Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Reg Trodd was born in Salisbury, England in 1902, the son of Arthur Edward and Eva. During the interwar period, he served as a trooper with the most senior regiment in the British Army, the Life Guards, part of the Household Cavalry, and then as a sergeant in the Territorial Army, the army reserve force in the UK. After emigrating to Australia, Reg married and was living in Essendon and by 1941 he was serving as a Commonwealth peace officer in the Peace Officer Guard, which was responsible for providing physical security at critical government sites.

Reg enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force at Moonee Ponds on 19 June 1941, aged 38, and was medically examined and attested at Royal Park the same day. As soon as he completed basic training at the Australian Army Ordnance Corps depot at Bendigo, Reg was promoted to the acting rank of corporal, and by early September to acting sergeant, no doubt in light of his previous British Army experience and civilian role as a peace officer.

Employed as a clerk, Reg was posted to the 27th Bde Group Ordnance Workshops on New Year’s Eve 1941,  and embarked at Sydney for Singapore on 10 January 1942, arriving there a fortnight later. He reverted to substantive corporal and was posted to 2/10th Ordnance Workshops on 2 February. Captured at the fall of Singapore in mid-February, he was officially posted missing.

On 8 July Reg was allocated to B Force, a group of 8th Division troops which was transported to Sandakan on the eastern coast of Japanese-occupied British North Borneo on the tramp steamer Ubi Maru, and arrived at Sandakan on 18 July. Over 2,000 Allied POWs were held at Sandakan camp, and they were employed in airfield construction. On 22 October 1944 Reg died of stomach cancer while in Japanese custody, aged 41.

He was initially buried near the camp, but after the war the Australian Army Graves Service considered the area to be too prone to flooding for a permanent cemetery, so disinterred all the remains and reinterred them at Labuan War Cemetery. Unlike many of the dead at Labuan, Reg’s grave is known and marked with his name and details, although his rank and unit do not match his service record.