led in the bitter Battle of Buna-Gona, fighting as infantry. In February 1943, he was evacuated to the 2/5th General Hospital in Port Moresby with malaria. On 12 April 1943, he relinquished command of the 2/7th Cavalry Regiment, and was placed on the Australian Reserve of Officers. For his services, he was mentioned in despatches on 10 August 1943. Later life While he was in hospital recovering from malaria, Moses received a personal letter from the Prime Minister of Australia, John Curtin. His Australian Labor Party had always been treated roughly by the newspapers, particularly the Murdoch press, and when it had come to power in 1941, it had instructed the ABC to ignore its agreements with the news agencies, and to gather its own news. Curtin feared that unless Moses was at the helm, the ABC would revert to sourcing all its news from the agencies. Moreover, Curtin wanted the ABC to develop a sense of national identity, and to provide the workers and service personnel with more entertainment. This last task inevitably set Moses up for a clash with Cleary, but now it was the general manager who held the cards, and Cleary resigned on 30 March 1945. In February 1945, Moses attended the Empire Broadcasting Conference in London, and was invited to see how the war in Europe was being reported by the BBC. He observed the crossing of the Rhine by Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery's forces, and crossed the Rhine River with the British Commandos. He was awarded the France and Germany Star. After the war ended, the Australian Broadcasting Act (1946) charged the ABC with responsibility for gathering its own news. The ABC expanded its audience in rural areas with the new ABC Rural. The Country Hour, which began in 1945, did surprisingly well even in city areas. The ABC followed it up with The Land and its People, a series of documentaries, and the iconic radio serial, Blue Hills in 1949. Moses did not neglect high culture; in 1945 he reached an agreement with the Sydney City Council to create an ABC orchestra. Soon there were ABC orchestras in all the state capitals. A major change was the introduction of television in 1956. The Labor Party had, in June 1949, pledged to introduce television into Australia as soon as possible, but it had lost office later that year, and the Liberal Menzies government was