Arthur Kadak

Alias Kodak (naturalisation)     Estonian spelling Kadak

Born 24.03.1891    Place Revel (Tallinn), Estonia     Ethnic origin Estonian    Religion Russian Orthodox

Father Kadak, George      other -

Arrived at Australia

            from Buenos Aires    on 4.02.1910      per Dorridon    disembarked at Newcastle, NSW

Residence before enlistment Brisbane

Occupation 1915 compositor, sailor (had 2nd mate’s certificate); 1943 storeman

Service

service number 1905   enlisted 5.07.1915 POE Brisbane

unit 26th Battalion   rank Private

place Western Front, 1916       casualties WIA 1916

final fate RTA 13.02.1917       discharged 24.08.1917 MU

Naturalisation 1943

Residence after the war Brisbane, Sydney

Wife Alice Kodak (née Lynch), married 1931

Died 1945

Materials naturalisation (NAA) (Kodak)

digitised service records (NAA)

court martial file (NAA)

From Russian Anzacs in Australian History:

Some men were pushed out into this nomadic way of life during the depression years and Arthur Kodak’s story, revealed as it crops up from time to time through the official correspondence of different departments, gives us a glimpse of one such tragedy. Severely wounded at Pozières (with gunshot wounds to the head and chest), he was unable to return to being a seaman when he arrived back in Australia, and worked as a labourer in the Sydney area. In 1931 he married an Australian woman and applied for naturalisation, stating in his application: ‘I am a staunch supporter of Labour and unfortunately I am unable to utilise the franchise. … I am unemployed and unable to pay the sum required by the amended act.’ The department refused to waive the fee. In 1933 Kodak, still unemployed, again applied: ‘I humbly pray the Commonwealth Government … to exempt me from the usual fees as an act of grace and recognition of my service and physical disabilities received in defence of the Commonwealth during the war’ — and was again refused. Sickness and poverty dragged him down even further, as becomes evident from a letter he wrote in 1937 while in Lidcombe State Hospital, applying for duplicates of his medals and a copy of his discharge certificate: ‘On or about 15 October 1936 I was camping out at “La Perouse” N.S.W. (unemployed camp) in a sudden storm my camp was destroyed and all my belongings were carried away by tornado and stormwater in the sea’. Later, writing his thanks for the medals, he adds, ‘I lost them at the time when I was canvassing, as every night I was in different place’. In 1939 he requested a replacement for his returned servicemen’s badge, which was ‘destroyed in bush fire at Liverpool plains in July 1938’. And it is only in 1943, when he was employed as a storeman at a munitions establishment, that he finally succeeds in being granted naturalisation: his police report noted, ‘Applicant appears to be a good hard working type’. Two years later he died — as an Australian citizen.

Back to home if you do not see frames