Swedes on The Western Front

In my research I often find information about American soldiers who were born in America by Swedish parents who immigrated during the late 19th century.

Many of those who fell in the Great War were brought back from the temporary cemeteries in France or Belgium to American cemeteries. I find those cases interesting as well, as I can follow their different backgrounds. I have also found quite many Swedish related American soldiers, with parents born in America, and in their turn with parents born in Sweden.

It would be really interesting to find out how large part of the American soldiers who fought in the Great War, who has Swedish grandparents as well. That would open an another part of the Swedish history related to the Great War. Maybe they are many more than expected?

Below you will find some information about one American officer, 1st LT Albert Emanuel Johnson, born in Connecticut, USA, by Swedish parents, mother Ida E Johnson and Charles J Johnson.

Charles was born as Karl Johan, most likely born June 30th, 1870, in Risinge, Östergötland, Sweden, and Ida was born as Ida Charlotta Emanuelsdotter, on November 20th, 1868, in Våthult, Jönköping.

Albert’s father, Karl Johan, emigrated with his family in 1880, and Ida emigrated with her brother Peter in 1886.

Albert fought for the 102nd Infantry, 26th Division, American Expeditionary Forces, and fell in May 8th, 1918. Below you will find a text from an American newspaper from June 11, 1918, that describes the last hours of Albert E Johnson.

Albert died of his wound and was initially buried near Sevastopol Farm Cemetery near Bruley, France, and was later on brought to St Mihiel American Cemetery, south-east of Meuse-Argonne region in France.

He was later brought home to American on June 6, 1921, and are today buried at Collinsville Cemetery, Collinsville, Hartford County, Connecticut, USA.

Even if the text in the article above mentioned that he would be awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, I haven’t been able to find any information about that yet. May Albert rest in peace.

There is always a great feeling when you are able to find original documents about your research subject. In this case I arranged a meeting in Blekinge Museum Archives regarding one of my soldiers in my research, Lieutenant Marcus Grundberg, who fought for the German Forces during the Great War.

I had found information in the Swedish archive “Riksarkivet”, that it would be more information to be found about Marcus Grundberg in Blekinge Museum archives, so I called them and checked if this was correct and it was.

I arranged a day to meet up with the personnel, who introduced me to the material. It was an amazing feeling to look at and feel the material which consisted of letters from Marcus to his family, but also from Marcus to his superiors in the Army.

There were also summarized information made from old news articles, and also some photos. It was really interesting to find text about where he fell and also to find photos from his original burial. I have only been to his final resting place in Menen in Belgium, but I will now try to find his previous burial site.

My upcoming work will now be to transcribe the handwritten text in the documents, and translate those from German to Swedish, and then in to English as well, to create an additional collection in PDF format, to be able to hand it out to those who have bought my first book, in where he is mentioned.

Below you will find some of the text files I scanned during my visit at Blekinge Museum Archives.

At the moment there is no information about who have made this compilation of documents, but it may be the regiment, Karlskrona Grenadiers, to which Marcus belonged, but I will try to get it confirmed. It will be a very interesting work to transcribe these around 65 documents but also quite demanding.

I will keep updates of the work on this page.