Comrade Hugo Throssell

Written by: Allan M. on 19 April 2026

This year we remember Comrade Hugo Throssell, who fought at Gallipoli in 1915 and fought the rest of his life for freedom of the working class and an end to wars.

Hugo Throssell VC fought and risked his life countless times in the bloody Gallipoli campaign of 1915. A WA farmer, Throssell, like many Australian men, signed up to fight for Australia at the outset of World War One. Fighting with WA’s 10th Light Horse Regiment, he immediately found himself in the midst of the inter-imperialist brutality. 

Landing in Gallipoli for Winston Churchill’s blood-soaked gamble for a scrap of land, he took part in the tragic charge of the Nek. While Throssell survived, nearly a third of the regiment were killed by machine gun fire in what he called the ‘fool charge’, a shocking loss of life in a battle that the soldiers desperately tried to call off. Later, he fought in the battle for Hill 60, and while being seriously wounded, he managed to rally his men to take and hold a trench-line near the summit. Fighting and bleeding on this hill far from home, he was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions. Throssell would eventually recover from the wounds and illness caused by this battle and continue serving until 1919. He went to war with his brother but he came home alone, carrying significant physical and mental injuries.

Throssell’s battles after the war get nearly no attention in Australian popular history, but his fights for his mates when he came home deserve just as much praise. Throssell said the war, seeing his mates chewed up by gunfire on a spit of dirt on the other side of the world, seeing Australians killed and maimed on the whims of British generals, made him a socialist. His wife, Katharine Susannah Prichard, was a founding member of the Communist Party of Australia, and together they fought for an end to imperialist conflict and the creation of a peaceful and prosperous society. In WA, Throssell was commonly found supporting unemployed and striking workers, and speaking at socialist events alongside his wife. Famously, the VC winner said in Northam, WA that the only way to end wars was to end the capitalist system which drives imperialist conflict.

Tragically, after surviving the horrors of the First World War, Throssell fell victim to capitalism at home. Being outspoken in the cause for socialism and peace, he found himself isolated and excluded from many areas of employment by WA capitalists. During the Great Depression, this led to extreme hardship for him and his family. To end this hardship, Throssell thought his best chance would be to provide his wife with a war widow’s pension so that she could continue to provide for their child. One week after Armistice Day in 1933, Throssell ended his own life.

On Anzac Day, we remember Comrade Throssell’s statement: that the only way to celebrate peace is to do things which make for peace.

We reject the shameless war-mongering of politicians who invoke the name of dead Australians to promote more war. In our times, with genocidal imperialist violence being supported by the Australian government, we continue Comrade Throssell’s fight for peace and socialism.

Peace can only come with the defeat of capitalism. No war but class war.

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