Saturday 11 November 2023: Trent Harron is a Ramsay Scholar undertaking an MSt in History (History of War) at Oxford University. He is a former Officer Commanding of 3rd/9th Light Horse (South Australian Mounted Rifles).
Trent reflects on Alexander Phipps Turnbull whose name he spotted on the Merton College War Memorial on a tour of Oxford with fellow Ramsay Postgraduate Scholars:
The Merton College War Memorial is situated between the Front and Fellows Quads of the College, commanding the interior of the Fitzjames Arch. It bears the names of 109 men associated with the College who perished in The Great War of 1914-1918. Appropriately, the roll now also commemorates two German scholars whose names were added in 1994. There was one name, however, of particular interest to Ramsay Scholars on a recent tour of the College, guided by Eric Sheng (Ramsay Scholar, 2021).
The name “A.P. Turnbull, Australian L.H.” was instantly distinguishable to an Australian audience. All the more so as his biography features poignantly in one of ten chapters of Ross McMullin’s recent book “Farewell, Dear People” which charts the lives of ten prominent Australians whose lives were tragically cut short by the conflict.
Alexander Phipps Turnbull, who went by his middle name “Phipps” to family and friends, was a Western Australian who had been educated at Hale School in Perth and came to Oxford to study Law in 1907 as a Rhodes Scholar. He was widely considered to be a first-rate intellect and fine sportsman, graduating with First Class Honours (Jurisprudence) and representing Oxford in Rowing and Football. After a short period at the Bar in England, he returned to Australia where he was practicing with the firm Parker & Parker in Perth at the commencement of the war.
Phipps Turnbull enlisted with the 10th Australian Light Horse Regiment as a Trooper, rapidly promoted to Corporal and then Sergeant prior to leaving Egypt for the Gallipoli Peninsula. He was later Commissioned in the field, serving as a Second Lieutenant from the outset of the Gallipoli campaign. His rapid promotion was undoubtedly a reflection of both his fine abilities and the esteem with which he was regarded by peers and superiors alike.
On the morning of the 7th of August in 1915 Turnbull would lead his Troop over the trenches in the 3rd Light Horse Brigade’s ill-fated dismounted charge at the Battle of the Nek. Following the valiant but unsuccessful attempts of two lines of men of the 8th Light Horse Regiment, the 10th Light Horse Regiment initiated their own charge. Not one of them would reach the Turkish trenches. The casualties amongst the 8th Light Horse Regiment numbered 151 dead with another 11 dying of wounds in the days that followed the attack. Tragically, Phipps Turnbull was among the 78 members of the 10th Light Horse Regiment who fell at the Nek, with another five dying of wounds in the following days.
Amongst those who fell alongside Turnbull that day were the brothers Gresley and Wilfred Harper, Western Australians also serving in the 10th Light Horse Regiment. Their father Charles Harper had been the Speaker in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, in addition to being the founder of Guildford Grammar. Both were themselves regarded as tremendous intellects and athletes, and aspects of their story are regarded as the inspiration for Peter Weir’s acclaimed 1981 film Gallipoli.
Charles Bean, Australia’s Official War Correspondent and Historian had been at Hertford College, Oxford several years prior to Turnbull. Although they were not contemporaries, Bean was clearly aware of Turnbull on account of his outstanding reputation.
He wrote the following of the 10th Light Horse Regiment following the Battle of the Nek which I think captures the enormity of the loss and the impact that we continue to feel over a century later;
“With that Regiment went the flower of the youth of Western Australia, sons of the old pioneering families, youngsters – in some cases two or three from the same home – who flocked to Perth at the outbreak of the war with their own horses and saddlery in order to secure enlistment in a mounted regiment of the AIF. Men known and popular, the best-loved leaders in sport and work in the West, then rushed straight to their death.”
Alexander Phipps Turnbull was almost certainly at the forefront of Charles Bean’s mind when he penned these heartfelt and moving words.
Writing in the Toc H magazine The Link many years after these events in 1927, Bean reflected; “We saw them fall – the strongest, the quickest, the bravest; the men to whom we looked as our leaders at school, in the university, in the workshop and playing field, in camp, and on the desert training ground. The generous men, the big men. We knew little in 1915 of war but we felt a hateful certainty that these were the men who would die first. And so it happened. When others crouched, they knelt; when others shrank, they held on; when others hesitated, they went forward and, one by one, even with indiscriminate fire, the Turkish riflemen and artillerymen eliminated them from our force. We learned to accept it as an axiom that the best must go.”
As we ourselves pause to reflect this Remembrance Day, we might well ask ourselves the very same question with which Bean concludes his lament, “Can any country afford to lose such men?”
Lest we forget.
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Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098 / sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org