Russian Anzacs

Onnie Backman from ‘Yarkup’ in Finland was farming in Bunbury in Western Australia before the war.
He came to the Western Front with the 28^th Battalion and was killed during the battle at Pozieres in July 1916.
All attempts to find the non-existant ‘Yarkup’, and Backman’s relatives in Finland, were unsuccessful.

Waldemar Franz von Kroeber was born in a Russianised German family in St Petersburg. He came to Western Australia as a sailor in 1909 and worked on Bunbury jetty as a lumper.
He served with the 16^th battalion on the Western Front. In August 1916 he was gassed and suffered shell shock at Mouquet Farm, but recovered and returned to the trenches. He fought to the end of the war, being several times in hospital with different diseases.
After the war he lived in Fremantle working as a labourer. In 1933 he married an Australian, Eva May Cook. In 1925 he joined the Communist Party of Australia, but although he later left it, he and his family were under observation of the Australian security forces.

Victor Ahl, a Finn from Borga (Porvoo) came to Australia in 1889. He lived in New South Wales and Queensland, working in Kingaroy in Queensland by the time of his enlistment in the AIF.
In spite of his age (he was 45 years old in 1915), he was accepted into the AIF and sailed to the front with the 31^st Battalion. However in Egypt he became sick, was returned to Australia and discharged.
After the war he lived in Queensland, occasionally getting into trouble with police for his drinking problems. In 1924 he succumbed to sickness and died in Roma Hospital.

Vaino Armos Balhorn was born in Finland and, emigrating to Australia, lived in Sydney and Muswellbrook, New South Wales, working on the railway.
Enlisting in the AIF, he served on the Western Front in artillery detachments as a gunner. In January 1917 he remained ‘in telephone dugout to maintain communication whilst their battery was being shelled, after the detachment has been ordered to a flank owing to no cover being available’, as wrote his commander. The dugout was blown up by a direct hit, killing Balhorn’s comrade, while Balhorn sustained a fracture of the base of the skull. He was saved by the gunner Kelly, who dug him out. While Balhorn was in hospital in England came the announcement that he was mentioned in despatches ‘for devotion to duty by remaining’ on his post ‘under heavy fire’.
Repatriated to Australia as medically unfit, Balhorn married an Australian girl, Gladys Louisa Smith, had a family, and worked in the Naval Store department on Garden Island in Sydney. Both his sons served in the Army during the WWII and he himself was awarded the Imperial Service Medal in 1954 ‘for marked devotion in his 35 years service with his department’.