Matti Puhakka, a Finnish seaman from Oulu, came to Australia in 1910 and worked as a horse driver.
Enlisting in the AIF in Brisbane, he served with the 47th and 49th battalions on the Western Front. In March 1918 he was wounded in the forearm, but returned to the front after his recovery.
After the war he married in Finland and brought his wife Hulda Katherina Pulkkenen to Australia. They lived first in Melbourne and then in Sydney, while Matti continued working as a seaman. In 1936 he was accidentally killed aboard the SS Wanganella.
Maximilian Kipman came from a well-off, cultured Polish family; he was born Copenhagen, Denmark, while his parents were travelling in Europe. Spending some time in Switzerland and England, he came to Australia in November 1914 together with his younger brother Stanley Kipman. They settled in Sydney and worked as cashiers.
Maximilian volunteered to the army but was rejected; on the 5th of May 1917 he was accepted as a member of the clerical staff, working in the Quartermaster section of Liverpool camp. He also worked in the Censor’s staff as an interpreter. In July 1917 he was discharged in order to join AIF. He was allocated to the Engineer Officers Training School, but discharged two months later. One the reasons for this could have been denunciations of his ‘pro-German’ sympathies sent in by the members of the public.
After the war Maximilian worked as a piano tuner in Sydney and NSW; later he became a liqueur salesman. In 1922 he married Henrietta Christina Mclean, whom he later divorced. His second wife, Florence Hooke, died due to an attempted abortion.
Stanley (Stanislaus) Kipman, the younger brother of Maximilian, was born in Warsaw, travelled all over Europe and came to Australia in 1914.
He applied to enlist in the AIF in 1914, 1915, and 1916, but was rejected for medical reasons. Finally, like his brother, he was accepted in the Quartermaster section of Liverpool camp. After two months he was discharged to join the AIF. He was accepted to Home service and posted to the wireless section, but was discharged in January 1918 as medically unfit. The denunciations against his brother could have affected his army career as well.
After the war he lived in Sydney, working as a piano tuner. In the late 1920s he moved to the USA, where he settled in Oakland, California.
Jacob Danoff, a Russian seaman from Levaia Rossosh in Central Russia, came to Australia in 1913 and worked as a labourer. He was active in the radical Russian community in Brisbane.
Enlisting in the AIF in Brisbane, he was allocated to the Mining Corps reinforcements, but discharged the next year because of ‘mental disease’.
Russian Anzacs