Josef Hammar (born November 15, 1868, in Helsingborg – died August 4, 1927, in Bouzaréa) was a Swedish military surgeon and adventurer.

[1][2] He continued his studies and practice and between March and May, 1894 he attended courses in Berlin and Dresden[1] and visited Karlsbad.

[1] In the summer of 1896, he became a medical field scholar of the 2nd degree[2] and served with The Royal South Skånska Infantry Regiment.

Two years earlier Salomon August Andrée had staged an air balloon expedition to the North Pole.

They start to map the coast southwards making frequent shore raids collecting minerals and hunting animals.

Hammar's main mission was to excavate traces of Eskimo villages and collect ethnographic remains.

Some 278 items found are still in the collections of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm[5] There is an extensive account of this expedition in A.G. Nathorst's books Två somrar i Ishavet (Two summers in the Arctic Ocean).

[6] Later, Josef Hammar became member of Sweden's oldest canoe club, Föreningen för Kanot-Idrott.

[7] Through contacts in Stockholm he got Sweden's foreign minister Alfred Lagerheim together with the Swedish envoy in Brussels, August Gyldenstolpe, to send the following telegram to the South African Republics Consul General in Amsterdam: "Dr. Hammar, 30 years old, military physician and surgeon, with the best recommendations from the Swedish Medical Board and the official representative of The Red Cross, wishes to ask whether he may put himself to the Transvaal Republics disposal.

Travelling through Holland via Italy and the Suez channel he arrived to South Africa and Pretoria in the beginning of December 1899.

The ambulance was staffed with six white and eight black men and featured two ox carts together with 24 oxen, 8 mules and 7 riding horses.

Hammar then participated as a field surgeon in three battles, the storming of Ladysmith where his commando suffered big losses, then one at Spioenkopf and finally the eleven days long battle by Colenzo and Pieterstasie where the British finally managed to relieve Ladysmith.

After the siege of Ladysmith was broken, Hammar's commando moved up to the Biggars mountains under constant shelling.

When he arrived there however the railroad to Pretoria was cut off and the British seized Johannesburg and advanced on their position and the Boers fled.

Dressed in a single set of thin clothes he rode over the entire Transvaal, over Ermelo and Carolina to the railroad in Machadodorp where he arrived on June 20 after ten days in the open.

From Machadodorp Hammar managed to take a train to Delagoa Bay where he arrived in the clothes he was carrying and no money.

On June 25, 1900, he arrived to Pietermaritzburg to the home of his brother August and his family who was living all this time on the British side of the conflict.

During the conflict his views changed as he experienced the undisciplined state of their forces, their poorly organized supplies and their general mindset.

[1][7] After attending a military physician training in the autumn he got a posting as battalion doctor at The Royal Position Artillery Regiment.

Then he boarded the Schenellendampfers "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse" on June 8, 1904, to cross the Atlantic with a seat at Herr Capt.

He arrives in Hoboken, New Jersey and stayed at Hotel Naegeli on June 14, then onward by Pullman train to Chicago.

Here he changed for Overland Limited and Union Pacific to San Francisco where he arrives on June 18, just 10 days after he left London.

Hammar immediately went to Tokyo where he sorted out all formalities meeting with the Japanese war minister General Terauchi Masatake.

The book contained a description of how the Japanese field medical care was organized and Hammar was instructed to read this before he was permitted to visit any military hospitals.

[13] Hammar stayed at the front by Port Arthur for four months visiting dressing stations, field hospitals and other medical departments of the Japanese army.

First stop was Shanghai followed by Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Port Said and finishing in Marseille.

Josef and Hulda had four children: When Hammar arrived back to Sweden he performed lectures and wrote the article "About the medical service in the Japanese third army"[17] about his experiences from the Russio-Japanese war.

Because he had unique experiences from warfare (not common in Sweden at that time) he was assigned as extra assistant at the Swedish Army Administration's healthcare agency 1905 - 1907.

In spring 1912 he gets a government grant to study food distribution at the Austrian army for von Noorden Archived 11 November 2017 at the Wayback Machine in Vienna.

[2][7] Hammar tried to settle down in Ystad, bought a big house, cultivated fruit and vegetables, went biking and took long walks but to no avail.