A CENTURY NOT OUT …KEITH BATS ON

On June 6 1944, a young Flying Officer, Keith Roediger, made 46 runs in a winning score of 4/190, that the Australian airmen made against a Sussex XI.

Like another famous warrior, called Drake, who played bowls, Roediger had time to play his game while a great air Armada swept overhead. D Day was on.

On Tuesday, May 25^th, Keith brought up his century-in years- after a distinguished life, not only as a night fighter pilot in WW2 but also as a respected York farmer and Church elder.

A fine baritone singer and biographer he recorded songs and life experiences at 83.

In the book Air Power Over Europe, author John Herrington, described  the Roediger effort, in the skies, as ‘outstanding.’ He shot down nine of his squadron’s 24 hits against Hitler’s VI rockets- the best individual performance of 456sqn, a unit with the second highest tally of all Australian squadrons flying in the RAF.

Keith also scored ‘kills’ against the Luftwaffe, notably the JU88s.

Understandably the German origins of his name were the subject of some scrutiny by an Air Force selection panel of 1940 but Keith managed to convince them. But for a wandering German grandfather, who settled in South Australia, (in 1849), Keith may well have been a Luftwaffe ace instead of an Australian one.

His eventual posting to the European war zone came in 1942 and it was an eventful journey for the nine airmen aboard an old tramp steamer, en route. A violent storm nearly capsized them and there was constant engine trouble during the long diversionary route towards Antarctica to South America,to avoid U Boats.

Later, the trip, from New York to Scotland, was made in convoy and 20 of the 100 ships never made it. In fact the ship that transported Keith and other airmen was sunk in the North Sea after they were unloaded.

Flying a Mosquito Keith was teamed with navigator Bob Dobson. “This is where my faith helped me. I never suffered from ‘butterflies’ and Isaiah 51:12 was my comforter (‘I am He who comforts you: who are you that you should fear mortal man…’)

There was at least three occasions he would need that assurance.

On one mission after being shot up by two Luftwaffe planes a fire started in the manifold of their plane. Scuttling for cloud cover they managed to extinguish the flames and elude attackers. Then followed a hazardous landing, with cloud cover down to 500 feet; followed by the next piece of drama when attempting to land on one engine. Initially, they approached too fast and had to pull out- something seldom done successfully.

Perhaps their most skilful landing took place near Melsbroek, Belgium. Returning from the Ruhr Valley the plane began to ‘ice-up’ and although ground control advised them to bail out the firm of Roediger & Dobson preferred to remain in business, rather than become prisoners of war the fate that happened to two of Keith’s older soldier-brothers, Claude and Eric, fighting the Japanese. (Both survived the war, the latter passing away five years ago, at 106)

The landing, by ‘wing and a prayer,’ at a strip, recently captured by the Allies, was under the three searchlights and a soldier flying flares into the night sky. The next morning they discovered that they had pulled up only six or seven metres from a telegraph pole and that huge craters were on either side of the runway, which had been hastily repaired after bomb damage.

But the worst moment, for Keith, was when an intelligence officer told him that a ‘buzz bomb’ he had shot down had wiped out a village of 21 people. “He told me it would have been worse if it had fallen on London but it still hurt,” Keith said.

His other big disappointment was when he returned home to find his father and all the other church elders had passed away. Instead Keith was appointed a Church of Christ elder, a position he held from thereon, either at Northam or York.

Cricket lovers may recall stylish EnglishTest batsman, David Gower once buzzing a cricket match but Keith did the same thing, earlier, during his war, by buzzing the unit commanding officer, Keith Hampshire, as the OIC was giving a lecture. He was sent on a commando training course as a penalty!

Farming at York, also had some dramatic moments for the Roediger family. In 1973 he was working in a paddock, two miles from the house and had promised his wife,Eva, he would be home for lunch. But at 10.45am, while sheltering under a tree that was hit by lightning he had a large limb fall on him. Regaining consciousness at 2.45 pm he was found soon after and set free by a son-in-law.

However, Keith was paralysed to the waist, couldn’t move his head properly and had three months of severe pain. Specialists were baffled but a physiotherapist called Ivan Martinovich, an unqualified man of Serbian background, wasn’t.

He was an answer to prayer according to Keith. “After describing my back as a mess he went to work and over four sessions he had fixed me. Ivan was a genius of the practical but not of English, which was needed to gain his qualifications,” Keith said.

Today, Keith Roediger is in a Rockingham retirement home, still enjoys reading and his faith is stronger than ever. He still agrees with the 1939 Christmas message of his sovereign, George VI, quoting Minnie Louise Haskins: “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me light that I might tread into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God: that shall be better than light and safer than a known way.’ ”

Keith Roediger’s life has proved the wisdom of the message….a well played century.