A Personal History Of
90 TRANSPORT PLATOON RAASC

Cliff Hodgson has kindly related for us his recollections of serving with the 90 Transport Platoon, RAASC. Below are his experiences, knowledge and photos of the 90's service during the 1969 to 1971 period, based in Singapore.

The history of this unit before October 1969 I cannot tell other than to say it was the domestic RAASC transport platoon in Western Australia (Perth). Domestic units hold a very mixed bag of civvy fleet vehicles such as semi-trailers, buses, ambulances, some old fire fighting vehicles, staff cars, utes and CL trucks (Commercial Loading)... and in some domestic units they hold and assortment of GS (General Service) vehicles: Land-Rovers and 4x4 trucks, the quantity depends on what variety of Army units are in the location the domestic unit supports. But things were to change for the 90 Tpt Pl.

On my return to Australia from service in Vietnam (May 1967), I was posted to a RAASC section at 1RTB Kapooka New South Wales (a bit of a climate change!). Some weeks later (about August 1969) I was called into the office and informed of a new posting. I was posted to 90 Tpt Pl, to take effect in September 1969. Well, a posting to Perth was like winning the lottery. Everyone at Kapooka was envious (winter in Kapooka can be bloody freezing) but about week later another movements signal came through to the office with more details. It said my posting was to 90 Tpt Pl assembling in Randwick Sydney for an overseas task based in Singapore(!) The 90 Pl in Perth had undergone a name swap for some reason.

On my arrival at Randwick it was just one big reunion. The new 90 Tpt Pl was being made up mainly using all those drivers that had already served in Vietnam during 1966/67, meaning 87 Tpt Pl and 1 Tpt Pl. The wealth of experience that this unit was made up from... well I doubt it could ever be equalled again. The only exception to this was our CO and 2IC and our admin Sgt plus about 6 others (and our blowfly that was new to us all).

In Vietnam there had been a lot of unit pride and bantering between the ex-Vietnam platoons, as 87 Pl was mainly Tipper and 1 Pl was General Cargo. So we had all worked, ate and played together. By late November 1969 we had all our unit stores including 24 new Inter F1 (MK5) trucks, 3 LWB Land-Rovers and trailers, as well as 3 BSA motorcycles and a Massy Ferguson forklift. So we were on our way to Singapore with our wives and "tin lids".

Arriving in Singapore we hit the ground running what with getting our families settled into new homes in a foreign country and a full-on workload. We drove convoy after convoy from Singapore to a place called Terrandac, north of Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, which was a round-trip of about 400km. And things stayed full-on as we moved the 1RAR Battalion lock stock and barrel to Singapore. The pressure backed off for a little after that job as we only had to support an Arty unit and our RAEME unit and the First Kiwi Battalion along with the "Five Nations" Exercise held in Northern Malaya which lasted six weeks.

I still remember the day we were all told have our uniforms ready for a what we thought was to be a bullshit parade. The Commander of The 28th Commonwealth Brigade was the Reviewing Officer (another Pommy). Well, the Commander said that in a period of seven months our unit vehicles had covered a total of 90,000 miles without a single incident and we were given a few days off as an award. We all got to sleep in our beds more than in our trucks and a lot of the wives got pregnant about this time!

As the Commander had said, 90,000 miles was a lot of work for us and also for the trucks. Our vehicles were showing signs of hard work and were always needing minor repairs etc. Servicing was always carried out when and as needed. The 90 Tpt Sergeant and our RAEME workshop team saw to that, but in less time than ever expected we had no replacement tyres for half the vehicles and by now the wet season had started to set in... so things slowed down somewhat.

During this slack period we had a British (aka pommy) Transport unit move into our lines with all their vehicles (RL Bedfords) and equipment and we all had to be crossed trained on each others equipment including weapons, vehicles and whatever else we all had. The Aussies just got into the Bedford cabs and drove them, and an hour later one would have thought we had been driving them since "day one", but our Inters proved to be a problem for most of the younger pommy drivers. Our Inter steering was "too heavy" and the lower gearbox was a problem to them. A good Beddie would do 70 MPH and our Inters were flat out at about 55 mph. So they hated our Inters, but we proved who had the better trucks. During offroad work, which at time was plentiful, I don't ever recall a Beddie towing a Inter or recovering an Inter but we often had a Beddie on our hook (tow) and this used to hurt the poor poms. The Bedfords were too light in mud or greasy tracks; traction was always a problem in the wet, but on the highway they would leave us for dead.

We had just settled down to a new routine with the pommy unit when we were introduced to 12 more new members who joined the unit A section: and they were Kiwis. We were now officially an ANZAC UNIT although some Kiwis seemed to have an attitude problem like "Don't tell me" or "I know". Within a few days of the Kiwis arriving we had our first accident involving one of our trucks and it was followed by 3 or 4 others over the next twelve months.

During our second year in Singapore our workload changed somewhat. Besides our normal support role to the other units, we took on the task of supporting the 1RAR Battalion which was now providing the perimiter defence at Butterworth, the RAAF base in Penang. Penang is at the north-west end of the Malayan penninsula, very close to the Thai border and about as far from Singapore you can get. It was about a 12 hour trip to the 1RAR depot at Butterworth and we had trucks going back and forth all the time.

As well as all the convoy work some of us were later involved in Driver Training roles (including bus work) for the poms - this was done in the pommy vehicles of course. During this work with the poms I was lucky to be picked to drive a new Royal Navy Humber Super Snipe, and for three weeks I drove around for a visiting British dignitary (it was like a holiday). Other pommy vehicles I got to drive included 3 ton 4x4 Commer tippers and several MK Bedfords with MF engines.

During December of 1971 the troops and the families of 90 Tpt returned home to Australia in time for Christmas. And the only thing that saddened me about leaving Singapore was that my Inter, ARN 174-658, had to stay behind. I had picked it up brand new at RAASC Bandiana in November 1969 and it hurt to hand it over. The 90 Tpt Pl was the only unit that I ever served in where vehicles were issued to a single driver and you set the vehicle up as your own -- and the trucks were treated as if the driver owned them and very rarely did anyone else use your vehicle.

Today 90 Transport Platoon no longer exists. But the troops of the original 90 have formed an Association and its slowly gathering momentum.

Here are some photos.