Regimental contribution

Exemplary in drawing its membership from students of every faculty, as well as the teaching and administrative staff of the University, Melbourne University Regiment had its beginnings as “D” (University) Company of 4th Battalion, Victorian Militia in 1884.

Early enlistees included John Monash and James McKay, who later became generals, John Parnell who became the first commandant of Royal Military College, Duntroon, and ‘Pompey’ Elliott, an iconic citizen-soldier, but the fledgling company was a ‘square peg’ in the militia’s ‘round hole’ and proved too distant for the Bendigo headquarters to administer with any degree of comfort or confidence. The company was disbanded in 1886, but students and University staff had shared an enthusiasm for things military, and raised a volunteer unit, the University Corps of Officers, in 1894.

Virtually a private club for candidates for commission in the wider colonial militia, this ambitious little group faded away in the administrative turmoil surrounding Federation in 1900, but established for the future what was to be the basic and ongoing role for the University’s branch of the new nation’s armed services – the identification, training and mobilisation of talent. Future Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies and his opponent, Labor’s Arthur Calwell, served together in this period.

Over the next decade, the interested parties among the University community continued to lobby the government for recognition of the potential military value among their numbers, and in 1910 the Melbourne University Rifles was raised as part of the new universal military training scheme, drawing its membership from the University and Victorian public schools. By the start of World War I, the unit could field 34 officers for immediate mobilisation, and of the 771 soldiers who passed through the Rifles on their way to the front, 180 were to be commissioned in the field, 84 killed in action and 613 wounded.

The immediate volunteers in 1914 had included 15 members of the University’s VFL football team, and this body was not re-raised post-war, leaving a little-known gap in the roll of today’s ‘industrialised’ League.

The regiment had its first headquarters in two rooms of the original Union House, until these were replaced by a self-built timber facility where the Alice Hoy Building now stands. A classic example of the old militia drill hall at the eastern end of Grattan Street (‘stolen’ from an unwary Royal Melbourne Regiment) served for group training for the next 40 years.

Between the wars, the Regiment underwent (not for the last time) the fluctuations in funding and government support which so crippled defence preparations for the impending conflict, but still succeeded in producing 2890 officers, and many thousands of NCOs and trained members for all three services, once war broke out.

Through its ranks passed future Governors-General Sir Zelman Cowan and Sir Ninian Stephen, future Prime Minister Harold Holt, and 890 wartime officers trained ‘in-house’. When the Citizen Military Forces (CMF) was formed in 1948, MUR was immediately included, this time as Melbourne University Regiment. Reaching a peak strength of 1190 during the Menzies National Service period in the mid-1950s, the unit included elements of infantry, armour, artillery, engineers, signals and administrators, and continued its long-standing role in officer training.

Private Barry Humphries chose a career in show business, while Sir Henry Winneke, Sir Edmund Herring, the Hon John Phillips, Sir Rupert Hamer and Sir David Derham went on to distinction in the law, politics and high public office.

Surviving the disruptive reorganisations, amalgamations, and disbandings which so adversely impacted on the general CMF, MUR and its sister university regiments eventually came under command of RMC Duntroon in 1997, as part of a standardised national qualification scheme for officer production.

Although it has never gone to war as a formed body, MUR graduates have served in all three services in every campaign of every conflict in which Australia has been engaged since Federation.

The Regiment produced 2943 officers and 9971 ‘other ranks’ in the world wars, and an average of 44 officers per year in peacetime since 1910. Tens of thousands of University alumni have passed through its ranks and absorbed their share of its unique culture.

Former members include two Governors-General, two prime ministers and a leader of the opposition, two state premiers, five governors and a lieutenant-governor of Victoria, three chief-justices, two full generals and seven major or lieutenant generals, two air vice-marshals and 11 brigadiers.

The contribution of MUR to Australian society and its progress is unmatched. It has been a remarkable hundred years of achievement.

http://www.army.gov.au/mur/