John Amolin, a Latvian from Riga, served on the trading vessels as a seaman, landing in Australia in 1911. He worked as a miner in Broken Hill.
He arrived at Gallipoli with the reinforcements of the 16th Battalion in May 1915 and was killed in action on 23 August 1915.
After the war his cousin Jan Rosiang, who also served in the AIF, learnt that Amolin’s father died in 1916 and his two brothers were killed by Bolsheviks in 1920. The Australian government paid Amolin’s mother a pension till her death in 1952.
Charles Riedel from Sosnowiec in Poland was probably of German descent. Before the war he worked as a labourer in Mount Barker in South Australia.
He arrived at Gallipoli with the 10th Battalion reinforcements in May 1915 and later served on the Western Front. He was killed in the battle for Mouquet Farm in August 1916.
Alexander Popoff was of ethnic Russian descent, from Vologda. His mother Neonila Kaverzneva was the wife of a priest. Alexander came to Australia as a seaman and enlisted in the AIF in Sydney.
He served at Gallipoli and the Western Front and was killed in action in the battle for Poziers in July 1916.
His family in Russia was never found, and there are grounds to believe that his younger brother Ivan Kavrznev was arrested during Stalin’s purges of 1937.
Russian Anzacs