Richard John Turner was born on the 19th of September, 1924, at Fordham, in Cambridgeshire, the third and youngest child of William Frank Turner (a grist miller/farmer, who had served as a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery during the First World War), and Lizzie Turner (née Cornell), of Bassingbourn House Farm, in Fordham.

Richard John Turner was baptised on the 3rd of August, 1919, at SS. Peter and Mary Magdalene Church, in Fordham, and eventually be became a foreman on his father's farm. He was unmarried.

Richard John Turner enlisted in the Royal Air Volunteer Reserve as an airman, with the number No. 1625760. As a leading aircraftman he was selected for flying training and belonged to Flying Training Command, at Heaton Park in Lancashire, where he had just passed out as a pilot.

He was at home on leave on the 19th of October, 1943, shortly before he was due to go abroad for further flying training. He was out with a gamekeeping party searching the ground of a previous day's shoot at Bassingbourn Farm.

Richard John Turner and a friend walked away to pick up a rabbit. They had two dogs with them, and one went into a belt of trees and put up a pheasant. His father, William Frank Turner heard the pheasant, swung round to his left to shoot it and slipped on sugar beet. The gun fell out of his hand, in the opposite way to which he was falling, and it went off.

The shot hit his son, Richard John Turner, who fell to the ground, fatally wounded.

He was put in a car and admitted to hospital at 4.50 pm, but was already dead. An inquest was held at the White Lodge Hospital on Wednesday the 20th of October, 1943, when the coroner returned a verdict of misadventure.

Richard John Turner was aged 19, and was buried on Saturday the 23rd of October 1943, at SS. Peter and Mary Magdalene churchyard extension, in Fordham.

Richard John Turner is buried in a family plot in Fordham's churchyard extention, but marked by a CWGC headstone.

However, he is not commemorated on the Fordham war memorial, probably as a sign of the grief felt and realisation by his father, William Frank Turner, that he had killed his own son, not an enemy.