List of Prime Ministers of Australia by military service

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. Claimed to served briefly in both the Queensland Defence Force and the Queensland Maritime Defence Force, but biographers have not been able to verify this.
  • 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 (RAAF) 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 – Enlisted in the Army in 1939/40. Reached rank of Major, but due to a hearing impediment was deemed unfit for overseas service and was confined to work in Australia, where he was a quartermaster for the II Corps and the Second Army.
  • Gough Whitlam – Served in World War II in the RAAF as a navigator, reached the rank of Flight Lieutenant. Stationed in northern Australia, protecting convoys and conducting bombing raids on islands to the north.

John Gorton prior to leaving for war service in 1941.

References
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