Albert Jacka, the man who would later be described as Australia’s greatest frontline soldier, was born in Layard, Victoria, on 10 January 1893, the fourth of seven children to timber worker Nathaniel Jacka and his English-born wife Elizabeth (née Kettle).
The family moved to Wedderburn when he was five years old. Educated at the local school, Jacka obtained his standard and merit certificates before taking a job as a labourer, working with his father. At the age of eighteen he joined the Victorian State Forests Department, working at Wedderburn, Cohuna, Koondrook, Lake Charm and Heathcote. Jacka shared his countrymen’s enthusiasm for sport and excelled as a cyclist. He enlisted in the AIF at Heathcote on 8 September 1914, but had to re-enlist after his papers were lost. By the end of November, Jacka, having been posted to the 14th Battalion, was made acting lance-corporal. After training at Broadmeadows camp, the unit embarked for Egypt on 22 December. More training followed in the Middle East before the 14th took part in the Gallipoli landings on 25 April 1915.
During the early days on the peninsula, Jacka had a narrow escape when a shell burst above his dugout, mortally wounding the man beside him, but leaving him unharmed. His VC, followed by rapid promotion – he was made corporal on 28 August, sergeant on 12 September and CSM on 14 November – established him as one of the battalion’s leading personalities. To new recruits he had the aura of a modern-day sporting celebrity. E.J. Rule, in his classic war memoir Jacka’s Mob, described his first meeting with the unit’s VC hero:
To me, Jacka looked the part; he had a medium-sized body, a natty figure, and a determined face with a crooked nose. His feat of polishing off six Turks single-handed certainly took some beating. At that time one characteristic above all endeared him to all underdogs; instead of criming men and bringing them before the officers, his method was: ‘I won’t crime you, I’ll give you a punch on the bloody nose.’
It was this highly individual and unorthodox style of leadership which led to Jacka becoming a revered figure in the 14th. But there were other sides to his character, which brought him into conflict with authority. An ambitious streak combined with an outspokenness, viewed by some of his superior officers as insubordination, stunted his advancement. According to his friends, Jacka fell foul of petty jealousies which prevented him receiving the honours his exploits merited.
Commissioned second lieutenant on 29 April 1916, Jacka accompanied the 14th to France where he continued to serve with the unit until being wounded and badly gassed in May 1918. In that time he had risen to the rank of captain and added a Military Cross and Bar to his VC. However, Charles Bean, Australia’s Official War Historian, was not alone in believing Jacka deserved still greater recognition. After his death, Bean wrote:
Jacka should have come out of the war the most decorated man in the AIF. One does not usually comment on the giving of decorations, but this was an instance in which something obviously went wrong. Everyone who knows the facts, knows that Jacka earned the Victoria Cross three times. In many cases there may be doubt as to what decorations should be awarded, but there could be no real doubt in these.
Bean rated Jacka’s courage at Pozières on the Somme in August 1916, and at Bullecourt the following April, as sufficient to have earned him two Bars to his VC. In the event, they brought him a Military Cross and Bar.
In the early morning of 7 August 1916, during the Battle of Pozières, Jacka’s platoon was cut off by a German attack which tore through the Australian lines. A grenade rolled into his dugout and killed two men before Jacka led a remarkable counter-attack. The German infantry had thought the battle was over. About forty prisoners from a neighbouring Australian unit were being rounded up when Jacka, followed by seven men, burst among them, shooting and stabbing with bayonets. His unit history recorded:
Jacka, hurled off his feet on different occasions by the terrfic impact of rifle bullets fired at close range, was seven times wounded, once being knocked down by a bullet that passed through his body under the right shoulder, and twice partially stunned by head wounds. He fairly surpassed himself this day, and killed upwards of a score of Germans with his own hand, including some with the bayonet … This brilliant counter-attack against an overwhelming and triumphant enemy was completely successful – all the Australian prisoners were released, the whole of the German escort guarding them was killed or dispersed, and in addition 42 unwounded Germans … were captured.
Bean called it ‘the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the history of the AIF’.
Evacuated to England, Jacka was promoted lieutenant on 18 August and reported dead on 8 September. In fact, he was very much alive and, despite the seriousness of his wounds, he was well enough to attend a VC investiture at Windsor Castle on 29 September. Eventually, following operations on both eyes, he was discharged from hospital on 22 November and rejoined his unit on 9 December. Jacka was promoted captain on 15 March 1917 and, the following month, while serving as battalion intelligence officer, he carried out a number of hazardous patrols in no-man’s-land which culminated in a daring reconnaissance of the German lines on the eve of the ill-starred battle of Bullecourt. His mission on the night of 10-11 April was to ‘ascertain the condition of the enemy’s wire’. Having successfully accomplished his task, he and another officer were busy laying tape to mark the battalion’s ‘jumping off’ position when they heard an enemy patrol approaching. What followed is best told in the recommendation that resulted in the award of a Bar to his MC:
They attacked the patrol and captured an Officer and one other rank. On the night of the attack Captain Jacka guided the tanks to the rendezvous and subsequently placed them in position on the jumping off tape. The whole of the work was carried out under the fire of an enemy’s 5.9 battery which on several occasions killed men in his vicinity. He further personally guided and placed the 14th Battalion into position … During the attack he, at great personal risk, maintained touch with events which entailed several trips across a stretch of ground swept by Machine Gun and shell fire. Captain Jacka showed the greatest gallantry and all through maintained the same splendid standard of bravery which won him the V.C., M.C.
In June, during the battle for the Messines ridge, Jacka was again cited for his ‘coolness and judgment’ displayed while commanding D Company. During their advance, they overran machine-gun posts and captured a German field gun, but this time his actions went unrecognised. A month later, on 9 July, Jacka sustained a bullet wound to his right thigh. Evacuated to England, he made a speedy recovery, rejoined the 14th Battalion on 1 September and was fit to take charge of his company during an attack near Zonnebeke on 26 September. Once more his gallantry stood out as his battalion captured and held its objectives against heavy German counter-attacks. According to his commanding officer, Jacka became the ‘soul’ of the defence, ‘personally co-ordinating the work of Stokes guns, Vickers and Lewis guns in such a way that heavy losses were inflicted on the enemy in three counter attacks’. Wanliss wrote:
His reckless valour, his excellent judgement, his skilful tactics, his prompt anticipation of the enemy’s movements, and the force and vigour of his battle strokes gained the admiration of all ranks, and inspired everyone with the greatest confidence. Throughout the whole engagement he was an ubiquitous and fearless figure, the very incarnation of a great fighting soldier and a born leader of men. No more fearless or gallant soldier took part in the Great War.
Jacka was recommended for the Distinguished Service Order, but despite apparently being passed up to brigade level the honour was not granted.
Posted to 2nd Army School of Instruction two days after the Germans launched their spring offensive in March, Jacka missed the worst of the fighting in early 1918. Rejoining the 14th Battalion at Villers-Bretonneux on the Somme on 10 May, he was only with them five days before a mustard gas bombardment resulted in three officers and 30 men from D Company being evacuated to hospital. Among them was Jacka, whose war was effectively at an end. By 23 May, he was being treated in
3rd London General Hospital for a combination of bronchitis, conjunctivitis and dermatitis and to these was soon added a hernia which required an urgent operation. The years of combat strain coupled with a succession of serious wounds had taken their toll. Normally a picture of rude good health, Jacka was reduced to a shadow of his former self. On 5 August a medical board considered him fit only for ‘sedentary’ employment and for once Jacka found it difficult to argue the point. ‘He is still pale and though he can walk well and climb hills and says he is fit, he confesses to being weak,’ reported the examining doctors.
The summer of 1918, however, found Jacka with another battle to fight. This time, the enemy was not the Germans, but the Australian military authorities who issued instructions for long-serving surviving holders of the Victoria Cross on the Western Front to be sent home on extended furlough to support the conscription lobby. Jacka was aghast and immediately appealed the order which had come direct from the GOC, Gen. Sir William Birdwood. Instead of a ‘well-earned rest’, he argued he could be more use serving at a depot in England which would also allow him to ‘keep in touch … with my own relatives in this country’. His request was denied. In complimenting Jacka’s ‘self-sacrificing spirit’, Birdwood felt he ‘must realise that he is in much need of a rest’. But still he would not accept defeat. A further letter, written on Jacka’s behalf, spelled out his case in more detail:
1. He is engaged to a lady in England and has arranged to get married to her within the next two or three months.
2. He is at the present time somewhat estranged from his father who is a strong anti-conscriptionist … Jacka, of course, being a conscriptionist; and he feels that if he goes out to Australia to help in the conscription campaign it will considerably widen the breach between them …
I feel sure when Jacka is informed … that he is to return to Australia he will at once apply for permission to take his discharge in England. Jacka has always stated that he is fit to carry on and according to his statement to me a week or two ago in his opinion he is quite fit (and anxious) to resume duty with his unit in the field …
The letter, which pointed also to Jacka’s concern that ‘a certain amount of unpleasantness between him and his brigadier’ might lay behind the decision to send him home, concluded: ‘I am afraid that if we persist in returning Jacka to Australia merely because he is a V.C. man we should come in for a great deal of criticism both here and in Australia …’.
Whether or not it was the force of this argument which influenced Birdwood is unclear, but on 18 September the army authorities finally relented. After giving the matter further consideration, the GOC approved Jacka ‘being employed at A.I.F. depots in the U.K. for a period of six months in lieu of returning to Australia’. The hero of Courtney’s Post had won his last battle.
Seconded for duty at an A.I.F. base depot near Sutton Veny on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, Jacka was in England when the war ended and remained in the country, serving as a sports officer, until September 1919 when he boarded the Euripedes for the long journey back to Australia and a new chapter in his eventful life. He went home a single man. His mysterious engagement cited as a reason for remaining in England had come to nothing, or had it merely been a ruse designed to help him return to his greatest love, the 14th Battalion? Whatever the truth, he returned to a hero’s welcome in October 1919.
Demobilised in January 1920, Jacka established an electrical goods importing and exporting business together with two comrades from the 14th. The venture was heavily financed by John Wren, the businessman who had given Jacka £500 as the first Australian VC winner of the war. The following year Jacka married Frances Veronica Carey, a typist from his office. They settled in St Kilda and later adopted a daughter. In September 1929 Jacka was elected on to St Kilda Council and the following year he became mayor. Much of his civic work was devoted to helping the unemployed, but what few realised at the time was that Jacka’s own business had fallen victim of the slump.
His last years witnessed a painful decline; both physically and financially. By August, 1931, when his term as mayor ended, he was worn-out by his civic duties and the vain attempts to keep his sinking business afloat. He soldiered on, taking a job as a salesman for the Anglo-Dominion Soap Company, until in December 1931 he collapsed at a council meeting. He entered Caulfield Military Hospital, where he died of chronic nephritis on 17 January 1932. Jacka was only thirty-nine years old, although visitors to his bedside reckoned he looked nearer sixty. Unknown to many, Jacka had separated from his wife shortly before his final illness. By the time of his death, Bert Jacka had come to epitomise the Australian creed of bluntness, personal bravery and great comradeship to such a degree that almost 6,000 people were reckoned to have filed past his coffin as it lay in state in Anzac House.
After his funeral, a public appeal raised funds for a memorial plaque and sculpture to be placed above his grave in the Presbyterian section of St Kilda cemetery. A further £1,195 was raised to buy his widow a house. Each year a memorial service is held at his grave; originally it was organised by his old comrades in the 14th, although today it is carried on by the local council.
The Jacka legend was perhaps best summed up by E.J. Rule, who wrote:
He was not one of those whose character, manner, or outlook was changed by the high decorations which he had received. His confident, frank, outspoken personality never changed. His leadership in his last battle was as audacious and capable as in his first. He deserved the Victoria Cross as thoroughly at Pozières, Bullecourt and Ypres as at Gallipoli. Not we only, but the brigade, and the whole AIF came to look upon him as a rock of strength that never failed. We of the 14th Battalion never ceased to be thrilled when we heard ourselves referred to in the estaminet or by passing units on the march as ‘some of Jacka’s mob’.
G.R.D. MOOR
Near Krithia, Helles sector, 6 June 1915
2nd Lt. G.r.d. Moor
By the middle of May, following a fortnight of prolonged fighting, the 29th Division was in sore need of rest and recuperation. Units which had shouldered the main burden of operations since the landings had shrunk to less than half their original number.
The losses sustained by the 2nd Hampshires were typical. On 28 March more than 1,000 officers and men embarked at Avonmouth for the Dardanelles. By May 10th, when the battalion was withdrawn for a brief rest, having endured the bloodbath at V Beach and the two subsequent hastily mounted and ill-prepared attempts to roll back the Turkish forces in front of Krithia, it numbered less than 250 men.
Throughout May the 29th Division’s hard-pressed battalions pursued a policy of careful but systematic advance designed to push the Allied lines to within 200 yds of the Turkish front line in readiness for a renewed offensive. As they prepared for the battle to come, the Hampshires received some welcome reinforcements, including a new commanding officer. On 30 May Lt. Col. Weir de Lancy Williams, who had distinguished himself at V Beach alongside Doughty-Wylie and Walford, joined the depleted unit. Williams, who had been given temporary command of the 88th Brigade after the establishment of the Helles beachhead, was the Hampshires’ fifth CO since 25 April. The battalion was further strengthened by drafts which brought the unit up to 382 other ranks. Among the arrivals on 17 May were thirty-nine officers and men rejoining the unit from hospital. They included 18-year-old 2nd Lt. G.R. Dallas Moor, one of the youngest officers then serving in the British Army. Nine months earlier, Moor had been studying at Cheltenham College. Now he was a wounded veteran of the battle for the Helles beachhead. He had returned just in time to take part in the general attack to be made at midday on 4 June.
The Third Battle of Krithia, as it was officially termed, was launched with great hope among the British commanders whose confidence appeared restored following the frustration of their original plan. At first their renewed optimism seemed well-founded. Supported by a short bombardment, the assault units of the 29th Division succeeded in securing their objectives while, in the centre, the recentl
y arrived 42nd East Lancashire Division achieved a spectacular breakthrough, advancing to within half a mile of Krithia. However, the failure of the French assault on the right and its tragic consequences for the Royal Naval Division brought about the ruination of the offensive.
One of the redeeming features of yet another lost opportunity was the gallant performance of the over-stretched units of the 29th Division. Of these, the 2nd Hampshires achieved more than most. Fortified by a stirring speech by their new CO, in which he expressed the hope that one of them would earn the Regiment’s first Victoria Cross since the storming of the Taku Forts in 1862, the battalion advanced across Fir Tree Spur, capturing two lines of trenches, H8–H9 and H10, in the process.
By mid-afternoon the Hampshires’ breakthrough had been deepened. The H12 line was secured along the 88th Brigade front and there were reports of lodgements in a fifth trench line. The repulse of the French, followed in turn by the retirement of the Naval Division, however, left the most advanced units of the 42nd Division exposed. Counter-attacks pushed the East Lancashires back, making some of the 88th Brigade’s gains untenable. At 6.00 p.m. the Hampshires were ordered to withdraw to the H11 line and by nightfall the brigade’s line, running from H11 westwards to a salient created by a section of the H12 line, was consolidated.
The Hampshires had paid heavily for their success. Almost half of the 300 men engaged were casualties, with losses particularly severe among officers. In one of the captured trenches, Lt. Col. Williams came across 2nd Lt. Dallas Moor, who he described as ‘a tall, wild-looking, dark-haired boy of 18’. He later recalled: ‘Moor, myself and one other officer were the only officers left untouched. I said to him: “Well done, boy! Hold what you’ve got.”’ An hour afterwards Williams was wounded, and by the morning of 6 June, Dallas Moor, the youngest and most junior subaltern of the battalion, had been left in sole command of the 88th Brigade’s right-hand forward sector. The previous day had passed off relatively quietly. A series of half-hearted Turkish attacks were beaten back by machine-gun fire. But in the early hours of 6 June the Turks, strengthened by newly arrived reinforcements, returned to the assault with extraordinary results. Lt. Col. A.G. Paterson DSO, MC, of the 1st KOSBs, who together with the 1st Essex were occupying the H12 salient on the left of the 2nd Royal Fusiliers and 2nd Hampshires, later recorded:
VCs of the First World War Gallipoli Page 16
