Survivor Eric Roedinger dies at 106
From the "West Australian"
1 October 2016
"Oldest digger off to join his mates"
Eric Roedinger, who has died at 106, endured great hardship and cruelty. The ANZAC Day parade has lost its oldest Digger. Thai-Burma Railway survivor Eric Roedinger died on Sunday aged 106, five months after thousands lined the streets of Perth to show their gratitude. There was more to Mr Roedinger than his military service. He was a loving father, grandfather and great-grandfather and a beloved member of the Church of Christ in Rockingham. But his experiences in World War II represent a harrowing chapter of Australian history. He last visited the Thai-Burma Railway when he was 93, walking 5km to Hellfire Pass, originally know as Konyu Cutting to the prisioners of war.
The West Australian journalist Roy Gibson joined veterans on their pilgrimage that year and remarked that Mr Roedinger could have been a man 20 years younger. Gibson struggled with the heat and the emotions as he walked a line that had cost Australians so dearly. When the group reached a section known as the seven-metre embankment, a fellow veteran reminded Mr Roedinger he had helped build it. He replied simple that he remembered 'moving a bit of dirt'. He didn't say too much but when he spoke people listened.
Mr Roedinger contracted beriberi and malaria in his eight months moving dirt on the eailway where 2646 Australians died. He also looked after his younger brother, Claude, who was taken prisioner with him in Java during a poorly planned stand against the Japanese in March 1942. Claude fell gravely ill with cholera but he made it out alive with the help of his brother and a medical team led by Sir Edward 'Weary' Dunlop. Eric and Claude were in the 2nd/3rd Machine Gun Battalion. Their brother Keith, 95, and the last of them alive, was a gun Mosquito pilot with the Royal Australian Air Force 456 Squadron. Once the railway was finished, Eric and Claude were sent from Singapore to Japan on a dilapidated boat the POW's called Byoki Maru - the sick ship. It was barely seaworthy but it ran a gauntlet of US submarines and bombers before dodging a typhoon in the South China Sea. The Australioans crammed aboard agreed whoever was at the helm was some kind of skipper.
By the time the atomic bombs fell on Japan, Mr Roedinger was working on a coal mine in Ohama. He was underground on August 9. 1945 when a bomb exploded to the south. Unlike most bombs that shook southern Japan, this one did not hit the ground, detonating 500m above Nagasaki, killing tens of thousands and triggering the war's end. The 35-year-old had survived Changi prison camp, the Death Railway, an epic voyage aboard the Byoki Maru and more than a year at a camp roughly halfway between Nagasaki and Hiroshima. All up it had been 3 1/2 years of physical and mental hardship but the stoic farmer from Dowerin could take it.
His daughters, Wendy Roedinger and Dawn Burr, often heard about the lighter moments of the war from their father. He regaled them with tales of clandestine trades made with locals through wire fences and Diggers getting one over the guards. He was teaching POW's about butchering one day when a guard took his sketches in case they were plans for an escape.
But he rarely spoke about the disease, the cruelty or the men he saw beaten to death. 'He would always tell us the funny stories' Ms Roedinger said 'I'd say, But how did you cope Dad?' and he'd say 'Well, I knew it wouldn't last forever'.
'That's the attitude he had. He was the most steadfast man, he put one foor in front of the other. He never complained much about anything because I don't think he found him,self that important'. He might not havr found himself important but he always attended the memorial services to represent his battalion. His birthday fell on April 24 but the next day took pride of place on his calendar.
For the last few Anzac Day parades, his daughter pushed him in a wheelchair while he smiled at the growing crowds.
Perhaps they reminded him of his homecoming and the people waving Australian flags along the shores of Sydney. He remembered singing Bing Crosby's Don't Fence Me In over and over on the journey home. Hardened soldiers were reduced to tears by the sight that greeted them when they returned.
Mr Roedinger went back to farming after the war with his brother Keith near Cunderdin, until he retired aged 70. Even in later years in Rockingham, he spent much of his time weeding along the foreshore. He was used to being productive.
He was due to go to the Perth Royal Show on Monday with his six-month-old great-grandchild before he died peacefully in the company of his daughters. Now he is one of the Diggers Australians vow not to forget.
Those closest to him do not need reminding. 'He was just a very even-tempered man - patient, gentle, kind and loyal' Ms Burr said. 'I think that might be why he lived so long. He didn't have any of the angst that other people have'.
--------------------
The oldest living WWII POW's are now Geoffrey Rowley-Conway (9th Baron Langfield) born 8 March 1912 and Dr William Frankland born 19 March 1912, both 104.