Page 41 - Memorial Groves

WORLD WAR II

Middle Eastern Theatre PLAQUE NO 68:

Pte Douglas Murray Gerloff (1923-33)
When war was declared on the Axis forces by Australian Prime Minister Mr Robert Menzies on the 3rd September
1939, preparations were speedily made to send Australian volunteers to Europe and the Middle East to fight for the
Allied powers. By 1940 thousands of Australian army, navy and air force personnel were serving in the North Africa and 2/11th Battalion
Palestine Theatre against Italian and German forces. Quite a few Haleians were among them and the hostilities took their Died on Active Service: Greece
inevitable toll. 25 April 1941. Age 25

PLAQUE NO 67: Doug lived in Mount Lawley and attended Hale School from 1923 to 1933. He
was a member of the 1st XI and the 1st XVIII and represented the School at the
Cpl James Thomas Willis (1924-28) Inters athletics. He joined a law firm as an articled clerk after leaving school and
was within one examination of being admitted to the bar when war broke out
in 1939.
2/13 Australian Infantry Battalion
Killed in Action: Er Regima, North Africa He immediately joined the first Western Australian battalion to be formed, the
4 April 1941, Age 29 2/11th, and after training at Northam and Ingleburn in N.S.W. he was posted
to the intelligence section when the unit embarked for the Middle East. He
James attended Hale School as a boarder from Leonora. His father had served in the Western Desert and then in Greece, when his battalion was later
been a pioneering pastoralist in the district since the mid-1890s. On leaving transferred there.
school he became a jackeroo and worked on various stations in the north and
subsequently in New South Wales. Private Gerloff was badly wounded at Mount Olympus on the 19th April, 1941
but managed to escape the advancing German forces to reach Kalamarta in
When World War II broke out he joined a New South Wales infantry battalion, the southern Pelopponese some days later. He twice swam out to sea in an
the 2/13th at Moree, and subsequently sailed with them to the North African attempt to be picked up by British destroyers but unluckily was not sighted
Theatre of operations arriving in late November, 1940. Shortly after they were by them. He managed to return to the beach but died during the night of his
involved in heavy fighting against advancing German forces near Benghazi. wounds and exposure. It was Anzac Day, 1941.

He was killed in action while engaging German tanks with a light machine gun, Dedicated by Hale School
enabling the remainder of his section to escape. Placed by his nephew, Mr Allan Gerloff (1966-68), representing his mother,
Mrs Dorothy Gerloff and cousin, Tracy Buckholz.
Dedicated and laid by his daughter Helen Campbell, Head Girl of St Mary’s
C.E.G.S. in 1954. Doug Gerloff, Jerusalem - October 1940