Private William Jackson VC medals now on display

In a private ceremony held today at the Australian War Memorial the medal group of Australia’s youngest Victoria Cross (VC) recipient was put on display for the first time. The loan of Private William Jackson’s VC is part of the Memorial’s commemoration of Australia’s involvement in the fighting on the Western Front in 1916.

Having lied about his age, William “Bill” Jackson from Gunbar, New South Wales, enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in early 1915, aged just 17. He joined the 17th Battalion and served on Gallipoli before being evacuated with enteric fever in October. He was able to re-join his unit in Egypt just before it sailed for the Western Front in 1916. There on the bloody battlefields of France and Belgium, more Australian soldiers would die than in any other theatre of war.

On the night of June 25/26 1916 Jackson was part of an Australian trench-raiding party that broke into the German trenches outside the town of Armentières on the Franco–Belgian border. As it withdrew, the raiding party came under intense artillery and machine-gun fire and suffered many casualties. Although he reached the Australian lines safely and with a prisoner in tow, Jackson insisted on returning to no man’s land to recover wounded men until he too was badly hit by a German shell blast that resulted in him losing his right arm. Despite this, and after receiving assistance, Jackson returned once more to no man’s land to help recover his comrades.

Director of the Australian War Memorial Dr Brendan Nelson said that Jackson’s Victoria Cross was the first awarded to an Australian on the Western Front. Aged just 18 at the time, he remains the youngest Australian VC recipient.

“Private Jackson’s story represents those of many ordinary men and women who have done extraordinary things in unimaginable circumstances; their deeds form an immortal part of our nation’s history,” Australian War Memorial Director, Dr Nelson said.

“This July and August we commemorate events that are beyond the comprehension of our comfortable modern lives.

“More than 100 years ago the Gallipoli campaign ended, leaving 8,700 dead, but the worst was yet to come; on 19 and 20 July at Fromelles Australia suffered 5,500 casualties in less than 24 hours. Charles Bean, our official First World War historian at the front, was witness to Australia sustaining 23,000 casualties over the six weeks at Pozières,” said Dr Nelson.

“A mortally wounded Australian asked Bean if those in Australia would remember his sacrifice, and, reflecting on the question, Bean wrote: ‘Many a man lying out there at Pozières or in the low scrub at Gallipoli, with his poor tired senses barely working through the fever of his brain, has thought in his last moments: “Well – well – it’s over; but in Australia they will be proud of this.”’ We are.”