ROBERTS, Henry
Service Number: | VX39985 |
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Enlisted: | 4 March 1941 |
Last Rank: | Lance Corporal |
Last Unit: | General / Motor Transport Company/ies (WW2) |
Born: | London, England, 13 July 1893 |
Home Town: | Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria |
Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
Occupation: | Governor's Butler |
Died: | 1960, cause of death not yet discovered, place of death not yet discovered |
Cemetery: | Not yet discovered |
Memorials: | Ballarat Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial |
World War 2 Service
4 Mar 1941: | Enlisted Private, VX39985 | |
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6 Sep 1946: | Discharged Lance Corporal, General / Motor Transport Company/ies (WW2) |
Help us honour Henry Roberts's service by contributing information, stories, and images so that they can be preserved for future generations.
Add my storyBiography contributed by Robert Kearney
Researched and written by Historian and Author Tony Wege
The Governors’ Butler: VX 39985 L/Cpl Henry Roberts
Henry Roberts was, in his civilian occupation, a professional butler. He led a rather unique life. Born in London, he served in the Royal Navy during the Great War. When Lord Jellicoe, the British commanding admiral in May 1916 at the huge naval Battle of Jutland became Governor-General of New Zealand in 1920, Henry Roberts went with him as his personal butler. There must have been professional contact between them whilst both were in Royal Navy service for this to happen. Following the return of Admiral Jellicoe to England in 1924 (and probably Henry Roberts with him), during the next decade or more, Roberts secured positions on the domestic staffs of at least three households of the British aristocracy. This included the first Earl of Balfour who had been the Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1902. Later, Henry Roberts became the personal butler to the newly appointed Governor of South Australia Sir Winston Dugan when Dugan took up the position of the King’s representative in SA in 1934.[i] Governor Dugan on arrival in Adelaide, couldn’t find locally a personal butler to the standard the position required. Henry Roberts who was working somewhere in England as a butler to an influential British family, was contacted and agreed to come to Adelaide as butler to Governor Dugan.[ii]
During 1937, 1938 and the first half of 1939, Henry Roberts spent much of his off-duty time as an amateur actor and valued member of the Repertory Theatre Company of Adelaide. With the later move of Sir Winston to become the Governor of Victoria in July 1939, Henry Roberts went with him to continue his position of personal butler to the now Victorian state governor, a move which ended his theatre appearances in Adelaide.
Henry Roberts enlisted into the 2/AIF at Royal Park Melbourne in early March 1941. At the time he was 47 years old (born in 1893). He must have responded to the newspaper notice from the army wanting drivers. He enlisted, probably with the governor’s blessing, stating, incorrectly (ie fibbing), that he was born on 13 July 1895, just four months inside the upper age limit of 45 years. He wasn’t alone in stating an incorrect date of birth when enlisting!
Roberts had a special skill officers of the embryonic 2/4 RMTC were looking for when building the company. He could drive a vehicle, a skill he had used on occasions helping to drive Sir Winston about both in Adelaide and Melbourne. No doubt commanding officer Major Joel Harris also recognised the inherent discipline and order that Henry Roberts brought when carrying out his duties soon after he arrived at Caulfield. These would have been just the aspects of character Harris wanted amongst his headquarters group that would go a long way into moulding his growing and rather disparate company of men into the type of unit he wanted. It is more than likely Roberts worked in Harris’ HQ sub-section, in all probability as his batman (personal servant) and/or one of his drivers.[iii] Sometime later during this building phase, Roberts was to be promoted to the august rank of lance-corporal.
Like most of the 2/4 RMTC personnel, Henry Roberts sailed for Malaya in April 1941 on board the modern Dutch liner Nieuw Amsterdam and served in the company throughout its time in the Malayan theatre. He was captured upon the fall of Singapore. Lance/Corporal Henry Roberts was to serve on the Thai-Burma Railway during the PoW period probably in “A” Force. His health deteriorated badly as he along with all PoWs suffered from Japanese brutality in all its guises. From about 1944, he suffered badly from beriberi and underwent the limited treatment the PoW doctors could manage. He was in hospital in Thailand a very sick man when the Japanese surrendered.[iv]
Post war and following a long period of hospitalisation in Melbourne, he was discharged from the army in September 1946. It is likely a very much weakened Henry Roberts stayed in Melbourne after discharge. Amongst other maladies, he was still suffering from the effects of beriberi and required continuous out-patient treatment. Whether or not he returned to his former job as butler to Sir Winston Dugan who was still the governor of Victoria is not known. Dugan completed his governorship of Victoria and returned to England in February 1949. Maybe Henry Roberts at that point, shifted to Adelaide. What is certain, he lived in Adelaide from the very early 1950s moving amongst the many close friends he had from his pre-war time working at Government House. These people included members of the Adelaide Repertory Theatre Company and other actors and actresses from other similar companies many of whom were the same people he knew and performed plays pre-war. These people, all of whom were genuinely concerned about his well-being, did their best to help and care for him as he tried to recover his compromised mental and physical health, particularly the continuing effects of beriberi and tropical ulcers. Henry Roberts persisted as best he could to maintain an active role in the theatre which for him was so important in his recovery. He served several years on the board of the Repertory Theatre and appeared occasionally acting in plays up to 1955 at least.
Despite all that his friends did for him, and the continuing treatment he received at Daws Road Military Hospital Adelaide (the former 105 AMH) throughout the 1950s for beriberi and lingering tropical ulcers on his legs, he never recovered from the three and a half years of trauma he suffered as a prisoner of war of the Japanese.
Henry Roberts, butler to imperial governors, sailor, soldier, amateur actor and long-suffering victim of the horrors of being a prisoner of war in Changi and the Thai-Burma Railway, died in 1960 real age 67 years. He was buried under the auspices of the Office of Australian War Graves at the Centennial Park cemetery, Adelaide.
[i] Dugan, a well-connected major-general of the British army, had served in the Great War and several minor peacetime colonial roles in the 1920s and 30s. He was typical of the more elderly and redundant senior military officers the Dominion and Colonial office of the British government appointed in those times as governors to far flung outposts of the empire.
[ii] From an on-air interview with Mr Peter Goers, 891 ABC Adelaide radio presenter, 25 November 2020.
[iii] It is confirmed by the company’s Routine Orders that Roberts drove Major Joel Harris’ Humber Super Snipe staff car in July 1941 with the CO on board when the company was on operations in Malacca, Malaya.
[iv]His release was announced in the Melbourne “Herald” 13 September 1945 page 2.