“I have seen enough of the horrors of war, and want peace. War has made me a socialist and a pacifist,” announced Gallipoli veteran and Victoria Cross winner, Hugo Throssell, on Peace Day in 1919.
Throssell was shot in the neck on Hill 60 at Gallipoli in 1915 and nearly died from surgical complications. He returned to the frontlines in Egypt in 1917. There, he was reunited with – then lost – his brother Eric, who was killed in action.
Throssell wrote to his wife, Katharine Susannah Prichard, of searching for Eric in battle in vain, “crawling across the battlefield, still under enemy fire”. After the war, he reflected on the “colossal profits” made in war, concluding that while it was possible for men “to profit by war, we will always have war” and advocating for society’s reorganisation “for the wellbeing of the community as a whole”.
