Rolf’s Baldwin War Service
You can listen to a reading of this article by clicking the link below:
Geelong Historical Society Remembrance Day Feature
As we commemorate Remembrance Day, the Geelong Historical Society is proud to re-publish Lana Capon’s detailed account of Major Rolf Baldwin’s military service, first published in Investigator (2015). Baldwin’s story, from Melbourne Grammar to the mountains of Timor, reflects the courage, ingenuity, and endurance of Australia’s special operations forces during World War II.
Affectionately known as “Baldy,” Rolf Baldwin completed his schooling at Melbourne Grammar and began a teaching career that would eventually lead him to Geelong Grammar School, where he was working when war broke out. Though teaching was a reserved occupation, accounts suggest that Baldwin told Headmaster J.R. Darling that if permission to enlist was not granted, he would do so under another name — a moment that revealed his quiet resolve and unwavering sense of duty.
Yet for all his battlefield tenacity, Baldwin remained deeply human. One former student recalled the irony that such a resolute and valiant soldier was “putty in the hands of his First Form students.” His affectionate memories of Baldy were tinged with guilt for the trials he and his classmates had unwittingly inflicted on their gentle teacher.
After retiring from Geelong Grammar in the 1970s, Baldwin continued teaching for seven years at Belmont High School, completing a remarkable forty-year career in education. In his second retirement, he devoted time to friends and neighbours, often through gardening, a task he loved. He remained an enthusiastic member of the Geelong Historical Society and the Geelong Field Naturalists’ Club.
An obituary prepared by his close relatives included the line: “An ardent socialist, his commitment to the Australian ideals of mateship and a fair go for all may have been inherited from his convict great-grandfather Morris Redmond, whose name he proudly bore.” It’s a fitting reflection of the values that shaped Baldwin’s life — loyalty, humility, and quiet strength — qualities that defined both his wartime leadership and his lifelong service to education and community.
Rolf Baldwin’s relationship with the Society was long and valued. He served as Treasurer from 1953 to 1955 and as a Committee member from 1967 to 1973. He also contributed two memorable pieces to Investigator: “Golden Days” (1969), a reflective memoir capturing the spirit of youth and community, and “Steiglitz – Geelong’s Gold Town” (1971), co-authored with H. Boardman, which explored the region’s mining heritage with historical insight and personal warmth.
Together, these writings reveal a man deeply engaged with both the past and present — a soldier, educator, and historian whose legacy continues to enrich our understanding of Geelong’s place in Australian history.
* Please note the page title includes Rolf Baldwin’s surname but the article below is fathful to the title used in Lana’s original article.
Michael O’Donnell
Rolf’s War Service
By Lana Capon, orginally published in Vol. 50, No. 4, December 2015
In March 1941, aged 31, Rolf left his position as a Master at Melbourne Grammar to pursue Army Officer Training. He was commissioned a Lieutenant on 3 March 1941 and a Captain on 11 July 1941. He became an experienced Commando Officer in the 2nd Independent Company (The Company), also part of the legendary Sparrow Force. The Company was based in Western Australia, after having trained for six months at Wilsons Promontory and spent some time in Katherine, Northern Territory. As a Lieutenant in the 2nd Independent Company, Rolf and his unit left for Darwin on the S.S. Zealandia on 10 December 1941.
The force was formed to defend the Timor island from invasion by the Empire of Japan after attacks on Pearl Harbor and Malaya. It formed the main part of the Allied units in the Battle of Timor (1942–43). Headed for East Timor, the Company was commanded by Major Allan Spence as first Commanding Officer and Major Bernard Callinan as his second-in-command, with Rolf commanding A Platoon directly under them (which was one of four platoons). On 17 December 1941, Rolf and most of the Independent Company moved to the airfield at Dili and the nearby mountains. He was known to be a “fiercely loyal and capable subordinate.” Major Spence later took command of Sparrow Force, and on 17 November 1942 Callinan became Commander of the Independent Company and Rolf was appointed Second-In-Command. The Company was based on Winston Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, with men selected as part of an elite force to operate behind enemy lines, training intensively in guerrilla warfare, demolitions and close-range combat.
On 20 February 1942, six thousand Japanese troops landed in Timor, attacking both east and west Timor, with approximately one third deployed to Dili. Whilst the 2/40th Battalion were overrun, captured and killed within days, the 2nd Independent Company were forced to leave the airfield and retreat into the mountains, but lost not one officer and carried out a highly successful guerrilla war against the Japanese that lasted for more than a year. Following the capture of Timor, Rolf and the Company were listed as “missing”, given they had lost contact with Australian headquarters. The Company’s signallers were able to build a jerry-built wireless radio nicknamed “Winnie the War Winner”*and make contact with Darwin in April 1942. Confirming their identity with Australian headquarters, the Company commandos requested resupply of boots, quinine, money and ammunition for Tommy guns. These supplies were provided by Australian Navy vessels from May 1942, and by September that year, the 2nd Independent Company were reinforced with the 2/4th Company. Although the 2nd Independent Company had much support from the local “criados”, the Japanese had recruited and armed natives from West Timor called the “Black Column”. Thousands of natives were killed by Japanese bombing and inter-tribal conflict, approximately 1,500 Japanese were killed, with only 40 men being lost to the 2nd Independent Company.
With their original mission complete and suffering from physical exhaustion, as well as the Japanese capturing the island and initiating reprisals against the civilian population of East Timor which decreased their support for the Australians, the 2nd Independent Company and the 2/4th were withdrawn on 11 December 1942. Rolf and his unit returned to Australia on the British-built Dutch fast destroyer HNMS Tjerk Hiddes on 10 January 1943.
Rolf was promoted to Major on 8 July 1944. Although he and the 2/2nd Independent Company are best known for service in Timor, they also undertook extensive service in New Guinea between 1943 and 1944 and New Britain in 1945, after the Independent Company had reformed at the Army’s training center at Canungra, Queensland. On 8 January 1946, Rolf was discharged from the Army.
Notes and Further Reading
* The 2015 article used the correct name for the radio but it is inaccurately transcribed as “Willy the War Winner” in Rolf Baldwin’s interview in UNSW’s Australians at War Film Archive interview in 2003: https://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/htmlTranscript/364
Members can read a digital copy of Investigator Vol. 50, No. 4, December 2015 (Issue 201) on our website. There are three articles in that issue relating to the life of Rolf Baldwin.
Golden Days – written by Rolf Baldwin and published in 1969 in Investigator can be read here.
The header photograph was taken in Timor on December 9, 1942 by Damian Parer. Source: AWM – https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/013767
Louis Meulstee’s website Wireless for the Warrior has two supplementary chapters on Winnie the War Winner and he has kindly given permission for the Society to make use of them. Of these chapters, the first is more general and the second is more technical. Louis asked me to acknowledge the AWM who supplied the photographs and provided other assistance. You can access the chapters by following the links below:
