Australians at War Film Archive Arthur Rodger
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Australians at War Film Archive Arthur Rodger - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 30th January 2004 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1440 Tape 1 00:36 We’ll start Arthur by [asking you to tell] us your life story. I was born in Newtown, Sydney on the 5th October 1917 and I came back to Queensland after six weeks because my mother, [she] just went down to Sydney to be with her mother while I was being born. 01:00 I started school at Goodna State School but my father worked on maintenance at the Asylum at Goodna. Being a stonemason there was no stonemasonry work at the moment, so the family, the mother and the four of us, that’s the two sisters and the brother, went back to Sydney, and stayed with our grandmother at Ashfield. I went to Croydon Park State School 01:30 there for a while. The father was going to come down but he didn’t because he got work. He started work on the Brisbane Town Hall as a stonemason in 1924. So we all came back to Brisbane and stayed at Kangaroo Point until we found a house. I went to Kangaroo Point State School for a little while and then they bought a house at Coorparoo. I finished primary school our at Coorparoo State school. 02:00 An item of note, one of my classmates was Dick Braithwaite who was one of the survivors of the Sandakan death march [while prisoner of the Japanese] and also he played with me in Australian Rules, in the first Australian Rules Schoolboy competition held in Queensland, and we got, I think it was Essendon guernseys. They 02:30 sent them up with the red collar and red cuffs on the sleeves, the long sleeves. Of course the long sleeves have gone now from Australian Rules. Anyhow, I passed scholarship in 1931 and did various things during the Depression. I eventually got apprenticed to Harry Duffle as a painting and decorating contractor. I finished up serving my 03:00 time there. Now Henry Duffle was my original boss but he died of pneumonia in 1936 and his son, Stan took over, and continued my apprenticeship, but Stan was a bit religiously inclined, and connected with the Holy Trinity church at Warragamba. 03:30 He decided to become a missionary and he transferred my indentures to James Small, which was the largest painting contractor at the time in Queensland. Stan went up to Madang as a missionary and when the Japs landed in early February 04:00 1942, he along with the others, were beheaded [by the Japanese] , and became one of the Madang Martyrs. I’ve written to the Anglican focus and I can’t understand why they put him down as “J” because nowhere throughout my life of working three years beside him every working day of the week, was he ever known as any other name but Stan. His mother and father called him Stan. His brother and sister called him Stan and at funereal recently 04:30 at Holy Trinity, I talked to two elderly ladies, and they knew Stan, and by no other name. Anyhow, I finished my apprenticeship and of course the war had started, and we had a phoney war, as you would know. It ceased to be phoney about the beginning of April 1940. My mate Jim, we’d been mates since about 1935, he said, “ I’m going up to enlist.” I said, “I’ll go up with you.” 05:00 So that’s how we enlisted on, I think it was the 5th June 1940 and we joined the anti-tank regiment at Redbank. Then we went overseas in October 1940 to Palestine. There was no Israel then and we stopped off, we went over in the Queen Mary from Sydney, first of all to Fremantle 05:30 and picked up the old Aquitania, and Mauritania. Those three ships carried the 7th Division to the Middle East but they wouldn’t take us in those big ships beyond India. So we all disembarked at Bombay and they shunted us up to Poona, which was an 06:00 English hill station. I’ve got a photo of a snake charmer playing outside the barracks up there. Anyhow they reorganised the convoy on smaller ships because they wouldn’t take those big ships up the Red Sea because the Italians still had Abyssinia, which is Ethiopia now and they wouldn’t have enough room to manoeuvre if they were bombed. 06:30 Anyhow, we went up to El Kantara and disembarked there but a few of didn’t. We went up with the baggage party as far as Port Said to make sure all the regiment equipment had been taken off. Then we went to a place called Castina in Palestine, which is up a little bit from Gaza, towards Jerusalem, had a day’s leave at Jerusalem 07:00 at one stage. It’s only an overview but anyhow, then we went over to Egypt. Seven or eight batteries stopped at Mersa Matruh, five and six went up to the front. So then they recalled us because the Germans looked like using the Vichy French to control Syria and Lebanon, and they called it the Syrian Campaign but the majority was fought in Lebanon. Anyhow we went 07:30 over there, I think it was in June, yeah June 1941. Our section of the regiment supported the attack on [Merdjayoun] , which comes into a lot in the Israeli, Arab conflict now. It was an old crusader town, 08:00 like a fort, with even with a big gate. The road leading up to it had a big gate. Anyhow, we finished up taking that and went through there, and we always acted as support to the infantry companies as they went forward. Then, when that had been finished, when the war was concluded and I was there at the conclusion, we were behind our gun, and 08:30 early in the morning, about five o’clock, down the road, came about five or six blokes. They’ve got a big white flag up on a pole, waving it back and forwards, you know, as a flag of truce. I saw them. Well we all saw them coming down to say the war was over. So we stayed there, had a trip around Syria 09:00 and even went to Damascus, to Iraq and Aleppo, and those places. Then the war started of course, by Japan entering the war by bombing Pearl Harbour and it was on for young and old. I don’t belong to any political party but I often in hindsight, often thank 09:30 [Prime Minister John] Curtin because you had to be a very strong man to resist [British Prime Minister] Churchill. Churchill wanted us, right or wrong, to go to Burma. Curtin said, “Right or wrong you’re coming home”. So we all arrived home. We left Port [Tewfik] and we went to India, Cochin, which is a port in the old Portuguese enclave of Goa, and buried there in the church 10:00 was Vasco da Gama [first circumnavigator of the world] and we saw his, just like in Westminster Abbey we saw his name, and everything was set into the floor. It wasn’t an upright grave. It was a slab set into the floor with all his names on it. Anyhow, we were on the old Empire Galleon, which was a coal burner. They started off 10:30 and we started off with them but they sent us back because we couldn’t keep up with the seven knot convoy. So we went back to Cochin for a few days. Then they said, “Oh well, you’ve got to give it a go.” So we gave it a go and one moonlight night we were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and there was smoke on the horizon away to our left, and we being in a coal burner, there’d be smoke there, and we didn’t know if it was friend or foe but we soon 11:00 found out. He went one way and we went the other, so he must have been a friend. So anyhow, we come home through the monsoon season too and only a 6,000 tonner, and the seas, you’d be leaning on the roll on the deck, and the seas were higher than the deck but they were smooth seas. There was no danger, so it wasn’t a cyclone or a hurricane. It was just a monsoonal whatsername. [storm] As we got back to Adelaide after about twenty-one days, you could have nearly walked as fast but 11:30 Ronnie has still kept the telegram I’ve still got it, “Arrive safely. Leave uncertain.” We were in Adelaide and then we came up to Woodford through various ways. We were up there on well I think it was the de facto Brisbane line, up around Woodford and those places. It stretched through to Dickie Beach 12:00 at Caloundra and that was all criss-crossed with barbed wire. They had a notice on the noticeboard they wanted volunteers for an independent companies, so about a dozen or so of us volunteered then. We didn’t know what an independent company was. I don’t know if we would have known but anyhow, after about a year they renamed them commando squadrons and we camped down at Ascot Racecourse while they 12:30 sorted us out.