Not Forgotten, 64 Lieutenant Frank Eric THROSSELL, 10 Light Horse, World War 1

Lieutenant Ric Throssell was born in Northam, the son of George and Annie Throssell (nee Morrell).Ric’s father George was the second Premier of Western Australia and his more famous brother Hugo was the only member of the 10th Light Horse Regiment to be awarded the Victoria Cross in the Great War. Ric was educated at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide for four years and Ric and Hugo were farming at Cowcowing before they enlisted together.
Ric enlisted on 6 October 1914 at Guildford aged 33 and joined 10 Light Horse Regiment as a corporal. He left Fremantle on the A47 Mashobra on 8 February 1915 for Alexandria, and from there embarked for Gallipoli on 16 May 1915, was promoted sergeant on 21 May and second lieutenant on 8 September 1915.
On 7 August 1915 Ric Throssell received a gunshot wound to the chest and was taken to Anzac hospital, then to Heliopolis where the abscess that had formed was drained. By this stage Ric had lost a stone in weight (over 6kg) and was considered not fit for service for at least six weeks. He was sent to England to recuperate at Reading War Hospital where he was admitted on 5 October 1915. Ric Throssell returned to duty on 14 February 1916.
In 1917, 10 Light Horse as part of the Desert Column advanced into Palestine and participated in the battles to break the Gaza-Beersheba line and helped to capture Jerusalem. Ric Throssell was killed in action in Palestine on 19 April 1917 and remained unburied in enemy territory at a place called Man Kheileh, although his effects were collected by one of his colleagues.
In February 1919 Ric Throssell’s body was exhumed and reburied in the Military Cemetery Gaza. By this time George and Annie Throssell had both died and Ric’s eldest brother George and his brother-in-law P.W. Armstrong were both being contacted by the A.I.F. George wrote to Base Records in Melbourne to express his concerns regarding the reburial of his brother, reporting that Hugo was in Palestine at the time and had gone looking for Eric’s body without success. George expressed his surprise that, since the body could not be located soon after Ric’s death, it should be identified and reburied a considerable time later, and asked for further particulars. There do not appear to have been any further particulars given. George wrote again asking that the memorial scroll issued for Frank E. Throssell be reissued for F. Eric Throssell as that was the name he was known by. The personal inscription on his headstone reads: “One who might hear the Decalogue and feel no self reproach”. Lieutenant Ric Throssell was awarded the 1914/15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Med