In July 1919, Captain Hugo Throssell VC, a West Australian hero born and bred, led the victory parade through his hometown of Northam. It was a bright, sunny afternoon. A light breeze caught the flags lining the streets and played with the emu plume perched on Throssells’ hat, the celebrated hallmark of every Light Horse man.

Throssell rode a big bay gelding, an officer’s sword swung at his side, and the dull bronze of the Victoria Cross was pinned proudly on his chest. Hundreds cheered as he passed them. This was their lad, their ‘Jim’, the boy from Northam who had been awarded the Empire’s highest award for gallantry.

The highest award for gallantry: A photograph of the handsome Hugo Throssell. This studio portrait was probably taken in London towards the end of the war. Throssell had been hospitalised on several occasions for illness and wounds. A03688 courtesy Australia War Memorial.

The procession wheeled to a halt at a large platform mounted outside Tattersalls Hotel. The Salvation Army Band struck up, a massed choir of the town’s churches sang ‘God Save the King’ and the whole town seemed to join them. Hugo Throssell took his place amongst the eldest and wealthiest men of the district. Throssell was well connected – the Premier of Western Australia, who sat beside him, was a close family friend.

The crowd listened respectfully to the usual speeches by churchmen and politicians. But it was ‘Jim’ they had come to hear. A charming man, tall and handsome, his speech began with heartfelt thanks for his reception. ‘It was good to be back in old Northam,’ he bellowed joyfully, and to receive ‘dozens of warm handshakes’ as he strolled through the town. Throssell delighted the crowd with ‘humorous references to his exploits’, tales of the football field and the boxing ring. Soon he had his old school chums and the entire community eating out of his hand.

He paused a moment and the crowd waited for tales of that next great adventure, a thrilling account of how the hero of Gallipoli earned the VC. But here, Hugo Thossell’s speech took a quite unexpected turn. During the past five years he had seen much of the world and now left childhood dreams of the glories of war behind him:

Nearly five years ago I rode through the streets of Northam in charge of eighteen men, who were amongst the first to enlist . . . Of that eighteen, seven are lying either in Gallipoli, Palestine, or France. . . . War had made me a Socialist . . . I have seen enough of the horrors of war, and want peace. After four years of war, after the loss of nearly eight million lives, with a total of eighteen million wounded, of whom six million are permanent wrecks . . . [how was it] still possible for individuals to make colossal fortunes by the manufacture of armaments . . . If the people do not want war, we must scrap this rotten old system of production for profit and organise . . . for the well being of the community as a whole.1

‘You could have heard a pin drop,’ Hugo’s wife, Katharine Susannah Prichard wrote to a fellow communist, Nettie Palmer. ‘Jim himself was ghastly, his face all torn with emotion. It was terrible – but it was magnificent.’2 Those who believed in the cause of the Empire would never forget what was said that day and few would forgive.

Hugo Throssell spoke with conviction. One of the boys he rode out with from Northam five years previous was his younger brother, Ric. They’d shared a close bond and all through their childhood the two mischief-making lads had been inseparable. But Ric was killed in the Battle of Gaza, just one more casualty in that desperate desert war against the Turks:

On the night that Ric disappeared, Hugo crawled across the battlefield under enemy fire, searching in vain for his brother among the dead and dying, and whistling for him with the same signal as they had used when boys.3

Ric was buried beneath the shifting sands of the Sinai Peninsula. Hugo was never the same again. In fact, he was one of the damaged men to whom his speech had referred. Hugo Throssell had been badly mauled at Gallipoli. One of the few officers to survive that ‘fool’s charge’ at the Nek, he was thrown into equally costly fighting at Hill 60 near Suvla. For several days, the Ottomans and Allies battled over a hill so tiny it resembled, in the official historian’s words, a ‘swelling on the plain’. In this place, ‘murderous bomb, rifle and machine gun fire’ left the trenches ‘choked with dead.’4

Badly mauled at Gallipoli: A badge commemorating the assault on the Dardanelles. Although Throssell was not present for the Landing, he survived some of the bloodiest fighting at the Nek and Hill 60. He came to remember his time on the peninsula with bitterness and regret. Courtesy Melbourne Museum.

In the action that earned him his VC, Throssell fought continuously for forty-eight hours, refusing to retire until ordered (twice) to do so. By then, wounds covered most of his body and a bomb blast had driven fragments of uniform, including the metal shoulder badge that read ‘Australia’, deep into his arm.

The wounds Throssell suffered at Gallipoli and then later in Gaza would plague him for the rest of his life. But earning a VC didn’t win any particular favours with the repatriation authorities. Successive medical boards classified him ‘partially incapacitated’, noted he was ‘depressed’ and ‘sleeping badly’ and that his defective vision was progressively becoming worse. ‘Metal splinters entered eye at Gallipoli,’ Dr C.W. Courtney scribbled in his notebook, ‘[even so] I do not consider patient eligible to receive glasses at Departmental expense.’5

Perhaps Courtney had heard about the speech Throssell made at Northam, and the unorthodox, left-wing company the husband of Katharine Susannah Prichard had come to keep. Consorting with known communists was not considered behaviour becoming of an officer, let alone a VC winner. ‘Manner somewhat nervy,’ one doctor recorded, ‘looks older than he is.’6 Intelligence officers were detailed to monitor the war hero’s ‘leaning towards socialism’.7

Forced to resign from a government post by those who opposed his politics, Throssell’s finances went from bad to worse. The Depression of the 1930s rendered much of his property worthless, his farm was failing and so too was his health. Along with the wounds inflicted on the battlefield, Throssell had contracted meningitis in hospital. He suffered what he called ‘brain storms’, searing pains that pounded in his head. And he was alone: Throssell had insisted his wife accept an invitation to visit the Soviet Union, believing only a brave new social order could avert the outbreak of yet another war. His ‘all consuming love’ had gone when he needed her most.8

Early one Sunday morning in 1933, Hugo Throssell walked from his bedroom to a latticed verandah looking out on the bush. He sat in his favourite wicker chair, rested his feet on the balcony, and shot himself in the head. The bullet that killed him was fired with a Webley service revolver. Remembrance Day, honouring the heroic dead, had passed just a week before.

A latticed verandah, looking out on the bush: The site of Throssell’s suicide. The Throssell family home now serves as a writer’s retreat, honouring the career of Katharine Susannah Prichard and the memory of the man who loved her. Courtesy Bruce Scates.

Throssell wrote a brief message before raising the revolver to his temple. ‘I can’t sleep, and I feel my old war head.’9 The authorities found a note with his will and personal papers:

I have never recovered from my 1914–18 experiences and with this in view, I appeal to the State that my wife and child get the usual war pension. No man could have a truer mate.10

They buried Captain Hugo Throssell VC with full military honours. His medal and sword were placed on the coffin, as was a union flag. Politicians and returned soldiers, some of them the same men who had hounded him since that fiery speech in Northam, mourned ‘a fallen hero’. ‘He died for his country,’ said the chaplain, ‘just as surely as if he had perished in the trenches.’11

He died for his country: Hugo Throssell’s grave in Karrakatta Cemetery. The Light Horse Association, Throssell’s old school and the Northam RSL restored the monument in 2014. ‘Courageous in war’ it reads, and ‘steadfast in peace’. No mention is made of the circumstances of Throssell’s death or of his pacifist beliefs. Courtesy Bruce Scates.

A few weeks later, his widow returned from abroad and reluctantly accepted a pension:

I consider that his ‘grateful country’ made it impossible for my husband to live. He thought he had to die to provide for his wife and child . . . I could not accept anything that cost him his life; but . . . I have no right to interfere with what he sought to do for his son.12

Katharine never recovered from the loss of her husband. But she threw herself into her work, devoting the rest of her life to the same ideals Hugo spoke of in Northam. Ric Throssell, Hugo’s son, sold his father’s VC, donating the proceeds to the campaign for nuclear disarmament. In 2008, Karen Throssell became a peace ambassador to Turkey and walked the ground her grandfather fought on:

I think my grandfather would have been very proud of me for making this journey . . . My brief visit . . . has left me feeling that I should . . . 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.13

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This story draws on Hugo Throssell’s service dossier NAA: B2455, THROSSELL HUGO VIVIAN HOPE; his repatriation records NAA: K60, C5723 and NAA: PP6441/1, M5273; and reports by postwar intelligence agencies on both Hugo and his wife NAA: A6119/42 and NAA: A6119 vols. 1–7. The authors have also drawn on a detailed survey of contemporary newspaper reports; C.E.W. Bean, The Story of Anzac, vol. 11 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1924) and autobiographical accounts by Hugo Throssell’s family, namely Katharine Susannah Prichard, Child of the Hurricane (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1963) and Ric Throssell, My Father’s Son (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989). For the most recent biography of Throssell’s life see John Hamilton, The Price of Valour (Sydney: Pan Macmillan, 2012) and for the most nuanced reading of his death, Pat Jalland, ‘A Private and Secular Grief’, History Australia, vol. 2, no. 2, 2005, pp. 42–57. For work on Katharine Susannah Prichard see Pam Portman and Sally Clarke, Katharine Susannah Prichard: Her Place (Western Australia: Gooseberry Hill Press/Katharine Susannah Prichard Foundation, 2010). Note also Prichard’s semi-autobiographical account, Intimate Strangers (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1937). The authors would also like to acknowledge the kind assistance of Peta Alderman, Manager of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Western Australia, and Julie Wells.

1 Sunday Times, 27 July 1919.

2 Ric Throssell, My Father’s Son (Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1989), p. 74.

3 Suzanne Welborn, ‘Throssell, Hugo Vivian Hope’, Australian Dictionary Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press 1990), pp. 223–224.

4 C E W Bean, The Story of Anzac, vol. 2, (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1924) p. 724. Recommendation for mention in dispatches in, NAA: B2455, THROSSELL, Hugo; and Mirror, 25 November 1933.

5 Medical Reports, Dr C.W. Courtney, 30 March, 30 April 1931 NAA: PP6441/1, M5273.

6 Medical Report, Dr J.S. Yule, 16 January 1929, ibid.

7 R.H. Weddell, ‘Report of Captain and Mrs Hugo Throssell’, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Central Office, NAA: A6119, 42.

8 Throssell, My Father’s Son, p. 7.

9 Inquest Proceedings, 19 November 1933 NAA: PP6441/1, M5273.

10 West Australian, 14 March 1934.

11 Argus, 28 November 1933.

12 Katherine Susannah Throssell To Deputy Commissioner Repatriation Commission, 28 January 1934 NAA: PP6441/1, M5273.

13 Australian Peace Ambassadors http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/2visiting/peace-ambassors.html.