Numbers: Jeffrey Grey gives no authoritative figure, saying nothing more than there were half a million in uniform in 1945. Australia also started shrinking its forces in 1944/45, returning people to the agricultural and industrial sectors which were supplying Great Britain and the allied forces in the South West Pacific.
Australia also maintained two forces in WWII, the volunteers (2nd AIF) and Militia. Due to the defence act of the 1880\'s the government could only deploy volunteers outside of Australia. Curtin found new and interesting ways to get around it though.
Since New Guinea was an Australian territory back then, he deployed militia there. Kakoda was one of the great Militia victories. Later on when he wanted militia deployed outside of New Guinea, he changed the definition of Australia to end at the Phillipines. Rather ironic that Howard is shrinking the definition of Australia to avoid refugees while Curtin was making Australia equal the globe.
This
site has a figure of
724,000 enlistments. Quote;
From over 724 000 enlistments, with almost 400,000 serving outside Australia, there were over 18 000 deaths, 22 000 wounded and over 20 000 prisoners of war, mainly from the early stage of the war with Japan
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