General News
13 January, 2025
BOOK REVIEW: Jacka joins a new elite
By CHRIS EARL THE bravery of Loddon’s greatest war heroes Albert Jacka and Albert Borella has been the stuff of stories and legends for more than a century. Both were awarded the highest medal for bravery - the Victoria Cross, both from...
By CHRIS EARL
THE bravery of Loddon’s greatest war heroes Albert Jacka and Albert Borella has been the stuff of stories and legends for more than a century.
Both were awarded the highest medal for bravery - the Victoria Cross, both from neighbouring Loddon towns.
Jacka was the first Australian to receive the medal in World War One for his feats in the bloody battles at Gallipoli.
Stories, those that created the legend of the forestry worker from Wedderburn becoming Australia’s bravest soldier of the Great War who should have picked up the medal instituted by Queen Victoria after the Crimean War half a century earlier not once, but three times.
Almost 110 years on from that VC citation, prolific Australia history author Peter FitzSimons has added his take on Jacka’s life and heroics to sit beside earlier tomes on legends, heroes, heroines, rascals and ratbags. All who have played a part in shaping the Australian psyche and the revered Anzac spirit born at Gallipoli and cherished through later wars and conflicts.
Albert Jacka’s Victoria Cross citation has been recalled at countless services of commemoration.
“For most conspicuous bravery on the night of the 19-20th May, 1915, at Courtney’s Post, Gallipoli Peninsula. Lance Corporal Jacka, while holding a portion of our trench with four men, was heavily attacked. When all except himself were killed or wounded, the trench was rushed and occupied by seven Turks. Lance Corporal Jacka at once most gallantly attacked them single-handed and killed the whole party, five by rifle fire and two with the bayonet.”
FitzSimons in his book The Legend of Albert Jacka offers an engaging, contemporary take on the Rechabite from Wedderburn., farewelled from the long-gone railway station by the local brass band playing Australia Will Be There.
One of local three teetotallers among the first off the war, FitzSimons writes that Jacka was the one who caught the eye of the local reverend’s daughter. “Sweet Elsie Raff had kissed him on the lips. Yes, the blue-eyed boy from Wedderburn had blushed furiously but all that had been so warm, so sunny, so happy”.
FitzSimons uses that moment to contrast Jacka’s life at war, in conflict not only with the Germans and the Turks but also his own family.
Jacka’s father Nathaniel, was a Labor through and through, writes FitzSimons. At the family home across the road from the school, Nathaniel receives the telegram that Albert, or Bert to family and friends, has been awarded the Victoria Cross.
“Now, though a staunch Labor man, Nathaniel Jacka, for this auspicious occasion, is happy to take time off from hating Conservatives like Fisher and Pearce and is gratified on behalf of his son to receive such messages,” writes FitzSimons, although it should be noted that Andrew Fisher was a Labor prime minister about to be deposed by Billy Hughes.
Nathaniel was not as accommodating of the conscription push by Hughes, who having seized the prime ministership late in 1915, left Labor and formed the Nationalist Party, would twice attempt to force young Australian men into the army for action on the Western Front.
FitzSimons writes that Nathaniel Jacka was ropable when his son was reported in major newspapers to be backing Hughes’ conscription bid.
Was there a hint of skulduggery? The Legend of Albert Jacka records that Nathaniel dismissed the pro-conscription stance reports at an “anti” meeting in Wedderburn. But “friend” Reg W., Turnbull claimed to have a letter from Albert urging support.
The barney played out in the media of the day. Nathaniel penned a letter to the Australian Worker newspaper and even claimed no such person as Reg. W. Turnbull lived in Wedderburn.
FitzSimons nicely explores that local drama and intrigue of the conscription fracas while interspersing it with the bigger battles Albert is fighting on the Western Front. Jacka, the soldier from the bush is now an officer with the rank of captain. His leadership a quality recognised and respected.
FitzSimons follows the encounters of Jacka, his men and the changing fortunes of the war on the road the eventual Armistice in November 1918, by which time he had been gassed at Villers-Bretonneux in the weeks after Brigadier-General Pompey Elliott, from nearby Charlton, had led troops to reclaim the French village and help turn the tide of the war. Jacka would recuperate behind front lines and in Britain before his eventual return to Australia and a hero’s welcome in Wedderburn.
Again, FitzSimons’ research lets the story of Jacka’s war, exploits and injuries, his return and later life flow.
He evocatively pens about the “burying of the hatchet” between father and son when there is a knock on the door on that October night of 1918.
Among the speeches, came a quote that summed up local pride for their hero: “May I say, to support the toast, that we have gathered to honour the bravest man the world has ever known.”
FitzSimons crafts a poignant story around the tender homecoming, He injects some wry humour when the Reverend Jager proposes the toast “to all returned men and all drink their health heartily (even the teetotallers)”.
The Legend of Albert Jacka is expansive in looking at life after the war - marriage, businesses, bankruptcy and an early death in the suburb of St Kilda where he had been mayor of the local council, although referred to in the book as lord mayor, perhaps the higher designation fitting for a national hero. As FitzSimons writes, Jacka was just 21 when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914.
His passion to tell Australian stories, “our own stories of great men and women, of stirring events in our history” has chosen a more than worthy subject for the latest book.
There’s the warts and all stories of army life, of personal and family life.
He goes beyond the gratitude of a nation and those recording its history. Great chroniclers like Australia’s official war history Charles Bean who 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.”
Or his commanding officer of the 4th Brigade Brigadier-General Charles Brand: “Captain Jacka was a super soldier, a born leader with an instinct to do the right thing in a critical situation. A company under his leadership was as good as an additional battalion.”
Jacka’s sense of service and civic responsibility jumps out in The Legend of Albert Jacka.
On his death in 1932, aged just 39, Victoria Cross recipients comprised the team of six pallbearers.
Among them was the man originally from further up the railway line and fellow Freemason, Albert Chalmers Borella.
The two had had no doubt travelled that same railway travelled in their younger years.
One now said farewell to a leader whose early death had been a major trigger in shaping the Anzac spirit that to this day is honoured in Wedderburn.
Peter FitzSimons has chosen wisely in giving his style of writing to this significant new book on the life and legend of Captain Albert Jacka, Victoria Cross, Military and Bar and his story of service and sacrifice.
The Legend of Albert Jacka
by Peter FitzSimons.
Published by Hatchette Australia.
Available in hardback, ebook and audiobook.
Peter FitzSimons will be at Wedderburn Library on December 4.