Trooper 432 Frederick Sampson
RSL (Port Pirie Sub Branch) Inc.Frederick Sampson was born in Stone Hut, South Australia in 1878 and educated at Gladstone Public School and Prince Alfred College in Adelaide. He was one of 11 children of Captain Richard Henry Sampson. There were three sons and eight daughters in the family.
He inherited from his father a great love for horses, and that fondness for the saddle and flying boots that not even a college education could quench. Being slight of stature, (5’ 2 ½”) his greatest ambition was to be a jockey and he was apprenticed to the famous St. Alban’s Stud at Geelong in Victoria. Later he entered the training stables of the late Mr. J. Jenkins (father of Mr. J. Firmin Jenkins, Mayor of Pirie). For several years he followed the calling of a jockey, and rode with a measure of success at meetings all-round the north.
Toward the end of last century he dropped the racing game and settled at the butchering trade with the other members of the family, at Gladstone and Port Pirie. Then, in 1900 war broke out in South Africa, and Fred Sampson aged 23, with four companions in Port Pirie were accepted for service in the Fifth Contingent of Australian Bushmen. His comrades in arms were Messrs. J. C. Fitzgerald, Roley Ferry, George Lush, and Jim Stuckey.
He went right through the South African campaign without injury. He was originally a member of the 17th Light Horse (Pirie Troop), in which he rose to the rank of regimental Quartermaster-Sergeant.
Returning to Port Pirie after the Boer War, he started business on his own account as a butcher on The Terrace in Pirie West. In 1905, he married Mabel Lucy Francis, who came from a well-known Wirrabara family; they raised six sons and one daughter from the marriage.
When the Great War broke out in 1914, he immediately offered his services and entered his second spell of warfare. He went to Egypt with the 3rd Light Horse, and from there on to Gallipoli for the famous landing. He was there until the evacuation, and then returned with the regiment to Egypt and the horses it had left there.
His next move was into the Sinai Desert, and it was while on that route, that the diminutive quartermaster fell foul of an enemy shell which buried him deeply under earth. That was the end of his fighting career, and he was invalided home to Australia on the 11th April 1916.
Frederick Sampson passed away on the 26th November 1942.The Port Pirie RSL Sub Branch honoured their old comrade in the arrangements for the funeral. The coffin was draped with the Union Jack, returned men turned out in large number, each dropping a tiny poppy into the open grave, as the "Last Post" and "Reveille" were trumpeted.
