WWII veteran Colin Wagener celebrates 108th birthday and shares his life secret
Born with a weak heart, Colin thought he wouldn't live long – now SA’s oldest surviving WWII veteran celebrates his 108th birthday with a lifetime of incredible stories.
South Australia’s oldest World War II veteran, Colin Wagener, recalls being “a millionaire for a short time” in the most unexpected of locations.
His brief period of overflowing with cash had remarkable significance. A keen photographer and non-smoker, he would swap his wartime cigarette rations for equipment to develop his photos in the dark of night.
He was there when Japanese war criminal Lieutenant General Masao Baba – tried for his involvement in the horrific Sandakan death march – surrendered, capturing key moments on camera.
He was also given the task of burning money seized from the defeated Japanese – today he keeps as a souvenir a sample of the still pristine cash, stored in a plastic sandwich bag labelled “diced beef”.
“Strangely enough, I was given all the ‘invasion money’ to burn. It might have been that I had an honest face,” he laughs.
“There were half a dozen boxes stamped with Yokohama Specie Bank and packed tight with money – I was a millionaire for a short time.”
For 39,420 days, Mr Wagener has led a life well lived and while he reckons he’s “got more things right than I got wrong”, he’s rapt to have been mistaken on one occasion.
Mr Wagener, who describes being the “wrong age – 16 to 17” during the Depression, today celebrates his 108th birthday but never expected to enjoy such longevity.
“This sounds crazy but I was born with a weak heart and up to the age of about seven or eight I couldn’t do very much,” he says.
“It was called a rower’s heart (a heart rhythm disorder) and I thought ‘I’m not going to live long on this one’. But I got that one wrong.”
The spritely centenarian still lives on his 24ha Adelaide Hills farm and chops his own wood, albeit he’s recently swapped an axe for an electric saw. He also visits his local shops daily, cheekily revealing he uses the shopping trolley as his “secret walker”.
This remarkable man, who rates “motor cars” as the greatest invention and plays card games on his computer for fun, warmly greets The Advertiser, visiting with early birthday cheer, at his front door.
There are jokes and laughter as the humble hero, who endured six years of war horror, reflects on his life today – and the growing notoriety that has come with each birthday.
“I said to (son) Paul only this morning, ‘What does it feel like to have a famous father?’,” he jokes.
“(But in reality) I’m overwhelmed and feel very spoilt ... you get to 108 and (people) spoil the old bugger.”
And the secret to his long life? “The best thing, find an ancestor that’s made 100 before you – mine lived 200 years ago. That has to be harder than doing it now,” the Pulteney Grammar School (Class of ‘33) old scholar who loves Tim Tams and crayfish mornay says.
Mr Wagener was in the signals unit – responsible for “telling them when to start firing or turn on the searchlights” – with the 2/3rd Australian Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment (9th division) in Borneo, the only of his unit to live beyond 90.
Mr Wagener, whose SA family would send him dry gum leaves to burn so his battlefield mates could be reminded of home, deflects any reference to his own heroism. “I look at it that we had a job to do at that time,” he says.
But he acknowledges the war left him forever changed, finding solace once home in escaping to the serenity of the bush with his beloved late wife, “bush girl” Peggy.
“That was my escape. Fortunately I had a wife who wasn’t a Rundle St (girl). She didn’t mind hard yakka or campfire cooking and would put a rabbit in the camp oven,” he says.
It would be months after the war ended that Mr Wagener would finally make it home to Adelaide – a moment that remains vivid almost eight decades on.
“It was 10.30 Christmas morning, 1945. When I got off the train … I could have knelt down and kissed the platform – I’d made it,” he says.
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Originally published as WWII veteran Colin Wagener celebrates 108th birthday and shares his life secret
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