Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

28/07/1915

Date of Discharge

05/02/1918

Place of Enlistment

Melbourne, Victoria

Gender

Male

Place of Birth

Ballarat, Victoria

Address (at enlistment)

Bachelor Quarters, Acton ACT

Occupation

Clerk

Next of Kin

George Turner (brother), Middle Brighton, Victoria. His parents were deceased.

Service Number

5303

Final Rank

Private

Final Unit

2 Anzac Headquarters AIF

Harry Turner was a clerk/ stenographer with the Department of Works and Railways in Canberra and a member of the Ainslie Cricket Club (where he was the official scorer). He and several other members of the club lived in tents at the Bachelor Quarters in Acton. After enlisting in July 1915 he embarked for Egypt with the reinforcements to the 10th Field Artillery Brigade. While in Egypt Turner was taken on strength as a Gunner with the 102nd Battery of the 21st Howitzer Brigade. He arrived in France in April 1916 and transferred to the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade shortly after. In January 1917 he was evacuated to England with pleurisy and general debility but returned to France in March 1917 and joined the 2nd Anzac Headquarters. He spent most of August in hospital before leaving for Australia in November 1917. Turner was discharged medically unfit on 5 February 1918 because of arthritis in his left shoulder.

He returned to the public service in Melbourne as private secretary to Walter Massy-Greene, the Minister for Trade and Customs, but he found time to attend the wedding of Percy Douglas and Una Southwell in Canberra on 11 May 1921. In October 1919 he applied for a soldier settler's block in the Goulburn valley in Victoria. Turner's aim was to become a fruit grower but instead of getting a block of land in the Shepparton area he was allocated around 15 acres near Red Cliffs, just to the south of Mildura in north western Victoria. He was granted a 39½ year lease beginning in July 1921 however life as an orchardist didn't agree with his health and in April 1928, on medical advice from doctors in Melbourne, he sought permission to transfer his block to another returned serviceman. He died in 1929 at Caulfield (probably at the Repatriation Hospital) in Melbourne aged 44 years.

Description - height 5 feet 6¼ inches, weight 120 pounds, chest 32½-34½ inches, medium complexion, brown eyes, dark brown hair, Church of England.

National Archives (A207) G1915/125 Leased Property in the Federal Territory
Queanbeyan Age - 28 January 1916, 2 June 1916
A.W. Edwards, 'My War Diary', 1920 (AWM PR89/050)
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
Stories from the ACT Memorial, 'Ainslie Challenges the Kultur Club', ACT Heritage Library www.library.act.gov.au/find/history/stories_from_the_act_memorial
'Battle to Farm - WW1 Soldier Settlement Records in Victoria', Public Record Office Victoria, 2015, http://soldiersettlement.prov.vic.gov.au/