Samuel Barbour was born in Southwest Arm on January 25th, 1920. His childhood was similar to most young men in rural Newfoundland of that day. He fished, he played, he went into the woods – almost all of the time accompanied by his dog, Skipper.
Sam attended a one-room school in the community, at least until he was thirteen years old, when he had to leave school to go to work fishing up along the Labrador (as many young men of his generation had to do to help support their families).
When he was 19, war had descended across Europe for the second time that century. On June 8th, 1940, Sam enlisted in Greenspond, and a little over two weeks later, he arrived in St. John’s to begin his military service as a Gunner (GNR) in “A” Battery of the 59th (Newfoundland) Heavy Regiment of Britain’s Royal Artillery. After a week of preparations, he shipped out on the S.S. Nova Scotia and landed in Liverpool.
For the next four years, Sam would be stationed in England. First was a stop in Brookhouse, near Lancaster, for the regiment’s initial training. After this, he spent most of his time in England as part of the coastal defense system in Lympne Castle, a tiny community along the southeastern corner of the country on the English Channel. As D-Day approached, Sam found himself in Tunbridge Wells – still in Kent County in the southeast. Six or seven days after D-Day, Sam and the “Fighting 59th” found themselves on their way to France. The initial plan was for them to be a part of the second wave that went across the English Channel two to four days into the invasion, but a big sea prevented their earlier departure. Upon arriving on the continent on July 4th, 1944, at Courseulles-sur-Meron, the 59th Regiment saw its first action, shelling a concentration of German tanks west of Carpiquet. Sam and his fellow soldiers would fight their way through France and then up to Belgium. It was in Belgium that Sam was involved in an accident, when his gun – a 155 millimetre Long Tom – malfunctioned