The Thirtyniners Association: Your presence is requested..., 1953

Your presence is requested..., 1953

While working on this sealed envelope, our curators discovered the message still enclosed.
Using our lightbox, faint wording printed on the inside was detected:

THE…./ASSOC…NINERS…are requested…/…ion at…

The letter is addressed to Godfrey Edward Wignall who left Perth in 1939 in search of work. But it was not long before war broke out in Europe. Godfrey enlisted in Darwin on October 20th, a little over a month later. In doing so, he joined a particular group of volunteers known as ‘thirtyniners’.

When war broke out in 1939, the Communist Party of Australia opposed the war effort out of solidarity with Soviet Russia’s pact with Germany. Stories persisted of communists heckling the thirtyniners as ‘five bob a day murderers’. Though these incidents appear to have been few and far between, they contributed to a general anti-communist sentiment amongst military organisations such as the Victorian RSL who banned communists from joining in 1946.

The Thirtyniners Association was established in 1946 to unite ex-servicemen and women who had enlisted before 1940 and served overseas. When the Western Australian branch formed in 1949, Godfrey served as its secretary. 

Originally founded to support the widows and orphans of fallen comrades, the Association aimed to strengthen bonds formed during combat and commemorate those who did not return. While non-political, the ‘39ers’ promoted gender equality and advocated for returned veterans with mental illnesses to be recognised as having ‘war-caused’ conditions, entitling them to the
same rights and benefits as those with physical injuries.