Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Signalman with British Commonwealth Base Signals Regiment

Korea, 1953-1957 (Post-Armistice service - ceasefire monitoring)

Clive was born in 1934 and was only 5 years old when the WW2 broke out in 1939. He was the youngest of two boys to Archibald and Mercia (nee Scullin - niece of depression era Prime Minister James Scullin) McArthur. They lived in the Grampians in western Victoria where Archibald was the Post Master of the Broadford then Natimuk Post Offices (a position of some standing in the 1920s). He later transferred to the Brunswick PO and the family moved there where Clive’s brother Robert John enlisted in the AIF and served in New Guinea in 1943 before transferring to the RAAF as a fighter pilot. As young boys they had been bought up on Biggles novels and my father Robert John must have been the apple of his little brother Clive’s eye! And so in the post war years Clive was still eager to do ‘his bit’ and joined as a signalman. 

While serving in Australia he went AWOL to see his mother who died only week after his return to service. Then after being transferred to with the British Commonwealth Signals Regiment, he was employed in Tokyo as part of the Post-Armistice service ceasefire monitoring for Korea, from 1954 until his death on January 30th 1956. My father Robert John (Clive’s brother) told me that Clive was immensely proud to be part of the regiment and one of ‘the lads’. The story goes that the ‘boys of the regiment’ (over 20 of them) had procured enough spare parts to assemble two jeeps  which they all piled into when on leave. Clive was seated on the door which burst open at the pressure of so many young boisterous men inside and the 2nd jeep which was close behind ‘collected him’ and killed him instantly.

He was only 21 years old - a week ‘shy’ of his 22nd birthday. My father never really got over losing his little brother, and of course when he and mum had me only three years later in 1959, I became the proud bearer of the name ‘Clive McArthur’. I think dad looked on me as a reincarnation of his own brother Clive, even until his own death aged 93 in 2017.

In the documents section here is a letter Clive wrote home to his mum’s sister Lila, a telegram from the Military board advising of Clive’s death and a letter from his commanding officer in the British Commonwealth Base Signals Regiment. The photos show Clive and his brother Robert John just year before his death, and finally a photo of Clive’s grave in the days following his burial in Yokohama War Cemetery, Japan.