Reg Dodsworth

Remembrance Day

My dad Reg Dodsworth served in the Merchant Navy in WWII. He was torpedoed twice. The first time was during a hazardous North Atlantic crossing. He and other survivors of the SS Sterlingshire ( formerly Clan MacDonald) sinking were picked up by Empire Puma in heaving waves and freezing temperatures, despite wartime orders not to break convoy. His next ship the Clan MacDougall was on its way from Liverpool to Sydney when a German sub sunk it off the Cape Verde Islands, with a loss of several lives. After being shipwrecked on a remote island for weeks and living off fish and seagulls, his group was rescued and off-loaded in Freetown. He worked his way home on various cargo ships, the last one being the Centaur. On the trip from Singapore to Fremantle the Centaur encountered lifeboats adrift with German survivors from the battle between HMAS Sydney and Kormoran, where 645 Australians died. The crew took on board 165 prisoners of war and delivered them to Freemantle. The Centaur dropped him in Brisbane and continued on to service New Guinea with cargo deliveries. A year later the Centaur was refitted as a hospital ship. A Japanese mini-sub committed a war crime and sunk it off Stradbroke Island with a loss of 268 medical personnel and patients. Before the war my dad was a strong swimmer and avid fisherman. After his war experience he never swam in the ocean and never ate fish or fowl again. My Dad was straffed, burned, almost drowned twice, had shrapnel in his legs, saw men die and found atheism. He despised the glorification of war but never missed Remembrance Day to be with his comrades who understood the horror that changed them forever. I am proud that he was one of many heroes who fought the white supremacist nazi fascists. #Lestweforget.