An ‘Aussie’ looks at the ‘Balts’ and ‘Reffos’ by John Mannion

The aftermath of WWII in Europe was characterised by devastation and misery, which led to seemingly insoluble problems, one of the most difficult being the Displaced Persons. Millions of people were crowded into the UNRRA camps in Germany, Italy and Austria. There were too many to resettle permanently in Germany, a country in chaos where they had been wronged and lacked means of support. 

Many countries including Australia turned their attention to the Displaced Persons and in 1947 Australia launched the "Australia Scheme" under which, eventually, 180,000 DP's would be accepted to increase the population for national security and economic development. Both sides of Federal Parliament agreed that it was essential to increase the rate of migration as a means of attempting to ensure the security of the country. 

The main hindrance was the shortage of ships, but this was resolved by the International Refugee Organisation, which had ships at its disposal to bring them to Australia. 

Commissioned in 1945 as a US army troop transport, the United States Army Transport, the General Stuart Heintzelman was converted to the DP Operations Germany and Austria at the end of 1946. When she sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany on the 30 October 1947, she was on her fifth DP voyage and her first to Australia.

This sketch of the General Stuart Heintzelman was used on one of the newsletters
published on board during the voyage to Australia

She arrived at Fremantle on 28 November 1947. This shipment of 729 men and 114 women from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia heralded the longest phase of planned migration to Australia since the convict days. 

These young and healthy refugees fleeing Communism were all under 40 and had been screened to ensure they were fit and healthy and free of fascist sympathies. They had agreed to be directed to live anywhere and prepared to work at any job in Australia for two years.* 

The majority were destitute and demanded and expected little. They were fleeing destroyed and war-weary countries and had a gutful of Russians, Germans and the European war where they had lived in camps for several years, to a country where the word democracy was more than a word. In return they would help rebuild Australia's resources which were run down and short of manpower after the war, and lay the foundations for future permanent migration. 

Most of the newcomers were to be sent to country areas where they were put to work on farms, mining and quarrying, railway construction and maintenance, road and bridge building and similar major works, along with timber and saw-mill work and food processing.  Termed the “Balts” or “Reffos”, terms not often heard today, they were later known as Calwell’s "New Australians", Eastern European migrants and many other colloquial names. 

On arrival at Fremantle, the Heintzelman passengers were housed in former army camps for several days and then boarded the HMAS Kanimbla, bound for Port Melbourne where they disembarked at East Princes’ Pier on the 8 December 1947. 

This iconic image shows the Kanimbla at berth at Princes' Pier, Port Melbourne, on 8 December 1947, with one of the two trains taking its passengers to their next home, at Bonegilla

Source: National Archives of Australia

Princes’ Pier’s neighbour, Station Pier was to become the gateway to a New World for more than a million newcomers until the last migrant ship, Australis, docked in 1977. Although Princes’ Pier has been dismantled, Station Pier continues as a cruise ship terminal. These days Station Pier also is regarded as a symbol of the mass migration that has transformed Australia, particularly in the post-war period. Internationally, it should rate as highly as New York's Ellis Island. 

The now 839 newcomers on the Kanimbla were first welcomed to Australia by the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, the man who had authorised the program which brought them to Australia.  Then they came down the ship's gangway wearing numbered identification tags and were met by officers of the Department of Immigration. Special trains then took them to Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre in north-eastern Victoria near Albury, NSW. 

The newcomers underwent varying weeks of rest, reception, medical examinations, basic survival-level lessons in English, orientation lectures and job placement. 

Living in a country largely dominated by the eastern states and their capital cities, it was not only Sydney and Melbourne that were influenced by immigration however. South Australia — and we are more than Adelaide — also accepted many Displaced Persons. 

Australians became increasingly aware of the influx of migrants, as did those at Peterborough with migrants numbering 10 per cent of the population of about 4,000 during the ‘60s and '70s. 

To the “outsider” Peterborough was a “railway town” and farmers and graziers generally looked down on "railway people" with suspicion. They even had their own internal Australian Rules Football association — Railways, Towns, Rovers (Catholics) and Terowie — and they played soccer (and so did some of the Aussies) and footy on Sundays! 

But generally the new Australians were accepted “to a man”. Many of them lived and worked in isolated railway settlements along the lines from Port Pirie to Cockburn, Gladstone to Wilmington, and Terowie to Quorn and beyond. 

Port Pirie in the west to Cockburn on the NSW border in the east: by road,
because Google can't find public transport by rail between these two towns;
Gladstone is on the line between Port Pirie and Peterborough,
Wilmington is shown north of Port Pirie, Quorn is north of Wilmington but
Terowie, not shown on this map, is some distance due east of Port Pirie and SSE of Peterborough

Source:  Google Maps © 2024

As time passed however, the Australian people came to realise that these “new Australians” found what they were seeking, the chance to rebuild their lives in their new homeland at a time when Australia was still a colonial country, populated largely by Anglo-Irish migrants. 

Australian society was dominated by “native-born” at the top, with the mentally ill, children (despite the propaganda that babies were the best migrants), Aborigines and migrants generally overlooked. 

A retired Peterborough railway worker once asked me "Where do you reckon Australia would be without the Second World War?" The answer would be very subjective and the man in question did speak with a broad European accent, but there is no doubt that Australia would not be the place it is without the vast number of Europeans who arrived here after WWII. 

For one, we not have the diversity of culture and European family names we now have in our midst, many of which are now accepted “Australian” names, after having married into native-born families. 

The men, women and children identified by these names have several things in common — they came to Australia seeking freedom, and a new start, and they worked for the railways. 

I spoke with one bloke who came from Germany as a four year old, to Peterborough via Bonegilla, Mildura and Woodside camps, with his Polish parents. He doubted if he would or could make the sacrifices his parents made for him and his brother! 

The hundreds of people who contributed to this story did nothing really extraordinary, but they were remarkable people, are proud of their achievements, and deserve to be remembered for making Peterborough and Australia their home, and for their role in the Australian story and our developing culture. 

My interest in post WWII migrants has not waned and I must thank my partner, Helena, for her understanding 20 years ago when I traipsed from one part of the country to the other recording people’s lives. Perhaps it helped that she too is one of those migrants, coming to Australia with her parents and younger brother in 1968 from the Czech Republic. 

In my next blog entries, I will tell you the stories of a couple of the men who I met through the Relaying Our Tracks project. 

* Ann's notes: Arthur Calwell, in a statement to the press and radio, had announced before the arrival of the Heintzelman that all of the Displaced Persons were under 40, but the reality was that 8 were aged 41 to 43. 

Those on the Heintzelman actually had agreed in Germany to one year only of work as directed. The Australian Government changed the requirement to 2 years when it learnt that this was the time expected by Tasmania's Hydro Electric Commission of the former Polish soldiers who had arrived from Britain in October 1947. 

Since this was while the Heintzelman was on the high seas, its passengers were not told about the change until they were in the Bonegilla camp. According to Endrius Jankus, this was not until 20 December and there almost was a riot when the camp Commandant announced the change at an assembly. We have seen already, in relation to Endrius’ story, and will see in some biographies to come that the change continued to prey on the minds of the new arrivals.

Light editing, choice of illustrations and their captions by me.

SOURCE

National Archives of Australia:  Department of Immigration, Central Office; A12111, Immigration Photographic Archive 1946 - Today, 1946-; 1/1947/3/6, Migrant Arrivals - Displaced Persons from Europe - HMAS Kanimbla arrives at Melbourne with the first group of displaced persons (Dec 1947) from where they will join the train bound for Bonegilla Migrant Camp.  They travelled from Europe to Fremantle on the GENERAL HEINTZELMAN and transhipped to the KANIMBLA. CATEGORY: photograph, FORMAT: b&w negative, TYPE: cellulose acetate, STATUS: preservation material, 1947-1947.

Heintzelman's "First Sailing": The First Report

The Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, published on board the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman on 26 November 1947, contains an article headed, 'From Bremerhaven to Indian Ocean'.  Several diaries from the voyage exist still and have been translated, but the Souvenir article is the first overview of the voyage.

Even though published only two days before disembarkation in Australia, it contains no account of the stop in the port of Colombo.  It seems, then, to have been written before 18 November — or else edited for reasons of space.  It is reproduced in whole here, but with some typos and stencil blurs corrected.

'From Bremerhaven to Indian Ocean' heading, missing the initial 'F', from the copy of 'Souvenir Edition' in the Reinhold-Valter Põder collection, Estonian Archives in Australia

If the duration of a sea-voyage is two days, it can be endured; if the duration is five days, you have to accept everything as it comes. But if 28 days are to be spent on a voyage through two oceans and four seas, you simply have to become accustomed to it whether you want or not. The high seas are a world by itself and each ship — an independent state with its own laws and habits of life which frequently differ from those predominating on land.

At the beginning of the voyage one or two of the Australia-bound passengers seemed inclined to ignore this truth, but a few hours in the Bay of Biscay forcibly demonstrated how easily can be disturbed the pursuance of a habit which is, so to say, a foundation of everyday life — the appeasement of a healthy appetite. The ship, initially bearing much semblance to a floating restaurant where each guest is primarily preoccupied with good food, soon assumed the appearance of an infirmary. Suddenly, everybody seemed to have lost interest in guessing the menu for the next meal; delicacies as fried bacon, unctuous potato salad, succulent apricots and smooth icecream ceased to be the main subject of all conversation. 

Instead - moans were to be heard emanating from double-tier bunks, ash-coloured visions staggered along passage-ways, awe-inspiring medicine boxes, bottles and pills passed from hand to hand, accompanied by instructions whispered in a faint, infirm voice: swallow the tablet..., take a teaspoonful of this..., chew the lemon..., hold your breath and turn your eyes toward the ceiling, lie down and adjust your breathing to the rhythm of the waves, lie stomach downwards and try to reach the floor with the toes of your right foot...

Two seasick passengers, 2 November 1947

After this period of weakness, lasting about one and a half days, resisted by only a few super-men, the sea has received its tithe and the pride of the land-lubbers had suffered a fall. Passing the Rock of Gibraltar, our ship had on board 843 subdued, reliable subjects of Neptune, resigned to yield to any whim of the sea-god. His majesty appreciated our sufferings and conversion, graciously permitting the warm sun to play over the blue, quiet waters. Before long, the passengers of General Heintzelman witnessed a second metamorphosis — the ship was seemingly transformed into a rest home and a beach. Heavy overcoats, turned-up collars, mufflers, caps pulled down over the eyes — all disappeared, giving place to rolled up sleeves, shorts and colourful ladies‘ beach suits. 

We thrived under the caresses of the warm Mediterranean sun, the same sun that lends splendour to Nice, Monaco, San Remo, Capri, Sicily, and the fabulous coast of Africa. Consequently, among the swarms of idlers basking in the sun you could observe studious explorers equipped with opera glasses, pointing out notable places; behold the palms of Oran! the southern coast of Sardinia! the Cape of Tunis! the rocks of Pantellaria! Prompted by curiosity in such unheard and exotic names, the laymen gazed with bewildered eyes at the blue, sparkling horizon, vainly endeavouring to catch a glimpse of a shadow of these famous places.

The rocks of Pantellaria (Source: CulturalHeritagOnline)

Our further course continued under the sign of the sun, blue waves and radiant weather, the passengers impatiently counting the miles remaining to be covered to reach Port Said. Egypt...: pyramids, sphinxes, Tutankhamuns, palms, camels, bedouins, tuaregs... Flowing robes and burnouses on the torrid desert sands, fascinating Scheherazades in cool, shady oases greet passing ships piloted by swarthy captains...Much of this unfortunately escaped our sight, the ship anchoring late in the evening in the harbour of cholera-infested Port Said.

Having risen early the next morning, the most zealous students of ancient and modern Egyptian civilisation returned below deck disheartened and quietly started rummaging in their suitcases for discarded pullovers and mufflers: a strong, numbing east wind was blowing across the Canal. The ship glided smoothly along the narrow Canal, the banks of which were adorned by trees resembling malformed seaside pines growing in greyish, powder-like sand. Now and then a recent model Ford or Chrysler would hurtle along the dusty highway running parallel to the canal, or a cyclist would be seen struggling against a strong head-wind. Egypt...but no sign of pyramids or palms. Disappointed, the pessimistically inclined among us returned to their rooms.

The more patient spectators, however, were soon rewarded by sights falling just short of expectations, but inspiring us with a feeling, that we had surely seen enough of this land to justify beginning future narratives with: "When I was in Egypt..."

A traders' boat has been hauled onto the deck, somewhere along the Suez Canal. The only woman in the photo is Galina Vasins (later Karciauskas). Can you identify any of the men?

And now we are once more on the wide stretches of a blue sea. The days pass, one very much like any other, sunny and bright. Mealtimes with their inevitable queues, clatter of metal plates, and thronging in the mess hall, have become milestones in the course of each day. English lessons, choir rehearsals, basking in the sun and the mild wind fill the other parts of the day and in the evening we suddenly realise that one more day has passed. Even if sometimes time seems to stand still, we can always be assured that each day our reliable engines are bringing us 4OO miles nearer to our destination, where a new life and new responsibilities await us. 

Passing the time on deck, from the Aleksas Sliuzas collection

We shall arrive there refreshed, tanned, and imbued with renewed self-reliance in our strength, impaired by the years of despair and misery in Germany. We should like to take advantage of this opportunity to express our feeling of indebtedness to "General Stuart Heintzelman" for its paramount part in our new adventure.

This essay was signed off simply, -d-.  Knowing his later career as founder of the Latvian-Australian newspaper, Austrālijas Latvietis, and book author, the co-editor of the Souvenir, Emils Delins, is the most likely suspect.

Sources:

'CulturalHeritageOnline: Island of Pantelleria', https://www.culturalheritageonline.com/location-2949_Isola-di-Pantelleria.php, accessed 2 October 2021.

Põder, RV, E Dēlinš, and R Mazillauskas, 1947. Souvenir Edition, 1st Sailing to Australia, published at sea aboard the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, 26 November 1947.

General Stuart Heintzelman: The Ship

The Heintzelman was one of 30 C4–S–A1 vessels, troop transports built to the same plan between 1942 and 1945. These ships are known also as the General GO Squier class, after the first of them to be launched.

Heintzelman at anchor, possibly in 1945 (US Navy photo from navsource.org)

The C4–S–A1 design was created for the American-Hawaiian Lines in 1941, prior to the entry of the United States into World War II, but taken over by the United States Maritime Commission in late 1941, initially for cargo ships. All were powered by a single-screw steam turbine delivering 9,900 shaft horsepower, so capable of 17 knots. After an agreement between the US Army and Navy in March 1943 that they become Army troop transports crewed by Navy personnel, all were named after American Generals.

The final ship, the Heintzelman, was launched on 21 April 1945, acquired by the US Navy on 12 September 1945 and departed San Pedro, California, on her first voyage on 9 October 1945. She was built at the Kaiser company’s Yard 3 in Richmond, California. On 12 June 1946, the Heintzelman was transferred to US Army and fitted out to carry 3,142 troops. She was commissioned as the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman on 20 August 1946.

The C4–S–A1 ships could be crewed by 256 men. They were 159 m long by 22 m wide, with a draft of 8 m and a cruise radius of 12,000 miles (19,300 Km).

By mid-1947, there was less military demand for them, so 10 were placed at the disposal of the International Refugee Organisation (IRO). This organisation had been tasked with moving millions of displaced persons from Europe, especially West Germany, at the end of the War. They included refugees from the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States and the Communist takeover of other Eastern European governments, known as the Soviet satellite states.

The IRO passenger configuration required the women to be separated from the men. This meant that no more than 1,000 passengers were supposed to be carried on each trip to Australia and, for that matter, the United States, Canada and some South American countries. On the Heintzelman, the women were ushered into cabins designed for Army officers, four to a cabin. The men occupied the open quarters below deck which had been fitted out for the US Army’s enlisted men.

The Heintzelman made four trips altogether to carry refugees from Europe to Australia. The first, berthing in Fremantle on 28 November 1947, is the one on which this blog concentrates. She brought 822 refugees to Melbourne on 20 April 1948, 1,301 to Sydney on 24 November 1949 and 1,302 to Melbourne on 3 March 1950.

After that voyage, the IRO returned the Heintzelman to the US Navy. Crewed by civilians, she now was known as the USNS General Stuart Heintzelman or T–AP–159. She operated out of San Francisco carrying troops to the Korean Peninsula for another war there. Then she travelled via the Panama Canal to New York for transport duty in the Atlantic and Caribbean. She carried passengers to Bremerhaven, where she had berthed in 1947, to La Pallice in France, to Southampton, England, to Newfoundland in Canada, to Iceland and Puerto Rico.

In 1954, she was laid up, which is to say, she was kept ready to be reactivated quickly in an emergency. Fourteen years later, she was converted to a container ship, the Mobile, deepened nearly one metre, by the Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding Company for the shipping company, Sea-Land Services. Sad to say, on 15 June 15 1984 she was sold to the Han Sung Salvage Co. to be scrapped, after 39 years of great service, at Incheon, Republic of Korea. 

Sources:

Cooke, Anthony, 1992. Emigrant Ships: The vessels which carried migrants across the world, 1946-1972. Carmania Press, London, p 91.

Dictionary of American Fighting Ships, ‘General Stuart Heintzelman’, http://www.hazegray.org/danfs/auxil/ap159.htm, accessed 6 May 2000. 

Charles, Roland W, 1947. Troopships of World War II, Army Transportation Association, Washington, DC, p 115. 

Naval Cover Museum, ‘General Stuart Heintzelman AP 159’, https://www.navalcovermuseum.org/wiki/GENERAL_STUART_HEINTZELMAN_AP_159, accessed 29 September 2021. 

Plowman, Peter, Emigrant Ships to Luxury Liners, NSW Press, Sydney, 1992, pp 36-37. 

Priolo, Gary P, 'USNS General Stuart Heintzelman (T–AP–159) ex USAT General Stuart Heintzelman (1946-1950), USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP–159) (1945-1946)', http://www.navsource.org/archives/09/22/22159.htm, accessed 29 September 2021. 

Sawyer, LA and WH Mitchell, 1981. From America to United States, Part 2. World Ship Society, Kendal, England, 1981, p 72. ‘United States Maritime Commission C4 Type Ships’, http://www.usmm.org/c4ships.html, accessed 31 July 1999. 

Videoinside.org, ‘USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP–159)’, http://videoinside.org/show/USS_General_Stuart_Heintzelman_(AP-159), accessed 14 September 2008. 

Wikipedia, ‘USS General Stuart Heintzelman (AP-159)’, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_General_Stuart_Heintzelman_(AP-159), accessed 29 September 2021.

USAT General Stuart Heintzelman: The Route to Australia

As the Heintzelman neared the Australian coast, a Souvenir Edition of the 1st Sailing to Australia was published on board.  It appeared on 26 November, edited by a team of Reinhold Valter Põder (Estonian), Emils Dēlinš (Latvian) and Romuldas Mazillauskas (Lithuanian).  They must have had typists and artists among the passengers to help them.  

They had the use of the ships roneoing equipment and supplies.  A roneod newsletter was issued for each day of the voyage, but only a few individual copies survive.  Clearly, those who ran the ship had learned already what was necessary to keep their previous US Army passengers occupied and entertained.  Below is the front cover of the Souvenir Edition.

For those of you not old enough to remember, roneoing involved typing or drawing first on a stencil with a wax-coated surface.  The typing was not clear unless the typeface had been cleaned first.  It was hard for the artist to see if their artwork was creating clean lines.  No wonder photocopying took over from roneo stencils in the 1970s!

Fortunately for our interpretation of some places on the map above, there is a list of dates and places elsewhere in the Souvenir Edition.  It advises that:

The Colombo stop was needed to allow the ship to refuel while taking on fresh water and provisions.  It also provided the passengers a few hours ashore in an exotic location.

The 11 pm crossing of the Equator explains why there are no photos in albums of the usual visit of King Neptune and associated rituals.

The Souvenir Edition contains summaries in English of the histories of the three Baltic States, which a foreword confirms are for the benefit of the Heintzelman's crew.  There's other information of continuing interest to descendants of the passengers on this 'First Sailing', such as lists of the senior crew and profiles of their leaders.  An anonymous contributor has written an essay about shipboard life.  These will be added to this blog.

My copy of the Souvenir Edition comes from the archive of its Estonian editor, Reinhold Valter Põder.  This is held by the Estonian Archives in Australia and I thank the Archives for granting access.

Who was General Stuart Heintzelman? by Ann Tündern-Smith

The first refugees from World War II in Europe to be brought to Australia by the Government came on a US Army ship, crewed by the US Navy.  As such, it carried the prefix USAT, for United States Army Transport.  Here is the story of the man behind the rest of its name.

Stuart Heintzelman was the son of a military man, Charles Stuart Heintzelman, and a grandson of an American Civil War General, Samuel Peter Heintzelman.  Samuel Heintzelman had married a Margaret Stuart, explaining his son's middle name and his grandson's first name.

A liberty ship called the SS Samuel Heintzelman had been launched on 30 September 1942, so the later General GO Squier-class transport ship also had to have the younger General's name spelled out in full, as the General Stuart Heintzelman. All the other 29 ships in the Squier class were named after American Army generals but, for most, their rank, initials and family name was sufficient.

Stuart Heintzelman was born in New York City on 19 November 1876. His father had reached only the rank of Captain when he died at the age of 35. Stuart was four years old at the time.

All three generations were graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

 

Brigadier Stuart Heintzelman, Chief of Staff, 2nd Army Corps,

American Expeditionary Force in France on 20 October 1918

(Source:  Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69589269)

Stuart Heintzelman's leadership qualities were evident early in his military career as a cadet. He was the captain of the class gym and track teams, and was elected president of the Cadet Athletic Association. As a star football player, he was an Army letterman, the American equivalent of a sporting "blue" from Australian or British universities.

Upon graduation from West Point in 1899, he was commissioned a second lieutenant. Assigned to the 4th Cavalry in the Philippines, he served there until the following year. He then joined the 6th Cavalry in China and participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion. 

He was an honour graduate of the Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1905, and graduated from the Army Staff College there the following year.  During 1909-1912 and 1914-1916, he was an instructor at the Army Services Schools in Fort Leavenworth.

He married Rubey Bowling, known as Ann, on 14 March 1910.  His wife brought a ten-year-old daughter, Dorothy Ann, into the marriage.

In 1916, he was assigned to Princeton University as a military instructor and was awarded an honorary degree of Master of Arts. 

Then a major, he was ordered to France from Princeton in July 1917, three months after the USA entered WWI. First, he was an observer with the French army during the Chemin-des-Dames offensive.  Then he spent time with the Tenth French Army on the Italian front during the 1917-18 winter.

By June 1918, he had become chief of staff of the Fourth Army Corps, then chief of staff of the Second Army.  In October, he was promoted to the rank of temporary brigadier general.

For his service in WWI, the US Army awarded him a Distinguished Service Medal. This is for clearly exceptional performance outside of normal duties. He had been instrumental in the planning of the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, 12-19 September 1918, in which the Americans and French, under General Pershing, had captured the town of that name from the Germans.  He also had organised the Second Army of the American Expeditionary Force until its commander, General Robert L. Bullard, arrived, at which point he became that Army's Chief of Staff.

The French made him a Commander of the Legion of Honor, and awarded him the Croix de Guerre with Palm, while the Italians named him a Commander of the Order of the Crown.

He reverted to his substantive rank of major on his return from France to America in July 1919.  His first appointment in America was as Director of the Army War College in Washington, DC. 

He was appointed a brigadier-general in 1922.  Further Washington assignments were with the War Department General Staff at Headquarters, where he was in charge of military intelligence, followed by supply and war plans. He was commander of the 22nd Infantry in Hawaii (1924-27); and commander of the Harbor Defenses of Eastern New York (1927-29). 

    

The Command and General Staff School in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1936
(Source: https://www.cardcow.com/24999/fort-leavenworth-kansas-command-general-staff-school/ accessed 31 Oct 2020)

General Heintzelman was the Commandant of the Command and General Staff School at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas for six years. During this time, he was promoted to major-general in 1931.  On 1 February 1935, he became commander of the Seventh Corps Area with headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska.

His wife, Ann Bowling Heintzelman died on 14 April 1935.  In early June, his gall bladder was giving sufficient trouble for him to be sent to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for treatment.  This was followed by an operation from which the General did not recover.  He died on 6 July 1935.

The obituary published in the American press said, "Of a quiet, friendly, forceful personality, General Heintzelman was not afraid to voice his views and was tolerant of the views of others."

He and his wife Ann share a grave in the Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia. 

The headstone of Stuart and Ann Heintzelman's grave, Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia (Photograph: MR Patterson, Oct 2007, at http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/heintzelman.htm)

The ship named after him was launched a decade after his death.

Acknowledgements

I had great help from Karen Kirshner, Sherrill Brown and Pauline Anthony (a relative of the Heintzelmans), all of the United States, two decades ago before there was so much digitised material on the Web.

Sources

Ancestry.com data

Garraty, John A and Mar C Carnes, American National Biography, Volume 10, 1999, New York, Oxford University Press.

Marriage announcement for Dorothy Ann Heintzelman, the Washington Post, 22 July 1923.

Obituaries from the Leavenworth Times, 7 July 1935, page 1, the Sedalia Democrat, 7 July 1935, page 8, and the Kansas City Star, 7 July 1935, page 2A (the latter two available online).

Press release from the War Department, 9 October 1934.

Who Was Who in America, 1897-1942.

 

Why the First Transport? by Ann Tündern-Smith

Updated 11 July 2023

The arrival of 839 refugees in Fremantle on 28 November 1947 was a turning point in the history of  Australia.  The refugees were from the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. They were the first non-British migrants to have their travel to Australia, on the USAT General Stuart Heintzelman, paid by the Australian Government.  The Government also arranged their initial settlement here.

Their arrival was part of the beginning, in 1946-47, of migration to Australia organised  by the Federal Government.

The States had handed their immigration powers to the Federal Government in 1920.  They continued to play an active role in recruiting migrants, especially from Britain, as late as the 1970s and 1980s.  

For its part, the Federal Government did not play much of an active role until Arthur Calwell in 1945 suggested to Ben Chifley that the Australia Government needed a separate Immigration portfolio.  Calwell became its first Minister on 13 July 1945.

Calwell was keen for a prompt start to an immigration program.  He was spurred on by his belief that a larger population would be better for Australia's security, which had been tested time and again during the World War now coming to an end. The start was rather slow, however, consisting chiefly of wives of service personnel.  

Several ships had brought some immigrants to Australia after July 1945 and before the Heintzelman arrived, but these immigrants had the means to pay for their own fares and initial settlement or had sponsors in Australia.  One such ship was the controversial Misr, about which you can read here, https://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/misr/start.html, and here, https://www.destinationaustralia.gov.au/stories/journey/voyage-misr-1947.

The voyage of the Heintzelman was organised by the Preparatory Commission of the International Refugee Organisation (PCIRO) on behalf of the Australian Government.  The Government also ran the arrival program, taking over part of the Bonegilla Army Camp in northern Victoria.  

There the new arrivals received English language lessons if they needed them, attended to bureaucratic requirements such as health examinations and discussed their placements in the workforce with the recently established Commonwealth Employment Service.

The excitement of the Australian press about the start of the program is still palpable to anyone reading the 1947 reports all these years later.  The positive reception of the Baltic refugees led to the Australian Government agreeing to accept another refugee voyage from Europe, which arrived in February 1948.  

The PCIRO became the International Refugee Organisation but the people it sent to Australia, Canada, the United States, South America and even New Zealand were called "displaced persons".  One suggestion is that this name was adopted when the USSR was still one of the Allies at the end of World War II, so as to not offend the Soviets. At this time it was thought that the displaced persons would return home at the earliest opportunity.

Altogether, 149 chartered ships brought to Australia most of the 180,000 and more European refugees who came here between 1947 and 1954.  By this time, many other migrants were arriving also from countries like Malta and the Netherlands, with which Australia had signed migration agreements.  Our post-War program was getting into full swing and continued up to the present COVID-19 interruption.

I have provided more background to the Heintzelman's first voyage (there were three others later as a refugee ship and some as a military ship before the November 1947 arrival) in Bonegilla's Beginnings.  This book is available over the Internet, from http://www.bonegillasbeginnings.com/.  

Egon Kunz wrote Displaced Persons: Calwell's New Australians, which now is out of print but still provides the best overall coverage of what was called officially the IRO Mass Program.

Jayne Persian's book on the Beautiful Balts:  From Displaced Persons to New Australians, first published in 2017, takes a critical look at how the Mass Program often ran to the disadvantage of Displaced Persons.  It was managed to fill what Australians saw as their workforce needs, not to match previous training and experience to vacancies.

In some cases discussed in later blogs, skilled Displaced Persons did manage to find their way back to work which suited them.  Many of the younger ones, students when they left their home countries, never attained the same status that they would have had there.  On the other hand, they were on the other side of the world from the trauma of war and, if they had children, those children were achievers.

My purpose here is to provide the public with some of the lives of those who came on the  Heintzelman's first voyage, known among the European refugees/displaced persons as the "First Transport".  The term "Transport" was used because USAT stood for "United States Army Transport" and 40 of the 149 voyages were on ships with this prefix.  

The first 4 of the 149 voyages were made on "Generals" or "Transport", setting the trend for these ships to be known generically as "transports".  Older Australians who arrived this way still ask each other, "Which transport did you come on?"

The USAT General Stuart Heintzelman at anchor, possibly 1945

(Source:  U.S. Navy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

In an era when not only the Australian public but citizens around the world have been encouraged to fear refugees and displaced persons as "the other", it is important to consider the contributions they can and do make to their new homes.

Some of their lives have been published already on the Web. A leader in the Lithuanian community, Kostancija Brundzaitė, has an obituary at http://www.slic.org.au/News/news_240405.htm.  The life of CSIRO research assistant, Zenta Liepa, from Latvia, is outlined at http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4910b.htm.  Library assistant and philanthropist, Salme Koobakene, from Estonia, is remembered at http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4860b.htm.  Amanda Hickey has written about the life of her Latvian mother, Vera Ludzitis, at https://amandahickey.substack.com/p/a-stolen-story. 

The life of Latvian journalist, Emils Delins, and incidentally, that of his wife who arrived here on the same voyage, Nina-Aurelija Sics, was honoured with an obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald, available at https://www.smh.com.au/national/protector-of-communitys-prosperity-20040419-gdirhx.html. The Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has published a tribute at https://www.mfa.gov.lv/en/news/latest-news/3932-in-memoriam-emils-delins, since Delins served in various consular roles in Australia, culminating in that of Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Latvia to Australia and New Zealand from 1993 until his death.  There is also a brief biography at https://prabook.com/web/emils.delins/566906.  Latvians Online also has a biography, which is unfortunately inaccurate in relation to one date important to this history: https://latviansonline.com/journalist-activist-emils-delins-dies-at-82/.

I intend to post more of lives of First Transport passengers on this blog as time permits.  Meanwhile, I welcome feedback, especially from anyone who can provide detail of the lives of any of the other arrivals on the "First Transport". 

If you are related to someone from the "First Transport", you can join the discussion and memories at https://www.facebook.com/groups/505412590020835/. 

Still wondering if you had a relative on this important voyage?  The complete passenger list is on the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Website, at https://www.immigrantships.net/v10/1900v10/generalstuartheintzelman19471128_01.html.