MUST WITHDRAW

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 43, 20 February 1942, Page 6

MUST WITHDRAW

FROM HOME GUARD

ORDER TO RAILWAYMEN

Instructions have been issued by the Railways Department that all' employees who have been serving with the Home Guard must apply for : their discharge from that branch of the country's defence forces. It is required of them that, following their discharge, they enrol in the Emergency Reserve Corps for railway E.P.S. duties.*

Similar action, it is understood, is being taken by some other Departments as well as by certain firms.

It is stated that over a year ago the Railways* Department invited its staff to interest itself in the Home Guard. There were "many employees who did so. The latest instruction, it is pointed out, is the result of-negotiations with the director-general of the1 Home Quard, Brigadier R. Young, 'C.8., C.M.G., D.S.O.

"Action along these lines has been necessitated," states a departmental circular, "following the incorporation of the Home Guard in the military forces of the Dominion, all personnel enrolled thereby becoming subject to military law and discipline.

"This development, also the actions of certain area commanders of . the Home Guard during recent weeks, made it clear that' the Railway Department no longer had the absolute right to dictate where a member of the Department who had enlisted in the Home Guard should be placed or what duties he should undertake in an emergency, and entirely negatived the conditions and basis under which the Department invited its staff to interest themselves in the Home Guard movement. '

"For the reasons • outlined and 'because of the vital character of the services carried-on by the railways, and of the present serious depletion of the Department's staff establishment, particularly on the operating.side, it. was felt that the time has arrived when the Department can no longer acquiesce in a situation which permits more than 1200 of its operating and other key personnel to be associated with the Home Guard."