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Karen Throssell
Karen Throssell is the granddaughter of Captain Hugo Throssell of the 10th Australian Light Horse, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions at Hill 60, Gallipoli on 28 August 1915.
Hugo Throssell, known to all as ‘Jim’, was born in 1884 at Northam, Western Australia, the youngest son of George Throssell, later the Premier of Western Australia, and his wife Anne, née Morrell. He was farming at Cowcowing in the wheat belt when war was declared, and enlisted in October 1914 in the newly formed 10th Light Horse Regiment.
In May 1915, his unit was sent to fight dismounted at Gallipoli, but Throssell remained in Egypt until August. He landed on Gallipoli three days before the charge at The Nek. Nine officers and seventy-three men of the unit were killed within minutes. Throssell was one of the leaders of the fourth and last line of attacking troops, which was recalled after having advanced only a few yards.
The August offensive was the last allied attempt to win the Gallipoli campaign. It was in the fighting three weeks later at Hill 60, in the early hours of 29 August, that Throssell led his men in an attack on the Turkish trenches. By daybreak, after several setbacks, the Australians had taken and consolidated their position. Throssell was badly wounded during the heavy fighting at Hill 60, but refused to leave his men until all danger had passed. He was largely instrumental in saving the situation at a critical period and was the only light horseman and the first Western Australian to be awarded the Victoria Cross during the First World War.
Throssell was evacuated to hospital in England. He was promoted to the rank of captain in February 1916, and rejoined his regiment in Egypt. In April 1917, he was wounded at the 2nd Battle of Gaza, in which his brother Ric was fatally wounded. After he recovered from his own wounds he rejoined his regiment and led the 10th Light Horse guard of honour at the fall of Jerusalem. Following the death of his brother in Palestine, the end of hostilities and the painful recovery from his own wounds, Jim Throssell made a commitment – to fight for peace.
After a series of financial setbacks during the Depression, he shot himself in November 1933 at Greenmount, WA. He was survived by his wife, the writer Katherine Susannah Prichard, and son Ric, named for his brother who had died at Gaza. In 1983 Ric Throssell sold his father’s Victoria Cross, with the proceeds being used to finance a film promoting peace for the People for Nuclear Disarmament. The Returned Services League of Australia bought the medal and presented it to the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
Former teacher and union organiser Karen Throssell is now a poet and author, and the manager of a Neighbourhood House for women in Warrandyte, Victoria. Widowed with two daughters, she is actively involved in politics and equal opportunity issues, and is a supporter of the peace movement. Her publications include two collections of poetry: The Old King and other poems (2003) and Remembering how to cry (2004); The Pursuit of Happiness, and a forthcoming book about work/life balance – Taking Back Time.
Reflecting on the meaning of Anzac Day, Karen said:
I think my grandfather would have been very proud of me for making this journey to Turkey as a missioner for peace … Our family has always seen his legacy as a cry for peace, traditionally shunning our Anzac Day celebrations as a day we felt was often used to glorify war rather than to remember its horrors.
My brief visit as a Peace Ambassador has left me feeling that I should break with our family tradition and acknowledge Anzac Day, acknowledge it as our Peace Day – a day to remember what happened not just to our own loved ones but to remind us of what should never happen again.
Ailsa Hawkins
Ailsa Hawkins remembers her grandfather as a quiet man who did not speak very much of his experiences in the trenches. He died when she was eleven years old and she has few memories of her conversations with him. ‘I’m certain he would have wanted to spare me, a child, the horrors of war that he must have experienced’, she said recently.
Twenty-three-year-old labourer Robert Portley was working at Berrigan, NSW, when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 1 September 1914. After training in Egypt, the 1st Light Horse Regiment in which Robert Portley served left their horses and landed on the peninsula on 12 May 1915. The regiment was about 500 strong and immediately moved into position at Shrapnel Gully.
The 1st Light Horse successfully defended their positions against strong Turkish attacks on the right of Pope’s Post on 19 May, and remained there taking weekly turns in the front line trenches with the 2nd and 3rd Light Horse Regiments. On 9 July 1915, Robert Portley suffered a gunshot wound to his right fingers and was evacuated by the hospital ship Gascon to Malta. Six weeks later he was returned to Australia on the hospital ship Ascanius, and was discharged from the Australian Imperial Force in Sydney on 17 December 1915.
Ailsa Margaret Hawkins has been the Director of Clinical Services (Nursing) at Calvary Mater, a regional hospital in Newcastle, NSW, for the past decade. Her nursing career has spanned many fields: midwifery, gynaecology and obstetrics, as well as veteran care at Concord Repatriation Hospital. Ailsa has professional responsibility for nursing standards within the hospital and operational responsibility for the cancer and haematology services that the Mater provides to the Hunter New England region. She has also been involved in management consultancy of a distance education post-graduate certificate for the New South Wales College of Nursing and various research projects.
The youngest of three children of Les and Eileen Portley, Ailsa was born at Greenacre, NSW, and learned at an early age the consequences of war through her parents’ support of Legacy. She lives with her partner Richard Kearney at Hamilton, an inner city Newcastle suburb, where she leads an active life, cycling and swimming. She has a keen interest in the Newcastle Film Society and participates in a local book club. Her only child, a daughter Louise, has completed a degree in Teaching and Early childhood Education at the University of Newcastle.
At the official ceremony in Ankara, Ailsa spoke of the meaning of Anzac Day:
For me it means to spend the day with an open heart … We remember all the sacrifices that communities make in times of war. We share thoughts and pray for the safe return of men and women currently in service.
Her closing remarks were of hope for the future:
I believe that we must use diplomatic solutions to resolve conflicts rather than war. My grandfather would be very proud to see me here today as your guest. You have extended your hand in friendship to me as the descendant of an Anzac who fought in your country 93 years ago. I am only too willing to extend my own hand in return and say ‘May peace be with you’.
Jo Hardy
At the official ceremony in Ankara, Jo Hardy said:
I am the proud granddaughter of Private Alec Campbell, the last Australian Gallipoli veteran … He was the last living link with the ANZAC legend that defined our nation.
Jo had accompanied her grandfather on a number of Anzac Day marches as he became frailer, and cared for him in the last few months of his life. She said:
Like the ANZAC legend and the Spirit of Çanakkale his life was one of spirit, determination and endeavour. Born in 1899, he died in 2002 at the age of 103. His life spanned three centuries.
Also present at the ceremony was Turgut Kaçmaz, son of the last surviving Turkish Gallipoli veteran, Hüseyin Kaçmaz of the 57th Regiment, who died in 1994, aged 111 years.
Alec Campbell enlisted with his mother’s consent at just fifteen years of age, in June 1915. He stated that he was eighteen years and four months old. Campbell’s fellow soldiers in the 8th Reinforcements called him ‘the kid’. He trained in Tasmania and Melbourne before embarking for Egypt, and joined the 15th Battalion on Lemnos Island in the Aegean Sea.
On 31 October he was posted to D Company and sailed for the front. His main duty was to cart water to the men in the trenches, a journey that took him along North Beach and up Shrapnel Gully. It was a dangerous job; shells burst overhead and snipers claimed the lives of many men engaged in such duties. He became ill with influenza on 8 December and left Gallipoli on 13 December as part of the evacuation. Campbell’s unit reached Alexandria on Christmas day 1915, but he fell ill again, a pattern that would soon repeat itself. He had expected to sail with his unit for France and the Western Front but a medical examination classed him unfit for further service and shortly afterwards his face was paralysed by Bell’s palsy.
Campbell was sent home to Australia and reached Melbourne on 7 July 1916; he was discharged from the AIF on 22 August 1916. He recovered his health slowly and took on a variety of jobs, became an active trade unionist, an enthusiastic sportsman, sailed in six Sydney–Hobart yacht races and once circumnavigated Tasmania. He married twice and produced six daughters and three sons.
Jo Hardy travelled to Turkey as the representative of the Campbell family; her mother Mary is one of Alec’s six daughters. Jo is the Chief Executive Officer of the Mary Ogilvy Homes Society, an aged care organisation, in Hobart, Tasmania, and is a passionate advocate for the Australian aged care system. She holds a Masters degree in Health Science and is a regular speaker at national and international conferences. A keen swimmer with a great interest in current affairs, theatre, books and film, Jo lives in Hobart with her husband Greg and son Hugo.
Jo was one of the Campbell women who accompanied Alec Campbell’s state funeral procession through the streets of Hobart in May 2002. Her son Hugo carried the wreath of 103 roses, one for every year of the long and full life of Australia’s last Gallipoli veteran.
In her speech to the assembled guests in Ankara, Jo said Alec was always an advocate for peace and that before he died he said ‘It will be up to others soon to make sure we don’t make exaggerated heroes; this was a vicious and awful campaign’.
Emma Slack-Smith
Gallipoli Scholarship recipient (2002) Emma Slack-Smith said that when she was asked to visit Turkey she felt ‘honoured, excited and also extremely proud’. Ninety-three years earlier her great grandfather Clarence Robert Lundy, known as ‘Bob’, had also visited Turkey – as a member of the 1st Field Company Engineers, who landed at 4 am on 25 April 1915 at Anzac Cove. Emma did not know her great grandfather, who died in 1951, but her grandmother recalls that he spoke with great respect for the Turkish soldiers. He said that the Turks fought with morals.
Bob enlisted in August 1914 as a 19-year-old, and travelled to Egypt for training before being deployed to Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. In his first few moments at Gallipoli he almost lost his life. When disembarking from the boat on the beach his leg caught in one of the ropes attached to the boat. He tripped and went head first into the water. Weighed down by his heavy pack he would have drowned if it had not been for a mate who pulled him from the water.
During the first few days on the peninsula the company was employed digging trenches and pumping water, often under shrapnel and sniper fire. They put roofs over trenches, carted supplies and ammunition and carried out the highly dangerous task of tunnelling under the enemy lines.
Bob was at Gallipoli for the entire campaign and was evacuated on the very last day in December. He arrived at Gallipoli as a private and after eight months he left during the final evacuation as a sergeant. He went on to see service with the Pioneers on the Western Front, and was awarded the Military Cross for his valuable service in carrying out the construction of the Decauville Railway, in arduous and dangerous conditions.
In May 1918 Lundy gained a commission in the Indian Army, serving at Waziristan and the Khyber before he ended his military life with the rank of captain in 1920.
Bob’s great granddaughter Emma Slack-Smith grew up on a sheep and cattle property at Burren Junction, in the west of New South Wales. Her secondary education was at the New England Girls School, Armidale, where she involved herself in sports, drama and school life and was elected drama captain, softball captain and in her final year, school prefect. After completing her secondary education she took a year off to work on her parents’ property and travel to Europe.
She returned to study Communications and Advertising at the University of Canberra and now works in a Communications and Events Coordinator role at Aon, a risk management and insurance company. In November of 2007 Emma married Dwayne Murray from Tumut and they have made their home in Canberra. Now enrolled in an Interior Residential Design at the Canberra Institute of Technology she aspires to running her own small business in the design industry.
Speaking of the respect and friendship that exists between the two nations, in her speech at the official ceremony in Ankara, Emma quoted the words of the great Turkish leader Mustapha Kemal Atatürk:
… Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
She added:
The respect and friendship for each other lives on today and our two nations share a unique and special relationship. During this visit we have been able to feel how our ancestors felt about your people, and from your warmth and hospitality we too honour that sentiment and hold the Turkish people in the highest regard.