Dec2014_ALBERT JACKA VC

Being the first can bring rewards. For being the first soldier in the Australian Imperial Force to receive a Victoria Cross Lance-Corporal Albert Jacka, 14th Battalion, also received a gold medal and a purse of £500 from Melbourne business identity John Wren. Jacka gained the award for a brave and determined bit of soldiering at Anzac during the night of 18-19 May 1915.

After the establishment of the Anzac line at Gallipoli in early May 1915, the Turkish commanders began making plans to force the Anzacs off the peninsula. New divisions were brought in and a great attack was scheduled for 19 May. In the words of Kiazim Pasha, Chief of Staff to the German commander of all Turkish forces on Gallipoli, Liman Von Sanders: ‘The plan was to attack before day-break, drive the Anzac troops from their trenches, and follow them down to the sea’.

On the morning of 19 May, in the hour before dawn, the Turkish attack went in all along the Anzac line. Eventually, with terrible loss of life by the Turks, it was beaten back. One spot, however, where the Turks did succeed in driving the Australians out of a part of their front line trench was at Courtney’s Post, defended by the 14th Battalion from Victoria. The approach to Courtney’s was up a gentle rise from the Turkish side, relatively well covered with undergrowth. In one spot, the attackers reached the lip of the Australian trench and, hurling bombs into it, killed some of the defenders and drove the rest off. As the Australians pulled back, Turkish soldiers occupied a few metres of the trench. The enemy, however, were unable to move up or down the trench because shots were being fired at them from connecting communication trenches. Some of these shots were coming from Lance-Corporal Albert Jacka who was occupying a fire-step in a firing bay. Two officers who ran into the trench, trying to get sight of or drive back the Turks, were both killed.

From battalion headquarters there now came another officer, Lieutenant K Crabbe, whom Jacka warned not to step out into the firing line. Crabbe asked Jacka if he would charge the Turks and Jacka replied that he would with some support. Jacka then led three men around the corner of the trench against the Turks but all three were quickly hit and he was forced to retreat. A new plan had Jacka taking a circuitous route through back trenches to get in behind the Turks. Once he was in position, another party would occupy the enemy with a bomb attack. As the bombs exploded, creating much noise and smoke, Jacka jumped out into no-man’s-land, ran to where the Turks were, and leapt in among them. He quickly shot five men dead and bayoneted two more; the remainder fled. As Lieutenant Crabbe entered the position Jacka, his face ‘flushed with the tremendous excitement he had undergone during the previous hour’, greeted him saying, ‘Well, I managed to get the beggars, Sir!’ He was recommended for and received the Victoria Cross.

Jacka’s award was only the start of a military career that saw him become a ‘living legend’ within the AIF. Moreover, it was a reputation earned by his personal qualities of leadership in the only area really respected by front-line soldiers, that of the battlefield itself. While Jacka could be outspoken and bloody-minded, attributes which many of his superiors saw as insubordination and which may had held back his promotion beyond his eventual rank of captain, everyone within the AIF came to know of Albert Jacka. In France, he was twice awarded a Military Cross for actions that even that judicious evaluator of men, the official historian Charles Bean, felt should have earned him two bars to his Victoria Cross. At Pozières on the Somme in 1916, arguably the most terrible battle the AIF was ever involved in, Jacka’s presence of mind and courage virtually saved the day when a German counter-attack had broken through the line. As forty Australian prisoners were being led by the triumphant Germans, Jacka, at the head of seven men, burst among them. Despite being hurled from his feet several times by explosions and wounded in the head and shoulder, Jacka killed nearly a score of Germans on his own and bayoneted others. The 14th Battalion’s historian, N Wanliss, described this as a ‘brilliant counter-attack’ and Charles Bean was also lavish in his praise describing Jacka’s action as ‘the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the history of the AIF’. From an official historian, who personally read over the stories of thousands of brave men that he included in his battle narratives, this was exceptional praise.

Albert Jacka died in 1932 and at his funeral his coffin was carried by eight Australian VCs. On his grave these words were cut:

‘Captain Albert Jacka VC MC and Bar, 14th Battalion, AIF. The first VC in the Great War 1914-1918. A gallant soldier. An honoured citizen.’

For years his old comrades of the 14th Battalion held a memorial service by his grave. After they passed on, that annual act of remembrance was continued by St Kilda Council, Melbourne. But perhaps the greatest tribute that was paid to Jacka was by another battalion historian, E J Rule, who called his book Jacka’s Mob, a title he explained in these words:

Not we only, but … 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 [French public house] or by passing units on the march as ‘some of Jack’s mob.