Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

TURNBULL  Joseph Henry  #3945  9th Battalion
 
Joe Turnbull was the second of four brothers to enlist. Like his other brothers he too had been born in Byron Bay. Joe enlisted in Gin Gin and reported his occupation as labourer, however a medical file records his previous employment as sugar mill boiler operator. He was most probably an itinerant labourer working in the cane mills in the Isis district during the crushing season. Joe’s enlistment documents record his age as 20 and his mother, Ellen Turnbull of Caboolture as his next of kin. Joe enlisted on 22nd August 1915, soon after news of his brother Tom’s death would have reached him. Armed with a railway warrant, Joe took a train to Brisbane, perhaps stopping off to see his mother and sisters, and reported to Bell’s Paddock at Enoggera. Joe was drafted into the 12th reinforcements for the 9th Battalion, the same battalion as his brother Tom. Joe’s younger brother William enlisted a month after Joe and was also allocated to the 9thBattalion, but William was in a later reinforcement echelon.
 
Joe embarked on the Itonus in Brisbane on 31st December 1915, allotting 3/- a day to his mother. The reinforcements left the Itonus at Ismalia on the Suez Canal and marched to the camp at Tel-el-Kabir where the 9th Battalion was being re-equipped and reinforced after spending seven months on Gallipoli. On 29thMarch 1916, the 9th Battalion boarded a ship in Alexandria headed for Marseilles. The bulk of the battalion travelled north across France by train to take up positions in the Armentieres sector of the Western Front. Joe headed to the huge British facility on the French coast near le Havre for further training. He was reunited with the 9th on 14th May.
 
Like many of the AIF battalions sent to the Western Front in the spring of 1916, the 9th Battalion had many new recruits. The Gallipoli veterans of the original 9th had been split to form the nucleus of two battalions; the 9th and 49th. Deployment to the Armentieres sector would allow the new battalions to acclimatise to trench warfare in an area of the front that was relatively quiet. To provide combat experience, trench raiding was encouraged.
 
The 9th Commander approved a plan by one of his company commanders that would involve a trench raid of 160 men. Volunteers were called for and Joe Turnbull was one who stepped forward. Once the raiders were selected, they were pulled out of the front line for a month of training and practice in the roles assigned to each of the three parties. Careful work by intelligence officers had mapped the defences of the German line to be attacked.
 
Just prior to midnight on 1st July, a concentrated artillery barrage was laid down supported by a barrage from the new Stoke’s Mortar crews. The war diary of the 9th Battalion contains a two page report on the raid. In it, the raiders were highly praised for the way in which the plan was carried out. In all, the three parties spent less than 20 minutes in the opposition trenches and withdrew to their own lines, carrying their spoils of a captured machine gun and other smaller equipment and 21 prisoners. The report confirms that 53 enemy were killed.
 
Casualties for the raiders were relatively light with one officer and five other ranks killed. Regrettably Joe Turnbull was one of the five. All wounded and the bodies of those killed were retrieved by the raiding parties as they withdrew. Joe Turnbull was buried alongside the other KIAs in the Rue-de-Bois Military Cemetery at Fleurbaix. Joe’s younger brother William who had enlisted soon after Joe into the 9th Battalion may well have been present at Joe’s burial.
 
Joe’s mother would eventually receive a parcel of his personal effects which as well as the usual letters and cards contained a razor and a broken wristwatch. William Turnbull and another brother John survived the war and returned to Australia in 1919.