IN GREEN UNIFORMS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3158, 17 August 1942, Page 6

IN GREEN UNIFORMS

AUSTRALIAN HOME GUARD DIGGER HATS AND GAITERS High Australian Army officers have stated that the Volunteer Defence Corps—Australia’s Home Guard—is a “ static defence” body which might be called upon in any area to take offensive action against an attempted enemy encroachment. “They call us ‘grasshoppers,’ do the boys in khaki, because some of us have been issued with uniforms of green, with Digger hats, military boots apd gaiters,” wrote a member of the V.D.C. in the Melbourne ‘ ‘ Argus. ’ ’

“They say that we were first formed as a unit to keep the returned soldiers of the last war quiet during the present one. Sometimes they make jokes about old gentlemen crawling around suburban paddocks on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings, improvising their gear because they have to wait until the front-line fighters have been equipped and adequate reserves stored up. “We sit back and take' it. We have a job to do, and we do it without pay, without expectation of any particular glory, but because Australia is in a scrap and it is there to be done. Many wear the medal ribbons of the last war, and are not young—but not all. Indeed, the proportion of lastwar soldiers was growing smaller, and

the ranks were filling with young men in reserved occupations, others exempt from the call-up, and specialists prepared to make their ‘civvie’ knowledge and skill available. The revision of the reserved occupation list.. and the new call-up may make a difference to that, but we shall on. ’ ’