Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Born 28 September 1914 in Hedingham, Melbourne, Victoria

Father:  Sam Wood

Wife: Sheelah Mary Wood (nee Lyle of Sydney, NSW)

Samuel Richard Creswick Wood was born at Hedingham, a mansion standing in two hectares beside Caulfield Race­course. His father, also Sam, was a respected veterinary sur­georn, and both father and son had a lifelong involvement with the racing industry.

But despite the early geo­graphical link with Caulfield, their involvement was on the other side of Melbourne with the Victoria Racing Club at Flemington.

Wood was the eldest of five children.

His maternal grand­father was Alexander Creswick, a son of the founder of the prominent family who gave the central Victorian town- and a street in Kew - their names.   He had made his fortune in the liquor trade at the goldfields but later became one of the country's largest rural land owners, at one stage running 400,000 sheep.

The life of the young Wood followed a pattern built up by the Melbourne rich early in the 20th century. He was tutored at home before attending a small, private school in Malvern, and was then off, at age 12, to board at Geelong Grammar.

There, the pattern that was to distinguish his long and varied life soon emerged. He excelled at his studies, sports and intellectual interests, winning prizes in divinity, history and economics. Throughout his life he was a practicing Christian, an authority on Australian history, and an astute observer of the Melbourne business establishment.

He won his colours in shooting and rowing, and as a further clue to future directions, he was a Lieutenant in the cadet corps.

In the last summer of his school days he played polo with the Melbourne Hunt Club.

Tertiary education was at Brasenose College, Oxford, where Wood enrolled in 1935 and where he maintained high scholastic and sporting standards.He became fluent in French and a student of history. Wood rowed in the Oxford-Cambridge race in 1936 (his crew lost) and graduated BA in 1937 and MA in 1938.

In1939, Wood joined the RAF Reserve and, having obtained legal registration, returned to Melbourne. He started work in a law office but enlisted in the RAAF four weeks after the declaration of World War II.

6/11/1939      enlisted into RAAF at Point Cook

Dec. 1942       a member of 10 (Sunderland) Squadron RAAF based at RAF
                     Station Mount Batten, Plymouth, England operating with Coastal
                     Command in the Battle of the Atlantic.

30/6/1942      London Gazette - awarded "Distinguished Flying Cross"
                     "Flying attacks on U-Boats in the Bay of Biscay"

*** service records need to be ordered through National Archives of Australia ***

His service career was spectacular. It spanned the six years of war and covered many major theatres. He trained in Australia and in Britain, and took part in U-boat patrols, flying Sunderlands, over the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and in the process earned a DFC.

Wood's feat in becoming the first airman to Capture a submarine from the air occurred while he and his crew were on patrol over the Bay of Biscay. He depth-charged a U-boat, and when it surfaced, his Sunderland circled until the navy arrived and formalised the matter. Years later he located and corresponded with the U-boat's commander.

In 1942, he flew to Banana Beach, Florida (now Cape Kennedy) , to train in the new Martin Mariners, flying the first one into Australia.

In the Pacific theatre, now with the rank of Squadron Leader, his role was to supply Australian forces in New Guinea and other islands as the war moved north. His final duty was to bring prisoners of war home.

He ended his service career in 1946 with the rank of Acting Wing Commander and remained on the RAAF Reserve until 1964.

Squadron Leader with 74 Wing Headquarters in Port Moresby

23/1/1946      discharged from service

At war's end, he returned to legal practice until 1948, when he applied for a position with the stockbroker Eric Morgan.

His brother Philip had been a partner there before he enlisted in 1939; he was killed in action in 1942.

Wood rarely spoke of war- time experiences, just as he rarely referred to the many highlights of his professional and public life.

His abiding interest was in racing. He was a member of the VRC committee from 1949 to 1977. This was the time when the private racing clubs virtually advised the government on the running of the industry.

Wood is generally accepted as the main influence in the reform of racing in Victoria, but a personal project, the Australian Jockeys School, will probably be remembered long after the central part he played in cleaning up the industry.

His involvement with racing started in childhood. He suggested the name Drongo for one of his mother's most consistent losers, thus introducing a hapless native bird to the nation's vernacular speech.

As a stockbroker in the post-war years, he prospered and enriched many of his clients.

In 1971, he joined the newly formed "Friends of the Latrobe Library". This association was a happy confluence of his interest in writing, history and his financial expertise.

As honorary treasurer, his advice enabled the organisation to become today's affluent and influential "State Library Foundation".

In 1944, he married Sheelah Lyle of Sydney. A tall, handsome and popular couple, they were a fixture on the city's social circuit for decades. After his retirement in 1979, he and Sheelah moved to Tasmania.

Reflecting on his Oxford years, he once said that being abroad had separated him from his contemporaries and left a gap.

Settled in Tasmania, near Perth, he wrote (but never published) the history of his family, while his wife created one of the state's great exotic gardens.

In 2001, his ill health brought them back to Melbourne, and in 2005l he entered a nursing home. He is survived by his wife Sheelah, children Sam, Annabelle and Eugene, five grandchildren, and his sister Helen Wilkinson.

Sourced and Submitted by Julianne T Ryan.  23/6/2016.  Lest we forget.

Thank you to Neil Clerehan and Sir David Hay for their informtion:-

Details - courtesy of "The Age" - Monday 26 June 2006 (by Neil Clerehan)
(Neil was assisted by Sir David Hay, a lifelong friend of Samuel Wood).

SAMUEL WOOD DFC - Pilot, stockbroker, Racing Stalwart  (b.28/9/1914 -d.19-5-2006)