Ulladulla to host National Service Day memorial service

The commemorative service, on Wednesday February 14, is being hosted by the Milton Ulladulla RSL Sub Branch at National Service Memorial Garden, at the rear of Kendall Cottage.

Sub Branch members and guests are requested to assemble at 10.45am for an 11am start.

All RSL members are encouraged to attend the Crescent Street, Ulladulla event.

There will be light refreshments available in Kendall Cottage after the service.

Between 1951 and 1972, a total of 287,000 young Australian men were called up in two separate schemes for compulsory training in the Navy, Army and Air Force.

Of them, 212 died on active service in Borneo and Vietnam.

National Service was part of Australia's defence preparedness for three decades.

National Service was a product of the post-World War Two global and regional conflicts facing Australia.

These began with the Berlin blockade by the Soviet Union in 1948, the first Arab-Israeli war the same year, Communist insurgencies in Malaya and Vietnam, Communist North Korea's invasion of South Korea in 1950, the Suez Canal crisis of 1956.

Confrontation with Indonesia in Borneo in 1963 and the Vietnam War. The threat of nuclear war hung over the entire world.

National Service was in the Australian tradition since Federation in 1901 of volunteer forces for overseas service backed up by a pool of basically trained men in the Naval Reserve, the Citizens Military Forces and the Citizens Air Force.

Source https://www.nashoaustralia.org.au/History.htm