About This Unit
2nd/9th Cavalry (Commando) Regiment
When the 2nd AIF re-located from the Middle East to Australia in early 1943, in response to the Japanese threat, a number of significant changes to the Order of Battle took place.
The 1st Armoured Division had been raised, equipped and trained on the assumption that it would deploy to the Middle East, where armoured mobility and firepower had rapidly become an essential rather than a novelty. However the prospects facing tanks and other vehicles in the jungles and broken terrain of the SW Pacific and SE Asia prescribed a re-appraisal.
The 9th Division Cavalry Regiment was re-designated as the 2nd/9th Cavalry (Commando) Regiment, relinquishing its vehicles and assuming command of three 'Independent Squadrons'; the 2nd/4th, 2nd/11th and 2nd/12th Commando Squadrons. The unit went into training in the Atherton Tablelands but did not see action in its own right until the landings at Tarakan in mid 1945, and later in southern Borneo around Balikpapan in the very final stages of the war. (1)
Steve Larkins Dec 2015
(1) AWM Unit History AWM Unit History (www.awm.gov.au)/