Pair of British commando boots : Sergeant R S Turner, 6 Division Supply Column, Australian Army Service Corps

Pair of black leather British issue commando boots, without toe caps. The boots lace, with black leather laces, to mid-calf, which are secured by six pairs of eyelets and six pairs of steel hooks. The soles are heavily studded with steel studs and cleats. Each heel is reinforced with a steel edge. A scabbard is attached to the outside calf of the right boot with two rivets and several rows of stitching. The scabbard itself is made of blocked brown leather and has a steel reinforced tip to take a commando knife. It is 198mm long. Original dried mud is stuck between the studs of the right heel.

These boots were worn by NX3048 Sergeant Richard Sydney Turner after they were issued to him by the British Military Mission in Greece. Turner was born in Sydney in 1916. He enlisted on 28 October 1939 and served with 6 Division Supply Column, Australian Army Service Corps. After service in Africa he was captured by the Germans near Megara during the Greek campaign in June 1941, but escaped from the train taking him to Germany. He was initially sheltered by the Greeks but this became too dangerous when Italian troops offered large rewards for the capture of Allied soldiers and threatened to shoot anyone harbouring them. Turner and a companion hid in the mountains south of Thessaly during the winter of 1941-1942. Weak from malnutrition and malaria he was considering of giving himself up when he met Ioannis Kallinikos from the village of Livanatas, who sheltered him for the next year and a half. Turner joined the Greek resistance in the summer of 1943 and led a band of fifty Greek andartes. He later joined the British Military Mission in Greece (Force 133), which operated behind German lines. He was awarded the Military Medal for his endurance and service in Greece. Turner was killed by Greek communist insurgents, during the civil war which broke out in Greece following the withdrawal of the Axis forces, on 17 December 1944 while in a truck on his way to Athens airport to be repatriated to Australia.