Peter Metser was born on Saaremaa Island in Estonia. Working as an engineer on a ship, he came to Hobart in July 1915 and enlisted in the AIF three weeks later.
He served on the Western Front with the 13th Field Company Engineers as a sapper.
After the war he aspired to become a consul for Russia but when the plan did not eventuate, he moved to Sydney, where he worked as engineer.
Harry Leven was born, most likely, in Kishenev in Moldova. He moved to Western Australia working as a farm labourer and gardener.
He served on the Western Front as a gunner in Howitzer Battery, but soon got sick with trachoma, which affected his vision. He was repatriated to Australia as medically unfit.
After this, he disappears from Australian records, probably because his name may have been misspelt on the enlistment form.
Nicholas d’Orloff was from Riga in Latvia, claimed to be a Count and could speak German, French, Russian and English. Australian police had a list of his aliases and according to their records he was a criminal, convicted for the first time in Adelaide in 1904.
Enlisting in the AIF in Brisbane, he was discharged a few weeks later because of absence without leave. A few days later he was detained at Maryborough for wearing military uniform and was tried by a police magistrate. On suspiction of pro-German sympathies he was jailed and later transferred to a concentration camp for Germans at Liverpool and finally, in 1919, deported from the country
Russian Anzacs