Dan Armstrong is seeking Waipā residents’ stories about Dr Lindsay Rogers (at left). Photo: Hocken Digital Collections – 41356
The News had great response following the recent article about the “Guerilla Surgeon” Lindsay Rogers.
Wellington-based Dan Armstrong is piecing together Rogers’ story for a biography and sought help from readers of The News.
The “Guerilla Surgeon” Dr Lindsay Rogers (at left) presumably during World War II in Yugoslavia. Photo: Hocken Digital Collections – 41355
When the late Te Awamutu doctor returned to New Zealand 80 years ago, he brought with him clay tablets containing some of the oldest written records. Now Cuneiform Australia New Zealand (Canz) is working to translate and understand the Sumerian clay tablets – dating back more than 5000 years.
Dr Lindsay Rogers OBE was born in Dunedin in 1902 and died in New Caledonia where he drowned in 1962. He practiced medicine in the 1930s in and around Te Awamutu.
He served with the British Royal Army Medical Corps and volunteered for special duty with the British Special Operations Executive and was deployed to Yugoslavia to work with the Partisan forces led by dictator Josip Tito.
Post-war saw a stint in Iraq teaching medicine and acquiring many antiquities, including the Sumerian clay tablets. Rogers’ many experiences of war prompted him to write the memoir Guerilla Surgeon, published in 1957 and republished as recently as 2024.
Researchers hope to publish a book next year detailing the collection Rogers donated to the Otago Museum. It is one of the most significant of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere.
Armstrong, originally from near Taumarunui but who grew up in Te Awamutu, is piecing together Rogers’ story for the book.
The longtime Te Awamutu community advocate learned Rogers’ story in the late 2010s and is grateful to have heard more about him from Waipā residents in the past weeks.
The News received a series of response from in and outside Waipā.
One came from Kate Peacocke who published a Wikipedia page on Rogers in January.
“I grew up in Te Awamutu and was conscious of the lack of a biographical profile although after I did some research found that there many resources to draw on.
She says her parents knew him and his widow Isobel.
“I went to Pekarau School briefly with his adopted sons Hone and Rewi. We also lived next door to Elsie and Ted Murtagh, his faithful friends, whom he mentions as dedicatees in the Author’s Note to the 1957 edition of Guerilla Surgeon. My mother told me that Elsie wrote to him all through the war.”
The community feedback will be helpful in continuing Armstrong’s biographical work.
“I’m overwhelmed at the response from the Waipā community,” Armstrong said. “It just goes to show that Lindsay was so memorable, even 60 years on.”
- See: Looking for tales of a doctor
- Know something more? Email editor@goodlocal.nz
Dan Armstrong is seeking stories about Dr Lindsay Rogers (at left). Photo: Hocken Digital Collections – 41356
