List of Australian Prime Ministers by military service
John Gorton prior to leaving for war service in 1941.
This is a list of Prime Ministers of Australia who have had military service. They are:
- Billy Hughes – Joined a volunteer battalion of the Royal Fusiliers while a teenager in London.
- Stanley Bruce – Served as a captain in the British Army in World War I; was severely wounded at Gallipoli; awarded the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre avec Palme.
- Sir Earle Page – Officer in the Australian Army Medical Corps, stationed in Egypt and France during World War I.
- Harold Holt – Enlisted in the Army in 1940 while a Member of Parliament and served as a gunner for 5 months before being recalled after the death of three senior ministers in the Canberra air disaster.
- John McEwen – Enlisted in the Army in 1918, and was in camp awaiting embarkation for France when the armistice was declared.
- John Gorton – Enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1940. A fighter pilot in World War II, flying Hurricanes out of Singapore and later Kittyhawks out of Milne Bay, Flight Lieutenant Gorton had three serious crashes, one of which gave him serious facial injuries. He also survived being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine while evacuating from Singapore aboard an ammunition ship, spending 24 hours in the water before rescue.
- William McMahon – Joined the Army in 1940, but due to deafness was confined to staff work in Australia until the end of the war.
- Gough Whitlam – Served in World War II in the RAAF as a navigator, reached rank of Flight Lieutenant. Stationed in northern Australia, protecting convoys and conducting bombing raids on islands to the north.
References
| ||||||||||||||