen.
Below you will now find all of the cards from those 17 soldiers that were reburied in Sweden.
I have only managed to find and visit one soldier of those 17, Ernest Johnson (Ernst Hildemar Valentin Jonsson) from Örsjö, Kronoberg County, Småland, Sweden.
I hope I will be able to find more burials of those 17 to visit here in Sweden.