Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Forgotten Stories of World War 1:  Harold William Turner

Harold William Turner was born in Marrabel, South Australia in 1893. His parents were Charles and Elizabeth Turner who lived in Greenock, just north of Adelaide, where Charles ran a carrier business, and later, when Charles retired, in Kapunda. When Harold succeeded in joining the AIF on April 10th 1916, he was 22, and already a baker. When he came back to Kapunda in 1919, he returned to being a baker:  his own shop, a baker’s cart and a delivery round. The bakery added a refreshment room, serving tea with the cakes he baked.

Harold was a small person, only 5 feet 2 inches. Brown eyes, light brown hair and a member of the Methodist church. And, for unimaginable reasons, he was assigned to the 5th Pioneer Battalion and so spent his war years very close to the front line in northern France and Belgium, constantly in sight and sound of the guns and the flares and the shells and the bombs, doing hard manual labour. The work of the Pioneer Battalions was done with pick and shovel. When Harold joined his battalion with 148 other Reinforcements on March 7th 1917, the Battalion was repairing trenches around Ypres and the Menin Road. He was assigned to B Company (the Battalion comprised about 1100 men, divided into four companies, A, B, C & D and a Head Quarters group). These companies formed the labour force for engineering projects: road repair, road making with metal or with planks, crater filling, trench construction, trench repair, tramline and rail line laying, pipeline and water point installation, deep dugouts construction for Division and Battalion head quarters, hut construction, hut improvement, making rifle ranges, concert halls and boxing rings and artillery dugouts, filling sandbags, salvaging building materials (including railway line), pontooning and bridging. The 5th Pn Bn also ran a local saw mill and laid many miles of duckwalk. Until quite late in the war (1918) the men would march between two and six miles to work and the same to get home again. Motor lorries eventually enabled a more efficient use of time. As well as all this, the Pioneers were expected to function as regular infantry soldiers, and therefore spent time on musketry, bayonet, and other combat based drills. They regularly guarded the bridges and managed the traffic. The training and work regime dictated a lot of movement around the country, to ensure adequate time in the ‘rest’ camp for lessons and route marches (but only twice a week) and recreation.  The arrangements for moving large groups of men long distances were often cumbersome and frustrating: ‘hurry up and wait’ was the catch phrase. Combinations of long marches with heavy packs (at least 30 kilos I think), long waits for trains or omnibuses, usually followed by a further long march, tended to characterize these moves. And the YMCA was at the stopping places to provide hot cocoa at all hours of the day or night.

Harold was very near to the most brutal and the most important battles of the war. He was there in 1918 when the Australian Divisions were fighting together for the first time since Gallipoli. He was there for the Battle of Hamel, but was on ‘U.K. leave’ for the first two days of the Battle of Amiens: the two week leave was his first time away from the battalion since he joined up – though he had spent two days in hospital in May 1918. The Battle of Amiens on 8th -11th August was the last major battle of the war. From that time, the Pioneers were working less hard - before and after November 11th a good deal of time was spent cleaning up whatever could be cleaned up. Unexploded shells, for instance. Harold was in the second last group from the 5th Pioneers to be repatriated, and was farewelled with music and dancing and tears by the locals. He was demobbed in Adelaide on August 22nd 1919. I think it took him a while to get back to a normal life, but he did it with his wife Nellie and his son Ray. - Catherine Cox 03 May 2016