November 11th is Remembrance Day. At 11am on this day we remember all those who served in our Australian defence forces. To pay respect to those who came home after service to defend all of us and remember those who gave their lives by doing their duty.
In the Second World War many local men served in the 17th Battalion Volunteer Defence Corps. I didn’t know what this was, so I did some investigating.
The Volunteer Defence Corps was an Australian part-time volunteer military force modelled on the British Home Guard. The origins can be traced back to 1860 when it was formed as the New South Wales Volunteer Rifles. They have been disbanded and reformed a number of times. The 17th Battalion was raised at the beginning of WW1 in Egypt where they were then sent Gallipoli and later went to the Western Front in France and Belgium as part of the Australian Corps. It was disbanded again in 1921.
The 17th Battalion Volunteer Defence Corps was established again in July 1940 by the returned and Services League of Australia and was composed of ex-servicemen who had served in WW1. The government took control of the Volunteer Defence Corps in May 1941 and gave them the role of training for guerrilla warfare, collecting local intelligence and providing static defence of each unit’s home area. Following the outbreak of the Pacific War the government expanded the Volunteer Defence Corps in 1942.
Some of our local men who were part of the Volunteer Defence Corps were:
- William Theodore Altus
- Benjamin George Beckett
- Wallace Crichton Browne
- Wilfred Nicholas Burmeister
- Frederick Raymond Leonard Gale
- William Arthur Groch
- Alan Harris
- Alan Ellis Jelbart
- William Everett Jelbart
- Herman Julius Knobel
- Peter Norman Knobel
- John Stephen Lewington
- Frederick Herman Lindner
- Alan Roy Pumpa
- Arthur Bernhardt Scholz
- Robert Christopher Sellwood
- Clifford David Smyth
- Cecil Henry Wilfred Spencer
- Herbert Leonard Terlich
Lest we forget.
Fiona Beckett