Armistice Day 1918

Earlier posts on this blog have outlined the stories of the first-generation 'Lithuanian Anzacs', men of various ethnicities who had been born in czarist Russia within the borders of present-day Lithuania in the late 19th century and who served with the First AIF (Australian Imperial Force) during World War I. As we approach the centenary of the end of that war, I thought it would be interesting to look back at where some of them were on Armistice Day 1918.

By the end of the European summer in 1918 it was becoming clear that the Great War was coming to an end and that the Central Powers were near defeat. An armistice with Bulgaria came into effect on 30 September 1918, followed by Turkey a month later, then Austria-Hungary on 3 November and finally Germany on 11 November. Nevertheless, the fighting continued on the Western Front right up until the 11th of November. Reports from the field record an abrupt end to the bombardment at 11am and an eerie sense of numbness, exhaustion and quiet on the front lines. In contrast, celebrations had started earlier in the day in many towns and cities across the world, later followed by bonfires and fireworks near some of the front lines that evening.

Martin Place, Sydney, 11 November 1918

 Lithuanian Anzacs on 11 November 1918

At least 40 'Lithuanian Anzacs' served overseas during World War I and nearly half this number were still in Europe at the end of the war.  Many of their stories have been outlined previously (click on their names below). A summary was also posted earlier [click here].

The longest-serving were Stanislaw Urniarz (Stasys Urniežius) and Militan Schatkowski (also known as Militan Oldham) who had both enlisted four years earlier, in November 1914. On Armistice Day 1918 Private Urniarz was still in the field in northern France, working at the 2nd Australian General Hospital; soon after he was permitted to proceed on furlough to the UK. Private Schatkowski/Oldham had already been in the UK since early 1917 and was working for the Australian Red Cross in London on Armistice Day.

Several of the Lithuanian Anzacs had been wounded on the Western Front and transferred to England by November 1918. Private William Frank Jaks was severely wounded in September and invalided to England; he met Armistice Day at the Reading War Hospital. Private Gerard Skugar, wounded in August, was at the Devonport Military Hospital (Plymouth). Private Leo Gordon was wounded in action for the second time in October and was at the 1st Auxillary Hospital at Harefield on Armistice Day. Private Paul Finn, wounded in action for the third time in August, was in medical repatriation in England. Others in England for medical reasons included privates Harry Cooper, Joe Caplan, Anthony Januski and sapper Ishai Belkind.

Some had suffered wounds but were still active combatants in the field as Armistice Day dawned, including Private Heyman Wolfson (enlisted in 1915, wounded in 1916).

A few were fortunate to meet Armistice Day in the field and to have survived the war without apparent major injury, including: Corporal Emerick Schimkovitch (enlisted in January 1916, in the field in France from October 1916); Private William Kalinowsky/Kalin/Kalinauskas (enlisted September 1916, in the field from December 1917); Driver Joe Ipp (enlisted February 1917, in the field from November 1917); Private Stanley Zygas/Stasys Žygas (enlisted September 1917, in the field from April 1918).

Still others had enlisted late in the war and had been sent overseas but not yet entered the field of battle. David Wishman enlisted in May 1918, disembarked at London at the end of September as a private with the 34th Bn and and was still in the UK on Armistice Day. 


And lastly, there were those who did not survive the war and could not return home. Six men were killed in action or died from wounds received in action:

• Charles Oscar Zander (died 22 August 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, France, no known grave, commemorated at Villers-Bretonneux);
• John Brenka/Brenke (died 23 August 1916 in the Battle of the Somme, France, buried at Boulogne East Cemetery);
• Anthony Puris (died 10 May 1917 in the Somme, France, buried in the vicinity of Noreuil, no known grave, commemorated at Villers-Bretonneux); 
• John Lovriaen (died 20 September 1917 in the Ypres campaign, Belgium, place of burial unknown);
• Franc Matzonas; (died 11 November 1917 in the battles for Beersheba, Palestine, buried at Beersheba War Cemetery (Israel)); and
• David Minor (died 11 May 1918 in northern France, buried at Meteren Military Cemetery).

https://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/armistice/62000-Poppies-Display
Handcrafted red poppy flowers on the Australian War Memorial's grounds representing the almost 62,000 Australians who lost their lives during the First World War.

  





  

Arrivals from England

England was the intermediate point for possibly the largest number of early Lithuanian-born migrants arriving in Australia. Many sailed from British ports having spent a shorter or longer period in England during the late 1800s or the early 1900s.

Most stopped in London, often spending several years or even decades before moving on to the New World. Some came with their families, others sailed alone or with small groups of friends or acquaintances.

The Lithuanian Catholic Church in London;
St Casimir's, Bethnal Green, built 1912.
Image courtesy of London Churches in Photographs:
https://londonchurchbuildings.wordpress.com/?s=lithuanian&submit=

One of the earliest settlers was Jonas MICKEVIČIUS (John McCOWAGE). The Australian Lithuanian Yearbook Metraštis (1961) notes that he arrived in 1887 with his wife and children together with two other unnamed Lithuanian men.  The two other men returned to London within a few years but Jonas and his family decided to settle in Sydney.  Family trees on Ancestry.com provide some more information: Jonas was born around 1855 in Suwalki (now in northern Poland, close to the Polish-Lithuanian border); and he married Morta Tuinyla in Fulham (London) around 1883. After migrating to Australia, Jonas worked as a greengrocer, eventually acquiring a stall at the Municipal Markets. Morta died in 1899 and Jonas in 1918; Metraštis records John Wedrien's account of meeting Jonas Mickevičius at the Sydney markets in 1914; Wedrien was apparently the first Lithuanian that Jonas had met in 23 years.

Michael Henry FRUMAR was born in Vilnius in 1885. A Lithuanian Jew, he had arrived in London shortly after 1900 and, in 1908, migrated to Australia aboard the Nairnshire. He settled in Sydney where he became a self-employed 'mantle and costume manufacturer' with premises in Pitt Street. Michael was naturalised in 1940 and died in 1949.

Others who arrived in Australia after spending some time in England included:

• Jonas BALAIKA from Marijampolė, arrived in 1912 after 5 years in England;
• George BARON from Marijampolė, arrived in 1908 - 20+ years;
• Isadore COHEN from Šakiai, arrived in 1915 - 6 years;
• William Frank JAKS from Kaunas, arrived in 1914 - 10+ years;
• Militan SCHATKOWSKI from Plateliai, arrived in 1914 - 6 years;
• Ksaveras (Alexander) SKIERYS from Marijampolė, arrived in 1911 - around 10 years;
• Jonas VIEDRINAITIS (John WEDRIEN) from Kudirkos Naumiestis, arrived in 1913 after 12 years in England and Scotland.

South Australia

Much material on Lithuanian migrants in South Australia has already been published by Daina Pocius on her South Australian Lithuanian History blog (SAlithohistory.blogspot.com).  Daina has been posting since January 2008 and has amassed a huge amount of information; her blog was listed as one of the "50 blogs you need to read" in Inside History magazine's 2014 annual genealogy blog awards.

So, rather than replicate what has already been published on the SA Lithuanian History blog, what follows here is a brief commentary and summary of early Lithuanian migration to South Australia.

Lithuanian histories in South Australia before the First World War are problematic:

• the story of Lithuanians amongst the early religious migrants to South Australia has gained much currency, both in Australia and Lithuania.  Luda Popenhagen (Australian Lithuanians, pp16-17), for example, wrote that the first Lithuanians to settle in South Australia were religious refugees from Prussia who arrived with other Lutherans aboard the Skjold in October 1841.  The Lithuanian VARNAS/VARNO family together with other German Lutheran migrants apparently established a new settlement near Adelaide, which they called Lobethal ('valley of praise').  This account appears to have originated from a 1958 article in the Australian Lithuanian weekly Mūsų Pastogė which reported research by Jonas Vanagas, the founder of the Lobethal museum.  However more recent attempts to confirm the existence of this early Lithuanian family have not been successful.  The search continues ..

• another hint of early Lithuanians in South Australia appeared in the US-published Lithuanian Encyclopedia (quoted in Metraštis No 1, p11) which recorded that Lithuanians were employed in an Adelaide glass factory in the late 1880s  and that they had established their own club and chapel.  Again, this claim has not been verified by more recent research.

Previous posts have looked at the Lithuanian Anzacs who reached South Australia in the second decade of the twentieth century and enlisted there:

• John BRENKA (arrived in Australia 1914);
• William Frank JAKS (1914);
• Heyman WOLFSON (1910);
• Charles Oscar ZANDER (1911); and
• Stanley ŽYGAS (1911).

Of these, only Stanley Žygas settled in Adelaide after the war.

Nevertheless, there are fragments of information which show an earlier presence.  Previous posts have looked at nineteenth century settlers from the Memel (Klaipėda) region who came to South Australia, such as John RUSSELL (arrived 1859) and Otto REIGERT (married at Light Pass in 1886).  Later arrivals with links to Lithuania include:

• Lena OBERMAN (nee Todras), born at Kedainiai in 1855, arrived in Australia with her husband Louis and son Joseph in 1892; Lena died in Adelaide in 1934 and Joseph in 1943 (source: www.oberman.org.au/lithuania.htm); 

• Frank GRIFF, possibly from Zagarė, who had arrived in Australia in 1904 and established himself as a successful businessman in Broken Hill, moved to Adelaide with his wife Sophie in the late 1930s (source: Jews of the Outback, pp 131-132) 

• Jacob David GOCHIN, born at Papilė in 1883, married Hannah Morgenstein at Adelaide in 1924 (source: Ancestry.com);

• Antanas (Antone) VIRBICKAS, born at Aukštakalnis around 1888, arrived in Australia 1924 and worked as a wharf labourer at Port Adelaide at least until 1953 (source: Trove);

• Frank (Pranas) ŠEŠKAS and Max Martynas KORALLUS were living in Port Pirie in 1928 (source: Trove).  

Metraštis No 1 (p11) refers to a 1953 article in Mūsų Pastogė which reported that there had been Lithuanians living in Adelaide in 1930 but that unemployment, poverty and hardship had forced most to move to the eastern states; by the early 1950s there were only a few of the early Lithuanians remaining in Adelaide. 

Lithuanian ANZACS - summary

Immigrants in the AIF

Over 420,000 men enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force (1st AIF) during the First World War, of whom around 332,000 were sent abroad.  Almost a quarter (22 per cent) of those who embarked for service overseas were not born in Australia, with a range of minorities represented amongst the English-born majority.  These minority groups are currently receiving some renewed attention:

• German Anzacs and the First World War (John F Williams, UNSW Press, 2003) looked at men of German origin and their war-time experiences, including internment in Australia.  Williams speculated that there may have been as many as 18,000 young men of German origin (not necessarily born overseas) who served abroad with the AIF;
• Anzacs and Ireland (Jeff Kildea, UNSW Press, 2007) focused on Irish-born members of the AIF.  Subsequently the UNSW's Irish Anzacs project has established a database of almost 6000 Irish-born Anzacs who served in the AIF;
• Next of Kin Untraceable; Foreign Born in Australia's First AIF was the title of a paper presented by Karen Agutter at 'The First World War - local, global and Imperial perspectives', The University of Newcastle, 25-27 March 2015 [this paper has not been sighted - JM]; 
• Elena Govor, author of Russian Anzacs in Australian History (UNSW Press 2005) has identified 1036 men born in the former Russian Empire who served in the AIF.  Of these, 241 were born in the then Baltic provinces of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania  - see http://russiananzacs.net/statistics/.  These figures do not include Slavs or Jews from those provinces; Govor has aggregated them separately.

Previous posts on this blog have looked at 40 Lithuanian-born men who served in the 1st AIF.  The following seeks to summarise the findings so far (keeping in mind that not all personal particulars supplied at enlistment - on the attestation papers - were necessarily accurate and ideally should be corroborated through other sources).

Origins

The first feature that soon becomes obvious when looking at Govor's statistics is that there were many fewer Lithuanian-born men in the AIF than Latvian- or Estonian-born; http://russiananzacs.net/ lists 100 ethnic Estonians, 130 ethnic Latvians and 14 ethnic Lithuanians. This suggests differences in migration flows which could be worth exploring.

The attestation papers held by the National Archives of Australia suggest that the Lithuanian-born men in the AIF were broadly representative of the various regions of the country; they were not exclusively from any one part of Lithuania.  About half of these men gave a specific town or village as their place of birth.  The others gave either Kaunas or Vilnius in almost equal measure; in the absence of other information this could be taken to mean either the cities of Kaunas and Vilnius or the surrounding provinces (gubernia) administered through them. They were also broadly representative of the various ethnicities living in that region: ethnic Lithuanians, Lithuanian Jews (Litvaks), Slavs (Poles, Russians, Belorussians), and Germans.

Their dates of birth ranged from 1870 to the late 1890s, with the most common years being 1892 and 1894 (4 each) and 1886, 1889, and 1891 (3 each).  By the time they came to enlist, they were mostly in their 20s, although a few saw active service overseas in their 40s.

They were mostly single men, although 6 were married.

Their dates of arrival in Australia also spanned a few decades: while Reuben Rosenfield reached Australia in 1888, Adolph Cantor in 1902, Stanislaus Urniarz in 1904 and Leo Gordon in 1908, all the others arrived in the second decade of the twentieth century (5 in 1914, 4 each in 1910, 1911, and 1912, 3 in 1913, 3 in 1915, 1 in 1916 and 1 in 1917, suggesting a fairly constant rate of arrivals in the first half of that decade).

The most common occupations shown on their attestation papers were seaman (12), labourer (6), salesman (4) and tailor or clothing cutter (3).


Enlistment

None of the 40 men appear to have enlisted together, and their enlistment dates span a period of 3 years.  The earliest enlistment was that of Charles Oscar Zander (August 1914) and the latest was that of Antonio Samson (November 1917).  In all, 6 men enlisted in 1914, followed by 12 in 1915, then 19 in 1916, and 3 in 1917.

Over a third of the men enlisted in the state of  New South Wales (15), followed by Victoria (10); South Australia (5), Western Australia (5), and Queensland (4).

Their discharge dates also spanned several years, from 1915 to 1920.


Service

Over half of these men served in the various AIF infantry battalions; the others saw service in pioneer or engineering battalions, machine gun companies, light horse regiments, and the medical corps. Most served as privates, only a few had the opportunity to serve as corporals.  Dr Rosenfield, engaged as a specialist surgeon on contract, was the only one on this list who was appointed as an officer.

34 men were sent overseas:

• most served on the Western Front;
• 6 saw action at Gallipoli;
• 4 served in Egypt/Sinai.

Twelve men were wounded in action (not counting those who were subsequently killed):

• Harry Cooper;
• Paul Elias Isaac Finn;
• Leo Gordon;
• William Frank Jaks;
• Anthony Januski;
• Joseph Josephson;
• Arthur Levy;
• Adolph Ignatieff Mishkinis;
• Sigismund Romaszkiewicz;
• Gerard Martyn Skugar;
• Kazys Waliukevic;
• Nathan Watchman; and
• Heyman Wolfson.

Six men were killed in action or died from wounds received in action:

• John Brenka;
• John Lovriaen;
• Franc Matzonas;
• David Minor;
• Anthony Puris; and
• Charles Oscar Zander

Lithuanian Anzacs on the Western Front #1

Previous posts looked at those who served in the Mediterranean theatres of the First World War - Gallipoli and Egypt/Palestine.  The next several posts will deal with service in France and Belgium (the Western Front).  Again, I have drawn heavily from Elena Govor's Russian Anzacs project.

Twenty four men with origins in Lithuania served for Australia on the Western Front.  A quarter of these men appear to have had Lithuanian heritage; around half were Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews), while the others were of Polish, German, or Byelorussian (or uncertain) backgrounds.

Let's start with the first four of those who appear to have been Lithuanians (clicking on their names will take you to their service records at the National Archives):

John BRENKA
(Here I've largely repeated the information shown on the earlier Gallipoli post:)

AWM memorial panel 61

(source: http://russiananzacs.elena.id.au/)

Arriving at Port Adelaide on 29 September 1914 on the Ajana from Liverpool UK as a single man, he worked at a sawmill in Gumeracha for a short while before enlisting at Adelaide in June 1915.  He served in the Gallipoli campaign as a private in the 10th Battalion, then went on to serve on the Western Front in the 50th Battalion where he died on 23 August 1916 of wounds received in action.  He was buried at the Boulogne East Cemetery in France and is commemorated at the Australian War Memorial and at both the Adelaide and Birdwood war memorials in South Australia.  


William Frank JAKS
Born in the province of Kaunas in 1882, he left czarist Russia around 1900 and lived in England prior to arriving in Australia on the Heathfield in 1914.  He enlisted in April 1916 at Adelaide as a single man, giving his residence as Berri, South Australia, and his occupation as a carpenter.  William served as a private with the 5th Pioneer Battalion (reinforcements) in France and was severely wounded in action in September 1918.  He returned to Adelaide in February 1919 and was discharged later that year.  After the war he was self-employed as a furniture restorer and french polisher in NSW and Queensland, eventually settling in Canberra where he married Madeline Elliott in 1936.  He died there in 1951.


P. KALINAUSKAS/William KALINOVSKY/KALIN

P. Kalinauskas (centre),
Sydney circa 1920
(Source: Metraštis No 1)

Russian Anzacs notes, as reported by Kalinauskas' family, that he left home at 14 working as a ship's cook and spent 3 years in Chicago before arriving in Australia; also that he continued to travel after the war, visiting Lithuania and living in the USA, Tasmania, Broken Hill, Newcastle and Brisbane. Metrastis No 1 includes an early photograph of him (opposite) but there is no first name given, only an initial.  He may have been the Petras Kalinauskas who is recorded on Hamburg shipping lists as sailing from Hamburg to New York in September 1913, however we can't be certain. Born in Zagarė in 1893, he was working as a tailor's cutter before enlisting in Cloncurry (Queensland) in September 1916 as William Kalinovsky, a single man.  As a private and lance corporal he served as an interpreter for the 4th Pioneer Battalion, 12th Battalion and 21st Machine Gun Co. in France 1917-19. His army record shows that he attended a cutting academy in London for several months in 1919.  On return to Australia, William used the surname Kalin from the early 1920s, married Clarisse McFeeters in Broken Hill in 1924 and raised a young family, but died in 1937 while self-employed as a tailor in Brisbane.


John LOVRIAEN

AWM memorial panel 113

(source: http://russiananzacs.elena.id.au/)

Born in Kaunas in 1889, he was working as a labourer at Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) and a single man prior to enlisting in August 1916 at Kalgoorlie.  John saw service as a private with the 27th and 28th Battalions but was killed in action on 20 September 1917 in Belgium.  He left behind a sister, Eva [Ieva] Alanskas/Alanckienė of Bellevue Western Australia, who had arrived in Australia with her family in 1912 having lived in Scotland for several years. Although arrival records for John Lovriaen have not yet been located, it seems possible that he had also reached Australia from Scotland, particularly as his military record lists his religion as Church of England. Western Australian newspaper reports of his death in 1917 show his residence as Bellevue.  He is commemorated at the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Belgium and also at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.


Sources: Ancestry.com; Metrastis No 1; Russian Anzacs; Trove.