Frederick Turner

Freddy Turner was killed in action on the morning of 10th January 1915, when in trenches near the village of Kemmel, south of Ypres. The younger of two sons of William and Jessie Turner, of 4 Mossley Hill Drive, Sefton Park, Liverpool, he worked in his fathers printing firm of Turner & Dunnett before the war. He was commissioned into the 10th King's, usually better-known as the Liverpool Scottish, a battalion of the Territorial Force. Freddy was also known as "Tanky" Turner, from his physical size and robustness on the sports fields. He attended Green Bank School, Liverpool; Sedburgh School, Cumberland, and Trinity College, Oxford, where he graduated with a BA. He became a great Rugby football forward at Sedburgh, and gained a Blue at Trinity. In 1910 he became Captain of the Oxford University rugby team, and was also selected 15 times for Scotland, becoming the national team Captain in 1914. He was also a talented cricketer. Freddy moved to France with the battalion on 1st November 1914, and spent the first weeks of the winter in atrocious conditions of flooded trenches. He was killed while walking to the end of a trench held by his platoon, to organise the arrangement of a barbed wire entanglement.