Interviewed  by  George  Dick  and  tape-recorded  at Brighton,  SA  on  18th  October  1993.

CLIVE SAMUELS
AN  ARMOURER
In his own words


Before the war I worked in a general repair shop in Jamestown for a couple of years and then when things got pretty slack during the Depression years I sought other employment to further my knowledge in fitting, turning and machine work, and  was accepted for a job with Refrigerators Ltd in Mary Street Unley, Adelaide.

My father had served in the Army during World War I, had stayed on the Reserve, and served in World War II. Having heard a lot about the Army, and having heard from my father about his many years of service, I thought I’d like to see what it was like in the Air Force. I enlisted in Adelaide on 28th January 1941, being the only one of my family to join the Services as the others were in reserved occupations.

I did my rookies at No 1 Recruit Depot at Laverton, which involved helping the cooks by peeling sacks of potatoes and shelling bags of peas as well as square-bashing. Our Sergeant Drill Instructor was’nt too well liked. So for our pass-out parade, when he gave the order to About-Turn, we pretended not to hear him and marched straight ahead and off the drill square. We copped a few extra turns at guard duty for that.

The authorities posted me to Point Cook to do No 10 Armourer’s Course on 9th April, where we learnt the basics of that trade: the Vickers GO Gun, the Lewis Gun, .38 Smith & Wesson Revolver, elementary aspects of bombs and bombing, Verey Pistols, and flares. We were all keen and  got our heads down and learnt all we could. John Glastonbury was one of instructors at the Point; he was a schoolteacher, came from South Australia, and was a very efficient man.

From there I went, on 5th June 1941 to No 14 Squadron at Pearce, which was then equipped with Lockheed Hudsons and worked on the first Boulton-Paul gun turret that was ever fitted to a Lockheed aircraft. I left Pearce on 24th August on posting to Point Cook to do a Fitter Armourer’s course. This built on the basics of my previous course and involved learning more detail about weapons equipments in the Air Force. I left there later that year and went to No 7 Service Flying Training School at Deniliquin, equipped with Wirraways. Dust got into everything. At one stage we had a grand total of 4 aircraft serviceable out of 125 Wirraways on strength.

The word went round that the Air Force was looking for fellows to join a new squadron which was being formed in New South Wales. Although no further details were given I thought it might lead to better things so I put in an application to our Orderly Room and my posting came through to move across to Richmond.

I reported to the Adjutant of No 30 Beaufighter Squadron on 13th March 1942, four days after it was formed. Other Armourers already there included:  Sergeant George Anderson (also from Deniliquin), Rick Forrester and Trevor hardy (both from Uranquinty),  AC1s Burton and Hamilton (from Evans Head), Abe Warhurst and Russell Hall (from Wagga). The Fitter Armourers included:  Laurie Crouch (from Wagga), Bill Gallary and Bill Watson (from Sale), and Frank Gunn from Wagga.

I was among the first bunch of airmen to arrive and found that nobody seemed to want to own us; we didn’t have a home and wandered round the place like lost sheep for a few days. However, the Squadron’s Adjutant, Flying Officer Cecil Cowley, took us under his wing and looked after us, and arranged for us to be billeted in huts on the other side of the road at the main gate. But we got ousted from there so that the Royal Air Force airmen of 100 Squadron could take our place.

The Squadron didn’t have any aircraft at that time so work was found for us around the Station, some filled sandbags, dug trenches, helped in the kitchen and so on. I was found work in the Transport Section, helping drivers to collect and deliver stores and equipment; this gave me an understanding of Sydney and of the Air Force units in the area.

The first two Beaufighters were in crates which were landed at Sydney wharves after passage from England, taken out by trucks to a paddock at Windsor which was adjacent to the aerodrome, and uncrated. One large crate contained the centre portion of the fuselage and the wing stubs. The undercarriage was dropped and the unit towed by RAAF vehicle to one of the hangars at Richmond where the complete machine (A19-7) was put together. I believe that Hudsons were being uncrated and assembled in a similar manner.

For its first flight it was taken across to Mascot where it sheared the tail-wheel pin on landing, and in consequence, when it landed back at Richmond the aircraft went all over the place in its landing run. Later on, other aircraft were brought up from Laverton and eventually we had 24 Beaufighters ready to go to war.

Our job involved fitting the fitting of the six forward-firing .303 Browning machine guns (four in the port wing and two in the starboard), the fitting of the four forward-firing 20mm Hispano cannons, as well as adjusting them after test-firings. We had a few documents, but these by no means covered everything that we wanted to know, so we had to do a lot of that by way of trial and error. There could have been some Royal Air Force or Bristol Aircraft men helping to sort out engine or airframe problems, but there weren’t any on the armament side.

One of our big jobs was to keep up the supply of .303 ammunition for the machine guns. There were times when other airmen had to help the armament fellows to belt up the ammunition.

The airmen’s favourite watering hole was just across from the main gate — the Clarendon Hotel presided over by Ma Tunnel (otherwise known as MTC). She sat up on a high stool behind the bar so that she had a clear view of everything that was going on and could see that none of the airmen were getting away with anything. The Clarendon was  local gathering place for many of the airmen at Richmond — not just those from 30 Squadron.

A bunch of us sometimes went into Sydney for the week-end and checked in at Air Force House where we could get a bed a meals quite cheaply. We took advantage of the arrangements they made for us to be billeted out with Sydney families and I made quite a few good friends as a result of those contacts. We never had a dull moment. We were taken on picnics, boat outings, parties, dances and drives in the country. Girls were always there, too. So it was just heaven.

On 11th August 1942 I went with some other 300 or so airmen on the train which took us from Clarendon Station to Clapham Station in Brisbane; from there we went by truck to the Ascot Racecourse on the other side of the river, and were billeted in an Army transit camp. We had two free days in the capital and were then put on one of Queensland’s narrow-gauge trains to go further north.

Arrangements had been made by the authorities in charge of troop train movements for us to have meals at various Railway Refreshment Rooms — such as Gosford, Kempsey, Grafton, Rockhampton, Bundaberg, and Gladstone. But we found that at nearly every stop there was a severe shortage of cutlery, so the fellows remedied that by walking out of the place with the Railways knives, forks and spoons in their uniform pockets. I still have a NSWGR knife.

When our troop train pulled in to Gladstone it was discovered that because another troop train  had left only a short time  previously, the kitchen staff hadn’t had time to prepare a meal for us. In any case Adjutant Wearne decided that we needed a bit of exercise so he ordered us to detrain, form up in column of route, and march around some of the streets of the town. It so happened that there was a recruiting rally  there that day so we may have done something to the Join The Forces campaign. However, as our route took us past a number of pubs, it was remarkable how many of the marchers were striding along with glasses of beer in their hands and a fair quantity in their stomachs.

Our 24 Beaufighters flew up from Richmond to Bohle River airstrip, landing there a couple of days after our arrival at Townsville Station. We had been taken from the station to Garbutt where we spent a night on the floor of the gymnasium and were moved out to Bohle River by truck the next day.

Warrant Officer Good and a couple of dozen airmen had been sent from Richmond as an Advance Party and had managed to establish a camp at Bohle River for us so we were able to settle in pretty quickly.

The Squadron stayed at Bohle River for a month or so while the aircrew did some more training. When the order came through to move out, the aircraft of ‘A’ Flight, flew across to Gurney strip, whilst the others flew to our new operational base at Moresby. Ken Golledge and I flew to Milne Bay with ‘Torchy’ Uren (who was the Flight Commander of ‘A’ Flight) in A19-33 on 11th September. We took off from Garbutt at 1320 and landed at Gurney strip at 1710. Ken (who had been sick in the aircraft) saw an American B26 in shallow water off the southern coast of New Guinea.

A small number of Squadron groundstaff was deployed to Gurney to support the flying activities of ‘A’ Flight but as the two Kittyhawk squadrons were flat out looking after themselves and weren’t able to play host to a bunch of visitors, we had to fend for ourselves as best we could. We hadn’t brought any tents or stretchers so we got hold of some timber posts, whacked up the frame of a hut, and got the natives to plait some palm fronds for the roof and sides. This hut became our sleeping quarters. We also got them to plait fronds which were then attached to a pole frame to make a kind of double stretcher.  These were about three feet above the ground and were reached by a walkway of raised tree trunks running down the centre of the hut. Ken and I shared one of these double-stretchers, but as the mosquito net was single-bed size, parts of our bodies stuck out of the mesh and were enjoyed by the mozzies.

We also put up another much more primitive native-style structure as our mess hut — although we weren’t able to equip it with tables, chairs or other furniture.  At one stage the cooks managed to get some fresh meat which was served up for our evening meal, but we all turned up our noses at the meal. It was Zebu meat. We had gone out into the plantation earlier that day and knocked one off, brought it back, skinned it, and so on, and taken it to the kitchen. But the meat was too much for us and our efforts to improve the catering came to no good. Outside the mess hut, we put up a little shed to accommodate a cut-down 44-gallon drum containing the hot water in which we washed our eating irons. It was kept hot by a small wood fire underneath.

There were two Air Raid Alerts on 12th September, two more on 13th, and two more on 15th, but nothing came of them.  Fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to dig slit trenches because of the moist soil, and although they weren’t at all comfortable it was comforting to dive into them when the three shots went off. Because the Intelligence people believed that two Japanese cruisers were in the vicinity and might threaten Milne Bay, the entire complement of the place was placed on full standby on 16th and 17th. But nothing came of that either.

Milne Bay was hot, steamy and swampy. Mosquitoes were there in their zillions. Malaria and Dengue Fever were rife, the Army units being especially affected. It seems that I was bitten by a horde of blood-sucking anopheles mossies and felt so ill that I just couldn’t go to work. On 19th September I walked to the Army Hospital down by the river, was put into bed and treated for Dengue Fever. On the third day someone in our detachment sent a message to the that I was urgently required back at work so the medical staff discharged me.

I still wasn’t feeling all that bright but I had to walk from the Hospital to our camp, carrying my bag. I was so ill that I lay down on a bed but one of the fellows came in and said that I was urgently wanted down on the strip. With others, I worked until late in the night belting ammunition required by the Beaufighters for an operation against the enemy early next morning.

The Army had captured a number of Japanese soldiers in the Milne Bay area and these were being flown up to Moresby in Avro Ansons which might have belonged to an air-sea rescue unit or a communications squadron. As a matter of administrative convenience, Australian personnel due to go back to Moresby were put on board the Ansons as guards for the Prisoners-of-War. I was one of those guards.

After landing at Wards strip and handing over our prisoners, I was taken up to the squadron’s camp in June Valley where someone pointed out my tent to me. It was on the lower slope of the hill that separated the 30 Squadron camp from that of No 42 Operational Base Unit.  To get to my tent you came up the June Valley road from the strip, turned left at our shower block and went about 150 yards along that roadway (which went to the Beaufort squadron’s camp).

There were three armament fellows in our tent: Ric Forrester, Hugh McDowell, and myself. They were real good mates; we worked together, we lived together, and we went around together. It was great to have such good friends.

Ric was a rather short bloke, a little bit reserved, had a dry humour and I suppose you could say he was a trifle shy. Most Sundays he and I would go to a church service conducted by Padre Kirby or one of the other chaplains. I knew Hugh a little bit better than Ric; I’d known his family and visited them at their home in Kogarah. He was a very strong and robust bloke, very outgoing and very easy to get along with.

It was a single Australian style tent with a central ridge pole, but unlike other tents, we didn’t have a separate canvas fly out front to extend our living area. We got some timber from the scrub and built the sides of the tent up so that more air could get in and we could move around a bit more comfortably. Our floor was made from the wood of old packing cases; it was easy to keep clean because all you had to do was open the tent-flaps at both ends and let the wind blow straight through. We used other packing cases and bits of timber to build some bits and pieces of furniture. Lighting was by way of a kerosine lamp. We looked out towards the messes.

My two tent-mates wanted to do something for my twenty-first birthday, which fell on 10th February, but it wasn’t possible to do the usual thing and present me with the key of the door on reaching my majority. So they cut off one of the tent-flaps, rolled it up and used that as a substitute. Later that morning the Orderly Sergeant and two serious-looking Service-Policemen came down to the strip and hauled me up to Adjutant Wearne’s office — cap off, quick march, right turn, halt. “Curly’ was most stern when he told me that it was a serious business to ruin His Majesty’s property that way, but in the event, no charge was laid, and we got ourselves a replacement tent. Now why the Orderly Sergeant picked on me instead of McDowell and Forrester, I don’t know.  A bit of collusion perhaps?

The three of us spent a deal of time writing letters, using paper and envelopes supplied by the Salvation Army character who dished it out when they visited tents in June valley in the evening. The Salvos often came round offering drinks after we came back from work down at the strip, and also came round to the flight tents down at the strip. I’ve got great admiration for the Salvos.

Cards, of course were a great way of passing the time in the evening; poker was our main game, and sometimes there was a pot for the winner. One of the Squadron fellows ran a two-up school in the vicinity of the camp, but though I had a look at it once or twice, I never laid out as much as two shillings. I think the operators of the school made a fair bit of money from that enterprise.

Another fellow who might have profited from his enterprise was Les Bromilow, a South Australian who traded in American material. He had a tent just up the track from us and I often saw American trucks pull up there in the evening to unload a few cases.  I bought a one of those torches which had an upright brown casing but whose globe and reflector was at right angles. I also bought from Les some GI clothes. Regrettably, when I came home some  nasty individual ratted my kit bag and stole most of its contents.

I think it was an Australian Army entertainment unit that put on a show at Murray Barracks and Padre Kirby was standing  a short distance away from me. Some of the items were a bit risque and he was a little bit unhappy about those, but as there was little he could do about them he didn’t show his distaste or try to interfere with the performance. Perhaps he realised that the fellows were appreciating what was happening on the stage. I did see the book that he wrote about Beaufighters but I never got around to reading it.

The Squadron was most fortunate to have ‘Doc’ Marsh as its medical officer. ‘Doovah’ Bill was a great bloke, much liked by everybody. One of his interests outside his medical activities was a butterfly collection and a number of the fellows made it a point to catch any that they came across and take them up to him.

The real butterfly collector, however, was John Butler, an electrician who came from Burnie. You’d see him dashing through the kunai grass waving his net around as he chased some particular specimen. He wore a pair of Service boots for the chase but when he came back to camp he’d have cuts all over his legs from the razor-sharp edges of the kunai. Although he had his own collection, John gave quite a few of his specimens to ‘Doovah’ Bill.

‘Doovah’ Bill examined me when I got tinea in the crotch; it was a terribly painful terrible rash, and was a relatively common complaint among those exposed to the hot and steamy conditions in the tropics. After his examination, ‘Doovah’ Bill referred me to ‘Snowy’ Poole, one of his medical orderlies, saying that he had some concoction which would alleviate if not cure my complaint. When I went into the treatment tent, Snowy told me to drop my shorts and bend over at which time he dabbed the affected part with a ball of cotton wool soaked in his secret preparation. I wasn’t able to pull my shorts up for quite some time. He’d used a white mixture composed of methylated spirits and calamine lotion and it stung like blazes. But it worked.

However, neither ‘Doovah’ Bill, or the other two medical orderlies — John Farquhar or Lionel Sheekey — were able to cure another condition that afflicted me at Port Moresby. While working with the ammunition down in our armament tent I’d got a bit of incendiary composition in my right eye. They were able to relieve the pain, but the scar is till there.

I had to rush up to the Sick Quarters on another occasion when I got bitten by a scorpion. I got that one night when I was across at the open-air cinema at 22 Squadron’s camp, and sitting on my steel helmet. During the film I felt something bite me so put my hand inside my shirt and dragged out this scorpion, put it in a match box, and got someone to take me back to camp. The wretched thing got out of the matchbox somehow so I wasn’t able to present it to ‘Doovah’ Bill for identification, but he knew it had been a scorpion because of the three bite marks on my chest.

We were in our armament tent down on the strip on 15th January when we heard a terrific crash. We looked across the strip and saw that an aircraft had pranged on the side of the hill and was burning fiercely. We rushed over and saw that it was Beaufighter A19-14, but the heat was far too intense to get anywhere near it. The aircraft had fallen apart, the rear section being a couple of yards behind the front.

There was nothing at all we could do for Bruce Stephens or Stewart Cameron, the flames were just too intense. When things had cooled down I had the distressing job of helping to remove the remains. We also tried to stop the fire from spreading because there was an ammunition dump containing boxes of 20mm and .303 material quite close. The dump probably belonged to an RAAF replenishing unit.

The Flights didn’t have what you could call a standard working day, for the if there were any early-morning take-offs the fellows would have to go down at around 5am and get the aircraft ready. Similarly, the men had to stay down at the strip until they’d finished attending to any late-returning ‘planes and they’d signed the various log books. One of the pleasures of getting back to camp after toiling away in the hot sun was to get under a cold shower.

The showers were open-air affairs until the nurses came and ‘Curly’ Wearne got the Barracks fellows to put malthoid along the wall facing the road that led down to the strip from No 3 Medical Receiving Station which was a little bit further up the Valley. We thought it was highly amusing to watch Lola  and Brenda  come down for their ablutions. They seemed to pick a time when nobody else was having a shower, and neither of them ever stood naked while they washed. They always held a towel round their waists, performing a series of deft manipulations with their left or right hands while they soaped and rinsed themselves in a modest fashion

Over near the Transport Section was a little tent which housed our canteen, but it had a very limited stock — such as washing powder, toothpaste, boot polish, soap, and razor blades. I used a cut-throat blade razor which I sharpened on a leather strop. I finished up using only one side of the strop because the other side had been attacked by mildew and was pretty useless. I’ve still got my razor, but I don’t use it any longer.

The food was pretty awful. It didn’t make for a pleasant day if you had to be down at the strip at 5am to get the kites ready for an early take-off, but all you got for breakfast was herrings in tomato sauce (known as goldfish), plus those hard dog-biscuits smothered in treacle. There were times, however, when the three of us did a little bit better than the meals dished up in our own Mess. If you knew your way around the Moresby area you could nearly always get your hands on some of the much-better rations that the Americans were issued with.

The catering people had set up one of those mobile cookers near the Servicing Flight at the northern end of Wards and the men were given their lunch  down there instead of being taken back to camp for their midday meal. On those occasions when we had acquired our own private food — maybe tins of pears and peaches — we’d stay in our flight tent for lunch rather than go down to the mobile cooker, where Tom Phelan was the washer-upper and general rouseabout.

Other airmen who were in‘A’ Flight with me included:-

Andy Herron    )
Ron James    )
Ron Morrison    )
Fred Hicks    )
Frank Sawtell    )    Fitters IIA
Bill Schofield    )
Ron Scrimshaw    )   
Harold Taylor    )
Frank Thompson    )
Laurie Webster    )   

Bob Bunting    )
Laurie Edmonds    )
Ken Golledge    )    Flight Mechanics
Keith McNaught    )
Harold Parker    )
Don Bain    )   
Gwynn Davis    )    Fitters IIE
George Latham    )   

                 
In addition to George Anderson,  the armourers in the Flight included myself, Russ Foster, and Laurie Crouch and our armament tent down at Wards was not too far away from the control tower and on the same side of the strip. The Beaufighters were dispersed at the far end. We lashed up a shower for our use on the little creek just behind our tent. It was great to sluice off after working in the tropical sun for an hour or so.

The transport fellows provided us with one of their Ironside trucks to take us down to the strip after breakfast and on those trips we passed by the camp of No 5 Mobile Works Squadron. They had a row of open-air dunny boxes quite close to the road which were all occupied at that time of the morning and as we whizzed past the truck occupants would enrage the thunder-box occupants by yelling out “Give it to her, mate”. I’m not at all sure whether this improved their performance or not.

Very early in February I was riding back from Servicing Flight on our Clark tractor and as I passed the dispersal bay which accommodated A19-9 I saw Percy Sullivan roll a 44 gallon drum under the nose of the Beaufighter and get on top so that he was closer to the muzzles of the 20mm cannons, which he had to clean before knock-off. The next thing I knew was a loud bang and when I looked round there was poor Percy with the metal cleaning rod clean through his left shoulder.

He’d obviously pushed the rod down the barrel without observing the laid-down precaution of going inside the aircraft to check the state of the breech-blocks. The block was in fact in the firing position so that when he pushed the rod down it released the block lock, and the block rammed forward, ramming the rod through the armourer standing on the fuel drum.

Sergeant Bob Anderson was the chap nominally in charge of our armament section, but it may have been that the heat and humidity of the tropics had adversely affected his drive. Nevertheless, his subordinates got the work done without too much input from him. He came from Hornsby.

There wasn’t a great deal of sightseeing one could do in Moresby, but I enjoyed my visits to Rouna Falls. I also enjoyed the outing we made to the native village at Hanabauda. We were taken across the river in one of their lakatois, forking out two shillings for the trip. At the village we were given some portions of a wild pig which had been cooked in a coal fire. It wasn’t the kind of meat I’d care to eat very often.

The air raids at Moresby were, for the most part, nothing but nuisance raids. The enemy bombers would come over on at night, drone around up top until they saw a break in the cloud, drop a couple of bombs, drone around a bit more and drop another one or two. It could have been designed to deprive us of sleep rather then inflict any real damage. When the three shots were fired the three of us would eventually clap our tin hats on our heads, get into the trench just outside our tent and watch what was happening.

Of course, it was too dark to see what was in the trench before you leaped in and there was one occasion when we really put our feet in it. The first fellow to jump in after the siren went found that his feet sank into a stinking and rotting mass of rice, sultanas, potato peelings and banana mush. It appeared that a couple of the orderly room clerks — Allan Laing and Reg Crowl — had made some jungle juice and tipped the remnants into the bottom of our trench. They weren’t very popular with us for that lark.

Hugh, Ric, and I had a go at making our own jungle juice, just like nearly everyone else in the Squadron, for which we used a 4 gallon tin we got from the kitchen. It had a clip-on lid, and had once held the dried potato that was part of the unit’s ration. Into that we tipped in whatever we could get that would ferment - rice, raisins, potato peel, bananas, tinned fruit and so on. Sugar was in short supply but as I had brought up from home some sweetener tablets and a couple of bottles of Yeaston tablets, we could get our brew going pretty easily.

The tin could just fit comfortably under one of our stretchers and you’d get a nice surprise some nights if you’d put in too many tablets and the yeast got so active that the lid would blow off the tin. We never got drunk on the stuff but we had many a pleasant evening; quite often the orderly room chaps would come round to help us dispose of the brew, and we would go round to sample theirs.

‘Doovah’ Bill sent me back to Australia because of my continuing problem with dengue and malaria. I flew out of Port Moresby on 23rd March and was admitted to No 112 Australian General Hospital at Greenslopes. I was sent across to Adelaide and spent some time in the hospital at Frome Road,and when I wa discharged from there I was posted to No Elementary Flying Training School at Parafield, went up to Tamworth, and then back to Victoria. On completion of an Armament Instructor’s Course at Hamilton, I was posted to No 6 Service Flying Training School at Mallala as an instructor on 16th October 1944

I left the Air Force on 24th January 1946 and then joined the Commonwealth Public Service as a clerk in the Department  of Air (Finance  & Branch). When that was transferred to Melbourne I transferred to the Postmaster General’s Department. I retired from the Public Service at the beginning of 1982


PERSONAL  PARTICULARS

NAME    :   CLIVE  DOUGLAS  SAMUELS
BORN ON    :   18th February 1922
BORN AT    :           J    amestown, SA
FATHER    :   Bertram Thomas Samuels
MOTHER    :   Viloet Grace Stacey
EDUCATED AT    :   Jamestown
MARRIED TO    :   Estelle Alison Brooker
MARRIED ON    :   31st March 1945
MARRIED AT    :   St Michaels, Mitcham
CHILDREN    :   Anne;  Heather;  Lynette
ENLISTED AT    :   Adelaide
ENLISTED ON    :   29th January 1941
ENLISTED AS        :   Trainee Armourer, Group V
DISCHARGED AT    :   Adelaide
DISCHARGED ON    :   17th December 1945
RANK on DISCHARGE:  Sergeant
OCCUPATION after DISCHARGE:       Public Servant.