Officer's undress winter trousers : Lieutenant R A E Cansdale, Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

Naval officer's blue wool superfine winter undress trousers. The trousers fasten with a five button fly, with black plastic buttons, a further two buttons at the waist and a metal hook and slide. There are six self fabric belt keepers around the waist. The front is shaped by two pleats on each side of the waistband. A pocket is set into each side seam and there is a single welt hip pocket fastened with a button on the right back. The waist lining and pocket bags are of white cotton; the flies and back darts are line with black cotton twill.

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.