Reports from the WWI battlefields – A Swedish journalist met the Swedish soldiers

Gunnar met the Swedes in the American Army, when he wrote about his dialogues between him and the soldiers.

I have been writing about it before, how digitized newspapers from the Great War era around 1914 to 1920, can be a great source of information. Now and then I go back to the large amount of bookmarks I have in my web browser, trying to find more information and sources about specific events connected to the Swedish soldiers within my research.

I always manage to find new information that I haven’t looked into before, or information that strengthen the already known details I have. At the same time I know that it is information from journalists, and not everything the write about is true or correct. It is the same today, we just have to be aware about it.

One journalist who spent a lot of time in France during the First World War was Gunnar Cedershiöld. Gunnar was born in Västerstad parish in Skåne 1887, and he died in Jönköping 1949. He worked in Paris and he also participated in the Summer Olympic Games in Amsterdam 1928, where he competed in fencing.

Gunnar wrote a lot of books and novels, and also a lot of articles within the subjects of politics and culture.

Gunnar thought a lot about the war and it’s meaning, and used to write the sentence below that I have tried to translate into english:

“It must be hard to be a soldier, if that thought comes up in your mind, that when you fight against men, you are also hurting or kill their mothers.”

His words gives me a lot to think about.

Gunnar met a lot of soldiers, with Swedish background or connection to Sweden, on the battlefields. I will mention some of the situations that he wrote about that I have found in digitized Swedish-American Newspapers.

Gunnar and the Swedes in the French Foreign Legion

In one article Gunnar wrote about his meeting with the Swedish soldiers in the French Foreign Legion. The article was in the Swedish-American newspaper “Vestkusten” from February 10th, 1916. In the article he mentioned the dialogues with the soldiers but also stated his opinion about some facts. Other articles about the Swedes in the legion has stated that there were about 50 of them who were born in Sweden, and 40 of them fell in the war, but Gunnar said in his articles that they were not more than 25, and I know from other sources that 16 of those 25 fell in the war.

That also correlates with other facts that I have found about the Swedes in the legion. Through Gunnar’s articles I have also been able to connect facts about the soldiers and in what situations they were involved in.

In earlier posts on this page I have written about the Swedish sign on the Division Marocaine Memorial on Vimy Ridge north of Arras. Most of the Swedes who fought for the French Foreign Legion were connected to this division. Gunnar spoke to some of them where the stories tells us that some of the Swedish soldiers participated in the Second battle of Artois, especially the battle of Hill 140 (May 9th-12th, 1915).

→ Read the entire article on the Swedes on The Western Front website here:

External Web Site Notice: This page contains information directly presented from an external source. The terms and conditions of this page may not be the same as those of this website. Click here to read the full disclaimer notice for external web sites. Thank you.