Africa Star : Able Seaman R D Cameron, RAN

Africa Star. Unnamed as issued.

Born in Launceston, Tasmania on 29 June 1918, Raymond Douglas Cameron enlisted in the RAN at Hobart, as an ordinary seaman in August 1942, shortly after his twenty-first birthday.

Assigned the service number H1729, Cameron was posted to the minesweeper corvette HMAS Lismore in May 1942, after completing his initial training at the Victorian shore establishment, HMAS Cerberus. He was promoted to able seaman the following month.

Operating out of Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) Lismore undertook convoy escort duties in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf until April 1943, when she transferred to operations in the Mediterranean. Lismore joined her sister corvettes HMA ships Gawler, Ipswich and Maryborough to form the 21st Minesweeping Flotilla. Most of her service involved escort duty. In August 1943 Lismore moved to the Atlantic to join an escort for a large convoy bound for Alexandria in Egypt, and was the subjected to numerous enemy air attacks. At the end of September she rejoined the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean, again on escort duty.

Cameron left the Lismore in January 1944. After leave and a short period at the Brisbane shore establishment, HMAS Moreton, he joined the crew of the newly commissioned River Class frigate, HMAS Burdekin. Between November 1944 and April 1945 the ship undertook escort duties between New Guinea and the Philippines, before moving to the Dutch East Indies to support the Tarakan landings. Burdekin then carried out surveillance operations in Borneo and the Celebes before returning to Australia in July 1945, shortly before the end of the war.

Raymond Cameron was discharged from the navy on 22 November 1945.