WERNER LINDE

6 feet 0 inch (183cm) Guard

1964, 1968 Olympic Games

The young Australian doctor and his wife spent their honeymoon in Ethiopia during the famine of 1971 with a medical famine relief team. This was just one of the adventures and humanitarian work the doctor would do. That young doctor, Werner Linde, tells about some of his time in Iraq. “Soon after catching a truck convoy from Jordan to Baghdad, I rushed out of the tea room at the Novotel, Red Cross headquarters, and knocked over a small, seemingly frail old lady. Helping her up, I noticed she had the firmest handshake.....it was mother Theresa!-most embarrassing.” Of his work in Iraq Werner comments. “Most of my time in Iraq, I worked with the Kurds in the northern mountain region, living in a Red Cross tent. The Kurds had fled to the Iranian border, fearing reprisals from the Iraqi regime after the Gulf War. They were now coming back to Iraq under extreme conditions. The Peshmerga were the guerrilla fighters, who also guarded me on my mountain treks and prevented me from stepping on land mines. When the Kurds received favourable news from negotiations in Baghdad, they would fire their Kalashnikovs into the air and tracer bullets went flying everywhere into the night air. During these times I had to scramble under the nearest Red Cross vehicle for protection. Then there would be the inevitable bullet injuries turning up. Life there was dangerous not only from the land mines but the ever threat that the Kurds would be at war with the Iraqi army. I remember my interpreter’s brother stepping on a tank mine and can remember him stuffing the remains in his shirt and burying the remains of his brother on the mountain side.” Werner Rudolph Linde was born on 13th October 1944 in Posen, Poland a town occupied by the German Army during the Second World War. His father was a Russian interpreter for the German army. Werner’s parents were Latvian nationals, who had fled the Latvian capital Riga before the war prior to the Russian invasion in 1940 of Latvia (part of a Pact between Germany and Russia). His father was an artist in Riga, who drew caricatures for newspapers. A favourite caricature of his was Joseph Stalin the Russian leader. Discretion was then the better part of valour as the invading Russians would not take kindly to cartoons and caricatures criticising their ruler. After the War Werner, his parents and three brothers lived in Displaced Persons (DP) Camps in Germany. In 1949 they travelled by train to Naples, Italy where they boarded a ship for Australia as refugees. Werner says, “No problems for boat people in those days.” Werner’s family was part of a great migration to Australia by refugees from Europe who would have a profound effect on basketball in their adopted country. These migrants included Stan Dargis, the Dancis brothers, Peter Bumbers, Inga Freidenfelds, Algis Ignatavicius and the Hody brothers to name a few.