Gordon Sampson – Korean Veteran
27 July 2016:
With commemorations of the Korean War on 27 July and the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan and Vietnam Veterans Day on 18 August, we invited a group of Vasey RSL Care residents in our Independent Living Units to share their experiences of those conflicts and the effects they had on their lives. Bob Evans reports.
Gordon Sampson, Korean Veteran
It would be unthinkable today for a 14-year-old to join the Marines. But when Gordon Sampson was growing up in the British port city of Plymouth at the end of World War II, the Royal Navy had no problem recruiting him. And Gordon didn’t seem to have a choice about joining the Royal Marines at that age. It seems like his father had him dragooned!
Gordon’s teenage naval career was his father’s idea. Gordon says his father called him a “menace” and shipped him off to the Marines to teach him some discipline. Looking at Gordon now, aged 85, it’s hard to picture him as a teenage menace aged 14, but he admits he was “enormous trouble, getting into fights and everything”. So, on his father’s orders he entered the service and emerged after training, not as a fighter, but as bugler and drummer, sailing aboard the heavy cruiser, HMS Norfolk, in the British East Indies Fleet.
Gordon’s service aboard the Norfolk saw him sailing around East India for two years. Then, he transferred to HMS Bermuda, based in Simonstown, South Africa. One day, while he was serving aboard the Bermuda, the Captain asked to speak to him, and informed Gordon that his parents had migrated to Australia. Gordon was offered the chance to transfer to the Australian navy which he accepted.
Gordon isn’t the only veteran of the Korean War to join the Australian Navy having served in the Royal Navy. The late Ron Benton, who was a resident of Vasey RSL Care’s RSL Park in Frankston South, also joined the RAN after he’d been de-mobbed in Britain at the end of World War II. Ron went on to serve in Korea and in Vietnam with the RAN.
The HMAS Sydney, courtesy of the Australian War Memorial, with a wartime ship’s company of around 1,300.
With his transfer approved, Gordon set sail first from South Africa back to Britain to complete the formalities and join the RAN. From there, he sailed to Korea to link up with the Australian forces. He recalls his dramatic boarding of the HMAS Sydney by flying fox in Korean waters. Once on board, he took up his duties as ship’s bugler, rotating 24 hour shifts with another bugler.
HMAS Sydney, classified as a Majestic Class light aircraft carrier, saw action in Korea from 5 October 1951 to 29 January 1952. The Sydney had in fact been built for Britain’s Royal Navy, but was not complete by the end of World War II in Europe and was bought by the Australian Government in 1948. For its Korean War duties, Sydney operated 24 Hawker Sea Fury and 14 Fairey Firefly fighter bombers, which though no match for Chinese jets, were well suited to reconnaissance and ground attacks on troops, artillery batteries and transport targets.
Operating for nine-day periods, Sydney’s piston-engined Sea Furies and Fireflies conducted 2,366 sorties against the North Koreans and their Chinese allies. Sydney lost nine planes to anti-aircraft fire, with three aircrew killed and six wounded. But it also had an impressive strike record including 3,000 communist casualties as well as the destruction of 66 bridges, seven tunnels, 15 guns, 38 railway sections, seven rail sidings, three locomotives, and 495 junks and sampans.
After Korea and a short stint on land with the Navy band, Gordon accepted the posting as bugler to the Admiral of the fleet. “Where the Admiral went, his flag went and where his flag went, I went,” Gordon says, with evident pride.
When Gordon finally left the Navy in the mid-1950s, he retrained as a panel-beater and coach builder, working first in Jack Smith’s motor repairs in Edithvale and then with Bayside Holden in Frankston. He later went on to bigger things, working as a coach builder on trains, trams and buses, for Freighter Industries in Dandenong.
Painting of the HMAS Sydney by Ray Honisett.
Gordon has been a resident of Vasey RSL Care’s independent living units in Frankston South for four years. He says he heard about the opportunity to move into the Independent Living Village by word of mouth.
Like so many of Vasey RSL Care’s independent residents, Gordon is grateful for the opportunity to live in a community of people with similar experiences and who share similar values.
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With our grateful thanks to Gordon Sampson for sharing his wartime experiences.
Korean War Commemoration
Around 18,000 Australians served in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. There were 1,500 casualties and over 350 died. A ceremony is held at the Shrine each year to mark the anniversary of the signing of the armistice on 27 July 1953.