The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (402110) Sergeant Felix Ffrench Clowry, No. 38 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Charis May, the story for this day was on (402110) Sergeant Felix Ffrench Clowry, No. 38 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second World War.

402110 Sergeant Felix Ffrench Clowry, No. 38 Squadron, Royal Air Force
KIA 13 July 1941
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 30 June 2016

Today we pay tribute to Sergeant Felix Ffrench Clowry, who was killed on active service with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.

Born in Sydney on 2 April 1918, Felix Clowry was the son of Francis Joseph Clowry and Edith Clowry. The family lived in Canberra, where Felix’s father worked as a foreman carpenter at the first Parliament House.

Clowry was a member of the Canberra Aero Club, and after leaving school he worked as temporary public servant before enlisting in the Royal Australian Air Force on 27 May 1940. His brothers Thomas and Paul also served in the RAAF during the war. Thomas became a prisoner of war, spending three years in camps in Italy and Germany, and survived the war. Paul also survived, and served within Australia.

Clowry began training as a pilot and embarked for overseas service. His journey took him to San Francisco, where he travelled across the United States to New York, and then on to Britain. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, he was one of almost 27,500 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined squadrons based in Britain throughout the course of the war.

After arriving in Britain, Clowry undertook further specialist training before being posted to No. 38 Squadron, Royal Air Force, equipped with the twin-engine Vickers Wellington medium bomber.

In November 1940 the squadron had been transferred from Britain to Egypt, where it joined the RAF Command Middle East as a night-bomber wing. From its base at Fayid, No. 38 attacked Italian ports in the Mediterranean and North African coast, and hampered the movement and supply of Italian forces in the Western Desert.

On the night of 13/14 July 1941 the Wellington bomber in which Clowry was pilot was undertaking an operation to bomb Benghazi on the coast of Libya. Nothing was heard from Clowry’s crew after take-off, but others taking part in the mission reported seeing the flaming wreckage of an aircraft floating on the water about one mile from the target. It was believed this may have been Clowry’s.

Reported missing, presumed killed, it was later confirmed that Clowry and all five of his British crewmates were killed in action.

Clowry was 23 years old. Their bodies unrecovered, the names of the crew are commemorated upon the El Alamein Memorial and the British and Commonwealth War Cemetery at Alamein in Egypt.

Clowry’s name is also listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, among some 40,000 others who died while serving in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Sergeant Felix Ffrench Clowry, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Dr Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section