Love of fishing for Digger who served his country
Anzac Day 2021 will mark exactly 80 years to the day during World War II that Arthur embarked to the Middle East as a medic with the Australian forces battling Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps in Libya and Egypt.
Training at Tamworth in 1941, his daughter Lynette wants to chase-up any relatives of the dozens of men who signed his army handkerchief as a memento from that time.
But her father’s love of throwing a line is the one thing she remembers most about him. “He was a fisherman, he loved fishing.
“I grew up in Marrickville (inner-western Sydney), and he’d get on his pushbike in the dark, and he’d go down to the Cook’s River and come back and he’d cook-up all the fish, while it was still dark, before we got up.
“I’ve got photos of him with fish he had caught, my grandmother had a place at Davistown (Central Coast), he’d hire a boat and go out and come back with flathead that big,” she said, indicating with her arms wide.
“He also used to hop in one of the trawlers and go out of Sydney Heads, he once came back with two crabs that were so big, they filled the bath,” she laughed.
Arthur Henry George Robertson was one of the so-called “Hero Generation” — born in the early days of World War I, he and his six brother never hesitated to sign-up barely two-decades later to defend Australia.
“He was only a little man —five foot five, 125 pounds in his army book — but they were all larrikins, they all signed-up, and they all came back,” Lynette said.
Her father was posted overseas with the 2nd/2nd Australian General Hospital (AGH) as a medic embarking from Sydney on Anzac Day, 1941.
“He was over there for nearly two years, and he sent my mother a unit Christmas card from December 1942 saying: ‘We’ve got mud up to our knees, we’ve been covered in mud for five days, but it’s laughs and smiles all-round…wear a big smile for Christmas’.”
Returning from the war with indifferent health, his time in the desert left a lasting legacy, however. “He used to go in the Anzac marches when he was younger, but he got very sick and couldn’t go.
“They were treating him for an ulcer, Mum tried very hard to get him a war pension, but he was working as a metal polisher with Fred Clarke’s (manufacturer), and they couldn’t decide how he got the dust on his lungs, but he would never take days off work.
“He only smoked occasionally… but he died of lung cancer when he was only 51,” Lynette said.
One of Lynette’s mementos from her father includes a khaki army handkerchief signed by the soldiers he did his training with at Tamworth with the date, “March 26, 1941” and dozens of names ranging from “Kidd”, “Forbes”, “Frankel”, “Morton”, “Ryan”, “Starkey”, and “Bray”.
“I’d love to meet someone whose father or grandfather signed the handkerchief, who trained with him, that would be great.”
Lynette comes from a family of service with her grandfather killed at Passchendaele on the western front during World War I, and her father’s cousin, James William Law falling at Tobruk in August 1941.
Her son’s mate, Luke Worsley, also died at Afghanistan in November 2007. Despite all this, she says we all have much to be grateful for this Anzac Day, 2021.
“It’s 80 years this Anzac Day since my Dad was on the ship heading-out — ‘April 25, 1941’ — it’s incredible when you think of it. Do you know, some of them were only kids?” Lynette said.