Family Name:
Tarry
Given Names:
William George Ambrose (Bill)
Gender:
Male
Birth-date:1924
Death-date:
Unknown
Marital Status:
Single
Age Range:
18 – 20
Location:
NSW, Dee Why
Occupation:
Employee of the Colonial Sugar Refinery
Primary Motivation:
Conscientious Objector – Religious Pacifism
Reason for Court Appearance:
[1] Refusal to undergo a medical examination
[2] Refusal to undergo a medical examination
[3] Refusal to take oath of enlistment.
[4] Appeal
[5] Application for registration as a conscientious objector
[6] Failed to enlist
[7] Appeal
Court Name and Location:
[1] Magistrate’s Court, Manly, NSW
[2] Magistrate’s Court, Manly NSW
[3] Unknown
[4] Appeal Court, Sydney, NSW
[5] NSW
[6] NSW
7] Appeal Court, Sydney, NSW.
Court Hearing Date:
[1] 8 September 1942
[2] October 1943
[3] 29 December 1942
[4] January 1943
[5] August 1943
[6] September 1943
[7] 1944.
Court Outcome:
[1] Fined £10 plus 20 days imprisonment (served at Long Bay)
[2] 2 months imprisonment (served at Long Bay and Emu Plains)
[3] Appeal dismissed.
[4] 3 months imprisonment (served at Long Bay and Emu Plains)
[5] 3 months imprisonment (served at Long Bay and Emu Plains)
[6] 6 months imprisonment (6 weeks served at Bathurst before his release).
[7] Appeal succeeded.
Military Event:
World War II
Bill Tarry, a Christian from Dee Why, NSW, was 18 years old when he first appeared in court on 8 September 1942, charged with refusing to undergo a medical examination. He was fined £10 was sentenced to 20 days in Long Bay Prison, which he served. A month later, Bill was sentenced to two months in prison on the same charge. After his release, he applied for registration as a conscientious objector. On 29 December, at Manly Magistrates’ Court, Sheridan SM dismissed Bill’s application. He accused Bill of being ‘insincere’, saying that while it was acceptable to hold such principles as ‘man should not kill’ in peacetime, in wartime ‘a man must put aside such beliefs and defend his country’. The media claimed that Bill’s refusal to undergo a medical was because he was ‘a freak’, rather than because he held an objection to serving in the military.
Bill served his third sentence, of three months duration, at Long Bay and Emu Plains Prison Farm in early 1943. Jim Somerville, to wrote to the Attorney General, H.V. Evatt, in Bill’s defence, insisted that his preparedness to go to prison repeatedly showed his sincerity. All to no avail. Bill served another three-month sentence from September 1943.
Bill wrote to F.M. Forde, Minister for the Army, on 23 March 1944: ‘It is incorrect for the military officers to claim that my refusal to serve is not actuated by genuine conscientious belief, for not only have I applied to the Court for conditional registration (I obtained non-combatant duties) but I [said] to the Area Officer when I first appeared before him that my refusal to be medically examined was due to conscientious belief.’ He also pointed out that he had been ‘working at Colonial Sugar Refining Co. Ltd, a protected undertaking, for some time, but in the past, this has not prevented the army from sending me back to gaol. I submit that I should be allowed to continue the useful, non-military work I am doing there, instead of wasting everybody’s time in the already overcrowded gaols.’
At his final conviction, the presiding judge, McGhie, in rejecting his appeal told Bill that he was ‘lucky’ that six months was the maximum sentence he could award, as Bill was a ‘hardened offender’. He was sentenced to six months hard labour at Bathurst Prison, but fortunately was released after serving six weeks, because of Somerville’s campaign.
Confirmatory Sources:
Correspondence in J.G. (Jim) Somerville Papers, National Library of Australia, Canberra, Series MS 7049; Sydney Morning Herald, 30 December 1942, p. 11; The Canberra Times, 11 July 1944, p.4.
THE AUSTRALIAN PEACE HONOUR ROLL 