WAR'S TRAGEDY

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 32, 8 February 1932, Page 8

WAR'S TRAGEDY

DEATH OF CAPTAIN

JACKA, V.C,

HIS PEACETIME BATTLE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 21st January. It has often been said that the heroes of war are forgotten in peace. This was certainly true of Captain Albert Jaeka, the first Australian to win a Victoria Gross in the Great War. Blind racked with pain, the result of gassing and severe war injuries, he fought death for months, and on Saturday death won. He was buried with full military honours, but the fact remains that for months he was in the ranks at Melbourne's Unemployed. It is said, that his financial worries, added to the ravages of the war, played an important part in bringing about his end at the age of 39.

There were many acts of bravery during the war .to the credit of Captain Jacka, and his name was a household word in Australia. He was a co.untrybred man, born in Victoria, and an employee of the Victorian Forests Commission when he enlisted at the age of 21, and left with the 14th Battalion. He saw his first fighting as a private on (rallipoh. Prom the outset he displayed a disregard of danger, and a capacity of overcoming difficulties that earned him the respect and trus£ of his comrades—officers and men alike. Many stories are told of his heroism, but it was his deed at Courtney's Post on 19th May, 1915, that first earned him fame. Then a Larice-Corporal, he was holding a section of an Australian trench with four other men. The position was heavily attacked by Turks. All Jacka's comrades were'killed' or rendered helpless by wounds, and seven Turks entered the trench. Lance-.Cor-poral Jacka attacked the raiders singlehanded, and after a desperate struggle killed every Turk in the trench, five by rifle fire and two with the bayonet. He beat off further attacks upon the trench, and held the position until he was relieved. For this achievement he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Many times afterwards Captain Jacka's heroism was mentioned in reports from the front. RAPID PROMOTION. He gained promotion rapidly. When the Australian troops 'went to France he was a Lieutenant, and, in that capacity, he led a counter-attack after a strong enemy offensive at Pozieres on 7th August, 1916, and he was awarded the Military Cross for what has been, described as "the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the history of the Australian Imperial Forces." At the disastrous battle of B.ulleeourt on 17th' April, 1917, Jacka, who was then a Captain, acted as intelligence officer and tanks officer, and won a bar to his Military Cross for a daring nocturnal investigation of the enemy position inside the Germans' wire entanglements, and for the subsequent capture of a German officer and his orderly. It has been said that this act warranted another Victoria Cross, and that Jacka prized most of all his bar to the Military Cross. . After his repatriation Captain Jacka became associated with an importing business which ceased operations about a year ago after having suffered heavily during the depression. He displayed a keen, interest in civic affairs, and in 1929 he' was elected to the St. Kilda (Melbourne) Council. He showed forceful debating capacities, and after being I associated with the council for only a year he was elected Mayor, a position which lie relinquished, in August last. Through the long months of winter, he was without work, but through ■ his council he found work for hundreds who would otherwise have faced dire want. Himself, he had lost everything, but still he battled on !and became a soap salesman. FROM BAD TO WORSE. Things went from bad to worse for him, and finally he had to leave his home. His plucky wife, at first without telling him, secured a position as waitress in a Melbourne hotel. Jacka went on trying to sell soap, but his financial worries must have played on his mind, and then his fatal illness came.! For weeks he was within an inch of death, but he fought on bravely against blindness, against his bodily disfigurements, against' the agonising rash of war gas and'his diseased lungs and kidneys. All day long his father sat by Ms side, and his wife was ever there to administer to his comfort in his last hours, j

Captain Jaeka uttered .no word against the Australia that had forgotten him. '