During this week I reached 300 Swedish born soldiers who fought and fell at the Western Front in The Great War. I never thought from the beginning that I should find so many, and now when I have so far found these 300 I already know there are more of them, that fits into my criterias for my research.
I will continue to look for more soldiers, and put them into my research. They deserves to be acknowledged.
You can reach the list of all these 300 during the main menu or through this link below:
I have also during the evening updated the Google Earth project about those Swedes who fought in Meuse-Argonne offensive together with the American Expeditionary forces. There are currently 74 Swedes plotted out on that map for the moment.
You will reach the project through the main menu or through this link below:
Today the weather was very sunny and warm, and I were in the terrain of some of those I eralier reported about, those soldiers born in the Perish of Hjälmseryd.
Why not then try to find the farms and maybe the houses the lived in? I went away for a short tour and I found some places.
I started to try to find the small place Slättö, that is mentioned on the casualty card of Andrew M Johnson, Anders Magni Magnusson, who was born in Hjälmseryd, and for some time lived in Slättö, according to some of the information I found in the church books. Next time I will also to get a photo of the Mo Västra farm. Slättö was the place where his father lived after Mo Västra, and is mentioned on the casualty card. You see Mo is mentioned in the church book, at the same line as his birth.
Then I went to the place where Gust E Ahl, John Gustav Edvin, lived. The place was Bodatorp, South of Boda in Hjälmseryds Perish. The picture below shows the house as it looks like today, it seems to be a summer house nowadays. The name “Bodatorp” is mentioned in the top of in one of the pictures below.
The last place I found today was Sevedstorp near Släthult in the same Perish, where John E Johnson lived in when he was born. The house looked like to be a house arranged for to live in more days than just in the summer. We could not find any persons nearby, even if we knocked on the door. I will try to visit the another time, when in the region. You can find the name Sevedstorp in the church book picture.
I will probably not be able to find all the places of those 200 Swedish born soldiers I will map in this project, but hopefully this can be a small story in a greater perspective. It was a great feeling to stand there and realize that those people went to USA for some reason but tragically fell in The Great War. This is my way to try to commemorate them. May they rest in peace.