Four Brothers at Gallipoli-Excerpt from John Tognolini's Brothers Part One: Gallipoli 1915

Ric and Hugo Throssell, in England where Hugo was recovering from his wounds at Gallipoli

"As it got close to 5 pm, a group from the 3^rd Light Horse Brigade Troopers gathered to watch the 1^st Brigade’s attack on Lone Pine. Four of them were members of the West Australian 10^th Light Horse Regiment, two sets of brothers, Ross and Lindsay Chipper and Ric and Hugo Throssell.

They looked down from the height of the Second Ridge at Russell’s Top and watched with excitement, as did many other soldiers, as the 4^th, 3^rd and 2^nd Battalions stormed across no-man’s-land to take Lone Pine. They shared a bottle of whiskey that one of them had “half inched” (stolen) from their Major Todd.

The next morning, Ross and Lindsay Chipper were killed when their regiment charged across no-man’s-land towards the Turks in the trench at the Nek. The Throssell brothers survived the Nek but the following month, Lieutenant Hugo Throssell was badly wounded while commanding his men at Hill 60 and awarded the Victoria Cross. Ric Throssell was killed in the Second Battle of Gaza in Palestine in 1917. In 1919, Hugo was the featured speaker at the Empire Day gathering of 1200 people in the Throssell’s home town of Northam, in Western Australia, he explained how despite hours of searching after the battle, he could not find his brother’s body amongst the dead and dismembered. He also explained to them how this had made him a socialist and why the war was an imperialist venture. In 1930, suffering victimisation for his views, post-traumatic stress syndrome and, like many others, the economic effects of the Great Depression, Hugo shot himself and died." 

My book Brothers Part One can be obtained through clicking on this link..