VCs of the First World War Gallipoli

by Stephen Snelling

  Throssell rejoined his old unit on 18 March 1917 and in the fighting that followed on 19 April he was seriously wounded again in the left thigh and left foot. Worse still was the discovery that his brother Ric, an officer in the same unit, was among the dead. To his painful physical injuries were now added deep psychological wounds. Throssell’s son later wrote:

  The war became a savage reality where even victory was a tragedy, the price of which was pain and death. The strange joy of battle that sustained him at the Nek and Hill 60 and inspired the men who fought with him died after the Gaza action. There were no more ‘great charges’ in his diary: no inspiring anecdotes.

  After recovering from his wounds in Egypt, Throssell went back to his unit. Promoted captain shortly afterwards, he commanded the guard of honour from the 10th Light Horse at the triumphant parade through Jerusalem in December 1917. His war, however, was almost over. The following year his health, undermined by wounds, climate and sickness, failed again. After a spell with a training unit, he returned to Australia. He left the Army on 13 February 1919. A fortnight earlier, on 28 January, at the Collins Street Registry Office, in Melbourne, ‘Jim’ Throssell had married the Australian writer Katharine Susannah Prichard. The couple had met in England while he was recovering from his wounds sustained at Gallipoli. They had one son, named Ric after his brother, who later served as Director of the Commonwealth Foundation.

  The Throssells settled on a small farm at Greenmount, near Perth, and soon became embroiled in controversy. Throssell joined his wife, a founder member of the Australian Communist Party, in supporting striking workers and the unemployed. In July 1919 he rode at the head of a victory parade through the streets of his home town of Northam. Addressing the crowds, the hero of the Light Horse described how ‘war had made him a Socialist’. It was greeted in silence.

  Appointed a member of the Soldier Settlers’ Board, he also worked briefly in the Department of Agriculture in Western Australia. During the 1920s he moved into real estate but as the decade wore on his money-making ventures ran into trouble. At the same time his health, never strong since his return home, began to go rapidly downhill. Already receiving a 40% incapacity pension on account of his war injuries, Throssell had suffered recurrent attacks of malaria, occasional heart flutters and was in more or less constant pain from his various wounds. By the early 1930s he was a physical wreck, unable to perform any strenuous task, weary from sleeplessness and with failing sight. His decline was undoubtedly accelerated by the stress of seeing his business ambitions reduced to dust. The economic slump, coupled with an unsuccessful attempt to wipe out his debts, brought him to the brink of financial ruin. To one doctor he had seemed ‘despondent and depressed-looking’. Another found him ‘introspective’ and suffering from ‘nervousness and inability to sleep’. The final straw came in 1933. While his wife was touring the Soviet Union, he staged a costly rodeo designed to attract interest in buying plots of land for housing, but instead of easing his money worries it merely left him with more debts, forcing him to sell off farm equipment and livestock. He described the disastrous wild west show as ‘Throssell’s Folly’ and worried about his wife’s reaction to the fiasco. He even told his brother-in-law ‘if he had the pluck he would blow his brains out’. The following morning, 19 November 1933, he was found sitting in his pyjamas on the verandah of his Lazy Hit ranch, a pool of blood beneath his deckchair and a revolver clasped in his right hand. ‘Jim’ Throssell was barely alive. Carried inside, he died some 15 minutes later.

  In his last will and testament, he wrote: ‘I have never recovered from my 1914–18 experiences… .’ It was officially recorded that he had ‘died by a bullet wound in the head self-inflicted while his mind was deranged due to war wounds’.

  ‘Jim’ Throssell, the only Light Horseman to win the VC in the First World War, was buried in Karrakatta cemetery, Perth, with full military honours.

  Today streets in Greenmount, Canberra and Melbourne, bear his name. He is also commemorated on a plaque in Greenmount, while a further memorial to the man dubbed the ‘Outcast Anzac’ was unveiled in his home town of Northam almost eighty-four years to the day after the action for which he received the Victoria Cross. The brick-built monument was placed at the point where, in July 1919, he had addressed the homecoming crowds, shocking them into silence. Beneath the citation for his award, the inscription reads: ‘Courageous in war: steadfast in peace.’

  The Victoria Cross, which Throssell had considered pawning to ease his financial plight, was donated to the People for Nuclear Disarmament by his son in 1984. Later his medals were purchased by the Returned Services League of Australia and presented to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. In 2010, they formed part of a travelling exhibition featuring all nine Australian Gallipoli Victoria Crosses which toured Western Australia, the Northern Territory, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland in honour of the ‘significance of the sacrifice the recipients made for the nation’.

  R. BELL DAVIES

  Near Ferejik Junction, Bulgaria, 19 November 1915

  Sqdn. Cdr. R. Bell Davies, RNAS Eastchurch, 1912–13

  The role of air power in the Dardanelles Campaign was restricted to the margins of naval and land-based operatives, making it little more than a sideshow within a sideshow.

  British involvement in aerial operations centred on the motley collection of aircraft which were officially designated No. 3 Squadron, Royal Naval Air Service, under the command of the enigmatic Sqn. Cdr. Charles Samson DSO. Samson was already a popular hero, having won acclaim as the leader of an intrepid band of airmen during the battle for Belgium in the first weeks of the war. An independently minded leader, he proved a great innovator, operating armoured cars against the German invaders. His new command consisted of twenty-two aircraft, of various types, only five of which were considered of any practical use. The squadron’s primary role was to carry out aerial reconnaissance and artillery spotting. But the adventurous Samson was always seeking out opportunities of carrying the war to the Turks. Apart from occasional brushes with the small force of German and Turkish aircraft, Samson’s pilots flew numerous bombing sorties. On one occasion, Samson bombed a motor car said to be carrying Kemal Pasha, narrowly missing him, and in another sortie, his second in command, Sqn. Cdr. Richard Bell Davies DSO, was credited with a direct hit on an aircraft hangar at the German airfield near Chanak.

  Sqn. Cdr. Davies’ involvement in the Dardanelles Campaign began before the landings when he undertook a number of reconnaissance missions over Cape Helles. On the morning of 25 April he acted as aerial spotter for HMS Prince George, which was supporting the French landings at Kum Kale.

  By July, the squadron had assembled at Imbros, near to Sir Ian Hamilton’s HQ. Attention was then focussed on the impending operations at Suvla Bay. With Samson having gone away on leave, Davies was in temporary command. It was a difficult and stressful period with huge demands being made on the small force of airmen. Davies, however, came through the test remarkably well. Samson wrote of him: ‘He had nearly done as much as I; but he looked and was unchanged. He only weighed about nine stone, and looked as if a puff of wind would blow him over. Looks deceived, though; it would take a 100lb bomb to knock him out’.

  The squadron’s strength was boosted by the arrival of some Nieuport Scouts, of which Samson and Davies each claimed one. In October, while flying his Nieuport on a bombing sortie against Turkish transports, Davies narrowly escaped death when his engine cut out, forcing him to come down in the sea 5 miles off Imbros. A trawler came to his rescue and, having taken him on board, began towing the semi-submerged biplane towards shore. After ten minutes, however, the aircraft sank, prompting the trawler skipper to remark to Davies: ‘Bain’t nobody else in the machine, Mister, be there?’

  Bulgaria’s entry into the war widened the conflict and presented No. 3 Squadron with fresh targets. Samson won approval for bombing attacks designed to disrupt communications between Turkey and her new ally. Their first missio
n was against a railway bridge spanning the River Maritza near the Bulgarian border. The target, which provided one of the main links between Bulgaria and Constantinople, lay 200 miles across the Gulf of Saros, on the Thrace mainland, near Adrianople. Sqn. Cdr. Samson struck the first blow. On 8 November he dropped two 100lb bombs from a specially converted Maurice Farman which shook the bridge’s supports so badly that it was out of action for four days. Two days later, Davies repeated the operation, piloting the same machine, complete with an additional fuel tank. The four-hour-long mission was not without incident. In his flying log, Davies recorded:

  Followed road to Burges bridge, passed through rain then clear. Considerable transport on roads … Dropped two 100lb bombs at bridge. Both just missed right. Ht 2,000 feet. Machine hit by rifle fire in wings. Returning throttle wire broke when off Gallipoli. Had to land on switch.

  Bad weather so delayed Davies’ return that Samson had given him up for lost. He was in the process of writing to his next-of-kin when the Maurice Farman arrived back at Imbros. On inspection it was found that four bullets had struck the aircraft near to the nascelle. Davies’ bombs had fallen on the railway line at Uzun Kepri station, close to the bridge. Over the next few days Samson maintained the pressure with a series of sorties against the bridge and Army camps dotted along their flightpath. Then, on 13 November, he switched his attentions towards the Bulgarian side of the border.

  In what was almost certainly the first British air attack launched against their new enemy, squadron commanders Samson and Davies, both flying Nieuports, raided Ferejik Junction, a rail station just inside Bulgarian territory near the Maritza River. Davies was the first to attack. His log noted: ‘Dropped 3 20lb bombs at Stn at Ferejik straddled line. Heavy clouds and rain.’ Samson, who arrived just as Davies completed his attack, saw one bomb hit the railway track outside the station. Both aircraft came under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire but escaped unscathed. The return flight, however, proved uncomfortable as they ploughed through a heavy rainstorm. The Maritza Bridge defences having been considerably strengthened, Samson continued his attacks on Ferejik Junction. Two more raids were carried out over the next five days, and they culminated in the squadron’s biggest operation, in which all five available aircraft were to be employed against the Bulgarian railhead.

  The squadron’s three previous visits had already torn up track and ripped the roof off of one of the station buildings. But for the next attack each aircraft was to have a specific target. At supper on the eve of the raid, Samson passed round his order book. He would lead the mission in his Nieuport, with Davies in the other Nieuport, Flt. Sub-Lt. Gilbert Smylie, a 6-ft-tall, newly arrived pilot, and Flt. Lt. Barnato, piloting two Henri Farmans, and Flt. Lt. Heriot and his observer Capt. Edwards in the Maurice Farman. Davies, who had not flown since the first attack on Ferejik, was less than pleased with his CO. He later recalled:

  I was deeply engaged with the operation of building winter quarters and was rather annoyed to find he had put me down to fly one of the Nieuports, carrying 20lb bombs, to Ferrijik [sic] Junction. I did not think those little bombs could do much harm, and I wanted to press on with supervising the building work.

  Whether he voiced his disapproval is not clear. If he did it was to no avail. Shortly after 10.00 a.m. on 19 November Davies took off in a Nieuport 12, No. 3172, a two-seater converted to a single seat by the simple expedient of covering the second cockpit. Slung beneath the fuselage were six of the 20lb Hales bombs which he considered almost useless.

  The flight out was uneventful. Arriving over Ferejik in company with Samson and Smylie, Davies carried out his attack and was turning for home when he spotted Smylie’s Henri Farman on the ground. In making his low-level bomb run, Smylie had been caught by heavy ground fire. With his engine stopped, he glided to a safe landing in one of the dry watercourses which cut through the Maritza marshes, within a mile of the railway station. Smylie clambered out of the aircraft unharmed and immediately saw a party of Bulgarians making towards him. Preferring the prospect of a Turkish prison camp to a Bulgarian one, he set fire to his aircraft and headed across the marshes towards Turkish territory. He had not ventured far, however, when, much to his surprise, he saw one of the squadron’s Nieuports descending. It was Davies. Having circled low over the marshes in search of a possible landing site, he decided to set his aircraft down in one of the dry watercourses and pick up Smylie. It was a manoeuvre fraught with danger. Aside from the proximity of the Bulgarians, the ground, baked firm by the sun, was extremely rough and the high landing speed of the Nieuport meant there was a risk of the aircraft crashing. As an experienced aviator, Davies would have been well aware of the hazards but he chose to ignore them. Many years later, he modestly wrote:

  It never occurred to me that we were likely to be interfered with by enemy troops. The marshes were wide and rough with tall banks of reeds and scrub. What did worry me was the possibility of finding two men to rescue, for I knew that some of our military observers had been detailed to take part in the operation as bomb aimer [in fact, Capt. Edwards was the only one] … I could only carry one passenger …

  As I circled down I could see the Farman burning. I flew low round it looking for Smylie and received an almighty shock when the plane suddenly blew up. I had no idea there was a bomb still on board and, in case there were any more, I hastily climbed away. Then I saw Smylie emerge from a little hollow in which he had been lying and wave.

  Having realised that the Nieuport was preparing to land close to his burning aircraft, Smylie had deliberately exploded a bomb still slung beneath his Farman in order to prevent it detonating as his would-be rescuer touched down. Going as close to the aircraft as he dare, Smylie fired at the bomb’s fuse with his revolver and succeeded in hitting it at the third attempt.

  Shortly afterwards, Davies made a safe, if bumpy, landing close to the downed pilot. While he took care to keep his engine running, Smylie turned the Nieuport by its wing-tip. Then, with Smylie steadying the aircraft, Davies taxied back across the river bed to allow himself the best possible take-off run. Smylie then had to climb in, which was no easy matter. An engine cowl covered the space where the passenger seat had been. Davies recorded: ‘He had to climb over me, slide under the cowl and crouch on all fours between the rudder bar and the engine bearers with his head bumping on the oil tank. He managed somehow to stow himself away looking most uncomfortable.’

  All this time, the Bulgarians were closing in on their quarry. A hail of fire was directed at the Nieuport as it sped across the dry river course. Davies, however, controlled his take-off to perfection. Forty-five minutes later, at 12.20 p.m., Davies touched down at Imbros, complete with his unscheduled passenger. Long overdue, Davies had been given up for lost and Samson later admitted to having retired to his office ‘feeling more depressed than I have felt for years’. The emergence of Smylie was greeted with astonishment by the squadron’s aircrew. But Davies, in Samson’s words, was ‘absolutely unperturbed’. Davies’ entry in his flying log was a model of understatement:

  Dropped 3 20lb bombs at Stn at Ferejik. Comdr and Smylie in compy. One bomb burst on line. Returning saw Smylie’s machine burning in marshes. Landed and picked him up. Ground firm and fairly level. Kept engine. He got under cowl. Returned, machine climbing well. Time 10.5–12.20.

  Samson was struck by the gallantry of both rescuer and the man he rescued. He noted how Smylie, having risked his life to detonate the bomb hung up under his own aircraft, had taken off his flying coat and coolly scribbled a message, which he left for the Bulgarians, stating: ‘Please return my coat, which I have had to leave, to No. 3 Wing.’

  Both Davies and Smylie were recommended for the Victoria Cross. Samson also put Davies’ name forward for early promotion. Smylie’s award was down-graded to a Distinguished Service Cross. But there could be no question of Davies’ selfless courage and outstanding skill, and on New Year’s Day in 1916 the London Gazette duly announced the award of a VC to Sqn. Cdr. Richard Bell
Davies DSO. The citation accompanying both Davies’ VC and Smylie’s DSC stated:

  On the 19th November, these two officers carried out an air attack on Ferrijik Junction [sic]. Flight-Lieutenant Smylie’s machine was received by very heavy fire and brought down. The pilot planed down over the Station, releasing all his bombs except one, which failed to drop, simultaneously at the station from a very low altitude. Thence he continued his descent into the marsh.

  On alighting he saw the one unexploded bomb, and set fire to his machine, knowing that the bomb would ensure its destruction. He then proceeded towards Turkish territory.