Pullover : Lieutenant R A E Cansdale, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

White polo-neck pullover hand-knitted in 12 ply wool. The body and sleeves are knitted in a single piece. The collar, cuffs and basque are knitted in rib stitch and the body and sleeves in stocking stitch.

Robert Antony (Tony) Evelyn Cansdale entered the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in March 1942 as a rating. After training he was posted, in June 1942 to the sloop HMS Folkestone protecting convoys from Northern Ireland to West and North Africa, the West Indies and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In March 1943 he transferred to HMS Royal Alfred, a shore establishment, to undertake officer training and was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant (Special Branch). He subsequently worked with small boats in North Africa and Italy before being transferred to the small boats depot at Bennelong Point in Sydney in 1945. Cansdale signed on for a further two years service at the end of the Second World War and served first in Malta and then in Palestine in late 1946 and 1947, turning back illegal immigrant ships. While in Palestine he met and married, on 19 November 1947, Lena Cohn, a Jewish refugee from Danzig, who had moved to Haifa with her family in 1936. The couple emigrated to Australia a month after their marriage. Pullovers like this were worn under the winter undress jacket for additional warmth on operational duty.