Major General Ronald Hughes, CBE, DSO (RETD)
(1920-2003)
Major General Ronald Hughes was an infantry officer whose distinguished career typified the critical contribution that the Australian Army’s officer corps has made to Australian security. His career spanned four decades: from entry to the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1937 until his retirement in 1977. He fought in three wars and served as Australia’s Military Attaché in Indonesia during the period of Confrontation. His was a varied and exciting career, in the course of which the Regular Army officer corps came into its own as the font of military professionalism in Australia.
On graduation from the Royal Military College in 1939, he was posted to the Darwin Mobile Force, which had been set up in anticipation of the likelihood of Japanese aggression in the Pacific. As a regular officer during World War II, he was mainly involved in operational and training staff appointments, but was able to break the mould by gaining regimental combat experience. He served in the New Guinea and Tarakan campaigns, taking part in the amphibious landings at Nassau Bay and at Tarakan, Borneo. His wartime service also included postings to the 2nd/3rd Infantry Battalion and Headquarters 1st Australian Corps. He witnessed the end of World War II as a member of the Australian Military Mission at General MacArthur’s Headquarters in Tokyo.
In 1951, he assumed command of the 2nd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, at Puckapunyal, Victoria, and the following year was appointed Commander of the 3rd Battalion in Korea. In 1956, he was posted to the Joint Services Staff College in the United Kingdom, initially as a course member, then as a member of the Directing Staff. He went to Indonesia as Military Attaché in 1964. These were the ‘years of living dangerously’, and he and his wife Joan lived an unsettled and precarious life. On return to Australia in 1966 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier and posted as Commander of the 6th Task Force. He followed this appointment with command of the 1st Australian Task Force in South Vietnam, a post that he held from 1967 to 1968. His command of the Task Force coincided with perhaps the most challenging period of operations in Vietnam, and embraced the Tet Offensive and the battles of Coral and Balmoral.
He attended the Imperial Defence College in London in 1969 and returned as the Army’s Director of Military Operations and Plans. He was promoted to the rank of Major General and became Director of the Joint Staff from 1971 to 1973 and Commander of the 1st Division from 1974 to 1975. His final appointment was as Chief of Reserves from 1975 until his retirement in 1977. His retirement years saw Major General Hughes actively assisting such organisations as the Royal United Services Institute, the National Returned and Services League of Australia, and the Red Cross. He died in Canberra on 2 February 2003, aged eighty-three.
Major General Hughes was in many ways the archetype of the Australian professional officers that made their way in the period from World War II. To him and his colleagues we owe the shape and standard of the modern Army.
