Edward Lakovsky was born in Iuzovo (now Eastern Ukraine), later his family moved to Odessa and in the early 1900s, in the wake of Russian pogroms, sailed to Western Australia. Initially they lived in Kalgoorlie and Broken Hill.
Enlisting in the AIF in South Australia, Edward sailed with the 10th Battalion to Egypt. He did not reach Gallipoli, being returned to Australia as medically unfit.
He married soon after his return and raised a large family in Melbourne, working as a boot repairer.
Alexander Popow, born in Glukhov, Ukraine, came from the family of Russian Army General Aleksandr N. Popov. Alexander studied electrical engineering at the University of Liège, Belgium, and worked for the Russian government.
Enlisting in the AIF, he served with the 2nd Field Company Engineers at Gallipoli, where he was wounded a few weeks after landing in June 1915. In November 1916, in the battle for the Somme on the Western Front, he survived multiple shell-wounds only to develop gas gangrene, and spent nearly six months in English hospitals, undergoing three operations, which left him with 63 scars on his left leg alone.
Luckily he recovered, came to the USA in 1919, settled near Boston working in metallurgy research. Here he changed his name to Peter Popow Alexander.
Lamotte Alexis Sage from Odessa probably had French ancestry, as his father’s name was Louis and sister’s was Dolora. Nevertheless, Lamotte’s religion was recorded as ‘Slav’, which must have meant Russian Orthodox; he claimed a three-year service in a ‘Cossack Regiment’, while his sister lived in Archangelsk – all this suggests long-lasting connections with the Russian Empire. Landing in Albany in 1898, in Western Australia, he found employment in the south-western areas of the colony, working as a timber cutter, sleeper carter and hewer on the construction of the railway lines.
Although he was in his forties, he enlisted in the AIF and soldiered through the whole war in the artillery regiments as a gunner and a driver.
While in a British hospital he met English girl Rosa Hales and they married before Sage was sent to the Western Front. In 1919 they returned to Australia with a young daughter. They lived in Western Australia, where Sage took up farming.
Russian Anzacs