April 2000 Volume 81 Number 4 "serving the protectors"
Lest We Forget

Tell them of us and say
For your tomorrow
We gave our today

hen the cruiser HMAS Sydney was sunk in the Indian Ocean on November 19, 1941, former SA policeman, Robert Underdown Ewens, lost his life with 644 other crewmen. He had resigned from the police department to join the navy, but was now lost forever.

Ewens came from a family whose many members had served as police officers since 1850. He joined the police department in 1936 as a 16-year-old probationary junior constable. He was stationed at the Old Port Depot of horrendous memory, where eating quarters were shared with the manure heap and turns were taken to act as cook.

Transferred to Thebarton barracks, Ewens became the bane of the instructor sergeant’s life by regarding drill as a bit of a laugh. He enlivened proceedings by playing his mouth organ, and was dismissed to the cookhouse where he carried out chores in a cheerful manner.

His resignation came two years later, before his entry to the navy and subsequent tragic death.

While granted indefinite leave for war service, many members of the police family made the supreme sacrifice.

Others who served before the war, however, left the police department and later joined one of the services.

They will all be remembered at the SAPOL ANZAC Memorial Service, Fort Largs, at 10.30am on Sunday, April 16.

- Dorothy Pyatt

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