‘Albert Jacka VC – myths and legends’, Honest History, 1 May 2025
[This review originally appeared in Quadrant and is republished here with the permission of the editor of Quadrant and of the author of the review. It is considerably longer than Honest History’s normal fare but is published in the public interest. Our previous commentary on Peter FitzSimons’ work can be tracked down through our Search engine. We note that Mr FitzSimons does not claim to be a historian but a ‘storian’. HH]
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Peter FitzSimons has written a new book titled, “The Legend of Albert Jacka,”[i] which is a biography of Australia’s greatest front line soldier, Captain Albert Jacka VC MC and Bar of the A.I.F.’s 14th Battalion. I am delighted he has, because Peter’s broad public profile will popularise and help preserve the memory of that extraordinary Australian. I am also dismayed because of the material factual errors, unfounded assertions, and debunked mythology that it contains.
Albert Jacka has been the subject of several previous biographies / narratives: Ian Grant’s “Jacka VC: Australia’s Finest Fighting Soldier” (1989) which provided a solid grounding of original archival research, Robert Macklin’s “Jacka VC: Australian Hero” (2006), and my two volumes: “Hard Jacka: The Story of a Gallipoli Legend” (2007), and “Return of the Gallipoli Legend: Jacka VC” (2010). Earlier treatments of Albert Jacka appeared in Newton Wanliss’ “The History of the Fourteenth Battalion, AIF” (1929) and Edgar (Ted) Rule’s “Jacka’s Mob” (1933). Each of these books, including Peter FitzSimons’s, has contributed to our knowledge about the man Sir Peter Cosgrove AC MC calls the “paladin of the AIF”.[ii]
Unsubstantiated assertions, fiction and errors of fact
None of the books written about Albert Jacka are error free, including my own I hasten to add. Not even “Jacka’s Mob” was completely error free, despite Ted Rule being Jacka’s friend and it being based on his war diary. However, Peter FitzSimons’s book contains many more errors than one would have thought possible given the team of researchers he had working on it.
It is ironic that FitzSimons should label Prime Minister Andrew Fisher and Defence Minister George Pearce “conservatives” who Albert’s father Nathaniel “is happy to take a little time off hating”.[iii] Both men were trade unionists, and Fisher was Labor Prime Minister at the start of the war while Pearce was a founder of the Labor Party in Western Australia.[iv] FitzSimons asserts that Jacka’s financial backer John Wren was “in his 60s” in 1920, when he was only 49,[v] and that Albert’s estranged wife Vera died in her late 60’s when she was in her early sixties.[vi] Following the Grant and Macklin books Peter also misspells the surname of Sergeant (later Lt.) Stephen De Araugo who backed up Jacka at Gallipoli (spelling it “De Arango,” and he doesn’t realise 2005 Australian Idol winner Kate De Araugo is Stephen’s great granddaughter).[vii] FitzSimons claims Jacka’s post-war business had “expanded to four stores” by 1930 when there was only one office or store at a time,[viii] and seems to think it was necessary “to be a full Colonel” in order to be “in charge of the whole 14th Battalion.”[ix]
Yet these grating peccadillos and many more dotted throughout the text pale in comparison to a number of distortions of battle scenes that Jacka or his contemporaries participated in. During the 14th Battalion’s first trench raid at the Western Front on 2 July 1916, its leader Lt. Harold Wanliss sustained wounds to the face and body, and was struggling to get back to his lines, when FitzSimons exclaims: “As it happens – Hello Bendigo! It is Stephen De Arango … who grabs Wanliss by the collar and drags him to the safety of his own trenches.”[x] This description is based on an assertion without citation in Grant’s book,[xi] which is repeated in Macklin’s book[xii] – who in addition incorrectly claims, and is followed by FitzSimons, that Ted Rule “was in the thick of the raid.”[xiii] But that is not what happened. In the 1956 memoirs of Sergeant (later Major) Fred Anderson we read that Fred lay end to end with Harold in a shallow ditch waiting out withering machine gun fire, using his feet to stop Harold’s head from submerging, and then carried him to safety on his back.[xiv] I referenced Fred’s memoirs in “Hard Jacka” but they do not appear in the FitzSimons book.
FitzSimons claims that his narratives are factual, but description of the death of Captain Harold Wanliss at the Battle of Polygon Wood on 26 September, 1917 contains serious fictional hyperbole presented as fact. Each of the books by Grant, Macklin and FitzSimons gets this wrong. Newton Wanliss knew very well what happened to his son, but chose to write in general terms that, “Just after the second objective was reached Capt. Harold Wanliss was killed at the head of his men…” Grant writes that “a machine-gun, fired from in front of the 15th Battalion position, caught Harold Wanliss in the back,”[xv] while Macklin follows suit with, “Tragedy struck when Harold Wanliss, in returning to his own company, took the full blast of a machine gun…”
Not satisfied with these tame versions, FitzSimons turns Wanliss around to face the enemy but then invents a bizarre fictional account: “Out on the right flank Wanliss is set to lead the next charge [against the machine gun post]… Wanliss leaps to his feet, raises his revolver and… one German bullet goes into his throat… His men charge forward regardless…”[xvi] Except, that is not what happened.
What actually happened, and is described in “Hard Jacka,”[xvii] was recorded by one of the two men who were in the shell-hole with Wanliss when he died. His batman, Sergeant Harry Delora, wrote the following to Newton:[xviii]
At the time he was about 75 yards ahead of his Company in a shell-hole with the second in command [not charging, but reconnoitring the ground before his men would come up according to Jacka’s order to take the battalion beyond the road], when a machinegun started to play around us; the Captain was observing, when a bullet got him through the side and another just under the neck, killing him outright… I might mention that the Hun who “got” your son will never be able to kill another, as he was finished off by myself and an officer – both fired together.
Contradicting the Official Historian C.E.W. Bean, Ted Rule and all other biographers, FitzSimons asserts that prior to Albert Jacka’s famous 7 August 1916 charge against overwhelming German forces at Pozieres, he and the remnants of his platoon had not sheltered in a dugout – which version FitzSimons dismisses as “a tale” – but in a shell-hole.[xix] The evidence for this revisionism is Jacka’s newspaper interview in which, according to FitzSimons, “He makes no mention of sheltering in a deep dugout, and states emphatically that he and his men had been sheltering in a shell-hole, that he himself had been splashed by shell shrapnel during the bombardment”[xx] (emphasis added).
However, the references provided in footnote 9 of FitzSimons’s “Attack” chapter do not support these claims. The newspaper describes a “bursting bomb [not “shell shrapnel”, that] had splashed him nastily before he ventured out on the amazing exploit,” which is consistent with the traditional account of a German grenade being tossed into a dugout, as grenades were called “bombs” in those times (emphasis added).[xxi] However, FitzSimons implies that by taking cover Jacka avoided the blast of a grenade (bomb) thrown into the shell hole.[xxii] While Jacka did speak of that area looking like “a number of shell-holes, joined by a little digging” he did not say he and his men were sheltering in one, but did say that after the Germans “went past the trench they took a turn about half-left”[xxiii] (emphasis added). German 152mm (6-inch) artillery shells left craters that were 2 meters in diameter,[xxiv] which was too small to accommodate the remnants of Jacka’s platoon, and why would the German have thrown his grenade into that shell-hole when there were so many other holes? How could he have not seen them? The opening to a dugout, however…[xxv]
If it was a “shell-hole” we would also need to ask ourselves why Ted Rule went to the trouble of spelling out Jacka’s distrust of dugouts after Pozieres in such strident tones:[xxvi]
Bert Jacka, after his experience at Pozieres, did not like deep dugouts… He had nearly been caught in one, and he would now rarely use one, and was very blunt in his criticism of officers who did.
Albert Jacka’s homecoming and the post-war period are not spared either.
Having endured the unwanted adulation of thousands at the Melbourne Town Hall homecoming reception on 20 October 1919, and after being hounded by reporters for his views on conscription, FitzSimons has Albert being driven straight from the Army Depot in Sturt Street “back to the Euripides and safety from civilians” (quoting The Herald).[xxvii] But the following day The Argus noted that “he was cheered by large crowds as he drove away and will proceed with the vessel to Sydney to-day, after visiting relatives”[xxviii] (emphasis added). FitzSimons completely ignores the fact that Jacka visited a dozen members of his family including his mother Elizabeth, and brother Sidney at his Aunt Margaret and Uncle Ted Waldron’s house at 35 Rowe Street North Fitzroy, where importantly – his father Nathaniel was not present. How could Peter miss this family reunion when the photograph of it is displayed in Robert Macklin’s book?[xxix] Did it not fit the FitzSimons narrative that all the conscription “estrangement” was already over with?[xxx]
After noting that due to Protestant embarrassment no newspaper reporters and hardly any guests were present at the Catholic church in St Kilda to witness Albert’s wedding to Vera Carey on 17 January 1921, FitzSimons implies that immediately afterwards, “Domestic life begins with Bert leaving their home at Murchison Street, St Kilda, to go to the store in Collins Street.”[xxxi] Except that after Albert married in 1921 there was no “store in Collins Street.” He operated offices on both sides of Collins Street and only later opened a store in Briscoe Lane which was then moved to a larger store in Elizabeth Street. [xxxii] The couple lived in rented premises up to 1926, when they purchased their house a 23 Murchison Street.[xxxiii]
The chronology of Albert’s last week before being hospitalised is also jumbled, because it follows the accounts provided by Grant and Macklin, despite FitzSimons acknowledging the latter had provided “a wonderful tool for sorting chronology and characters.”[xxxiv] The last St Kilda Council meeting that Albert attended was on Monday night, 14 December, 1931, at the end of which there was a ceremony thanking him and Vera (in her absence) for their year as Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress. Grant writes, “He collapsed following the Council meeting on 14 December 1931”,[xxxv] so Macklin adds that after leaving the meeting Jacka “went towards his office with a list of people to telephone. He never reached it. He collapsed.”[xxxvi] Now FitzSimons has followed suit with, “Just after the meeting [on 14 December] is adjourned, to the shock of all, [Albert] collapses and is rushed to Caulfield Military Repatriation Hospital.”[xxxvii]
That is not what happened.
As noted in “Return of the Gallipoli Legend”, Jacka’s medical record shows that he visited the Caulfield Military Repatriation Hospital on Wednesday 16 December, where he was examined by Dr Rueben Rosenfield and Dr Montefiore Silberberg. Albert ignored the recommendation of hospitalisation for “vigorous treatment”[xxxviii] because he had one last task to perform – a meeting he would chair at the council offices that Friday 18 December, for last minute planning of the Beach Carnival taking place the next day. As noted in the St Kilda Council Minutes of 8 February, 1932, the new mayor Cr Moroney told the meeting that:[xxxix]
He had left a meeting in the Town Hall on the 18th December to go straight to the Caulfield Military Hospital. No one ever dreamed that his complaint was of a mortal nature…
Albert Jacka’s Service Record shows that he was admitted to the hospital on 18 December.[xl]
When Albert’s now estranged wife Vera appears at the hospital with her daughter Betty, FitzSimons comments that: “What Betty doesn’t see are the daggers thrown at her mother, every eye an accusation…”[xli] As we find below, FitzSimons throws his dagger eye in there as well, but he is not correct, at least not according to Betty’s recollection. She told me that image of the “dagger eyes” weighed on her for the rest of her life, and the dark brown linoleum floor, the tall bed, and being picked up to reach her father so she could kiss him. There was much that Betty told me in the course of two years of email correspondence, which I have preserved.
Even FitzSimons’s funeral scene at St Kilda cemetery is chronologically flawed, because it again follows the account provided by Robert Macklin, who assumed that the imposing tombstone over Albert Jacka’s grave, including a bronze relief of his profile was already there on 19 January, 1932, just two days after his death on 17 January.[xlii] Hence FitzSimons writes: “When the graveside eulogy is over, with a final flourish, Brand pulls off the Union Jack and salutes Jacka’s Australian tombstone.”[xliii] However, on 1 February, 1932 a mourner reflecting on the proceedings in “The Duckboard” writes: “After the last solemn rights had been observed, the crowd slowly dispersed. There remained a mound of earth, covered by beautiful wreaths…”[xliv]
Apparently neither the authors nor FitzSimons’s research team had stopped to ask if it was physically possible to make such a handsome and complex tombstone in two days, and were unaware that it was unfurled by General Brand on 15 May, 1932, as reported in “The Argus”, which published a photograph of Vera and daughter Betty mournfully standing next to it.[xlv] Ian Grant’s book even displays an image of the appeal that was distributed in February 1932 to raise funds for the monument.[xlvi] The explanation may be that people who are speed reading Ted Rule’s “Jacka’s Mob” might miss the part where he writes “on the 15th of May the [battalion] gathered again” and watched as “The Brig. drew aside the Union Jack.”[xlvii] Such errors should not be leapfrogging through time.
Non-attribution
In a number of instances FitzSimons says things that he could only have come to know through reading my books or listening to my YouTube interview with Michael Madden, author of “Victoria Cross: Australia Remembers.”[xlviii] While FitzSimons mentions my books and the interview generally in his Acknowledgements,[xlix] there is not a single reference to them in the bibliography or appendices to chapters, unlike the numerous end of chapter citations of the Grant and Macklin books.
At one point FitzSimons recalls Albert’s spirit of adventure, when as a young boy in Wedderburn he and his two brothers “saw a fire break out at the hotel and after saying, ‘Let’s go boys!’, had put the fire out!”[l] The fire was at Dockley’s hotel and while Albert’s brother Bill did recall him yelling “Let’s go boys!”, they didn’t put anything out – they just wanted to watch. This episode was mentioned in “Return of the Gallipoli Legend”[li] and was attributed to Bill Jacka’s 1977 audio interview recorded by the Korong Historical Society.[lii] Citations to neither the interview nor the book are to be found in FitzSimons’s list of references.
FitzSimons asserts that Albert’s membership of the Freemasons, first mentioned by Macklin, did “not sit easily with Vera Jacka,”[liii] and Macklin incorrectly speculates that Jacka being a Freemason prevented a closer relationship with Wren[liv] (i.e., despite the fact that Wren’s right hand man Dick Lean was also a Freemason).[lv] His evidence for this appears to be based on Albert’s annoyance when Vera sang back to him a secret Freemason hymn that she knew because the East St Kilda Freemasons’ Hall “backs onto their property” and “she simply stood in their backyard and overheard the tune!”[lvi] Except Peter infers that the hall backs onto “their property” in Murchison Street, when it is still located 1.5 kilometres from Murchison Street. I recalled this episode in “Return of the Gallipoli Legend”[lvii] because Albert and Vera’s adopted daughter Betty told it to me, describing it as Vera’s whimsical prank. None of this is attributed by FitzSimons, and it would seem fundamental that any biographer of Albert Jacka should at least visit the house where he, Vera, her mother and daughter Betty lived and peer over the back fence to see if there actually is a Freemasons’ hall there.
Another example of non-attribution is found in Peter’s remarks about a Government House reception in April 1927, where Vera reportedly asked the Duchess of York for and obtained permission to name her adopted daughter “Elizabeth” after the princess that had also been born in 1926.[lviii] That episode was reported in “Return of the Gallipoli Legend” on the basis of what Betty told me.[lix]
Neither is there attribution when FitzSimons writes in relation to the collapse of Jacka’s electrical store business: “John Wren again steps forward, this time paying off debt amounting to a nigh £20,000”.[lx] This was a previously unknown fact, and only reported in “Return of the Gallipoli Legend”[lxi] and my April, 2024 “Quadrant” article, because I contacted the archivist of the National Australia Bank and asked him to look at the board papers of the bank, which proved finally that John Wren had absorbed the full amount of bank debt accumulated by Albert Jacka’s business.[lxii]
Agenda and biased myth making
While FitzSimons cites my “Quadrant” article about the myths surrounding Albert Jacka’s post war life, it is only to reference that the surname of Betty’s physical father was Smith, and that Jacka was known as “the Lemonade Mayor”. The substance of the article is ignored as Peter ploughs on with a myth that Albert was left wing like his father and brother Bill. Subtle snippets are inserted, such as reference to an “Argus” article that reported, “When Captain Jacka won the Victoria Cross Labour officials were jubilant. He was a good unionist they said, a stout Labour man.”[lxiii] Albert is later quoted as describing himself as a “working man”.[lxiv]
The war changed Albert as well as his brother Bill, with the former turning to the right of their father and the latter to the far-left.[lxv] After the war, when he became a businessman Albert would support a Nationalist Party candidate here,[lxvi] and chair an anti-strike meeting there.[lxvii] During a 1925 dinner at the upmarket Scott’s Hotel in Collins Street “Captain A. Jacka, V.C.” was quoted as saying, “Had the Labour party continued in office taxpayers would have expected to fight against an unscrupulous onslaught upon their savings.”[lxviii] Influenced by his free enterprise fellow veteran, fellow councillor and fellow Freemason Burnett Gray, Albert voted against raising rates to pay for the new St Kilda baths, arguing instead – 70 years ahead of his time – for a Public Private Partnership (PPP).[lxix] As Mayor of St Kilda he presided over a political rally of the All For Australia Party that took place in the Town Hall.[lxx] None of this is mentioned by FitzSimons or any previous author apart from myself.
Grant,[lxxi] Macklin[lxxii] and I[lxxiii] all assumed that Jacka was offered a safe seat in parliament by John Wren, a fact that is questioned by Wren’s biographer James Griffin because Ted Rule did not actually say it was Wren,[lxxiv] and Jacka had previously turned down offers from other parties. FitzSimons merely quotes Albert’s dismissive response including the words “Look at Jacka – failure in business, climbs into a safe job as an MP!”[lxxv] The words Peter excludes from “Jacka’s Mob” are “No Eddie, they’re not my style.”[lxxvi] If Wren did say it as FitzSimons and the other authors have assumed, then the “they” that Jacka was referring to on that occasion was the Labor Party.
None of this is to deny the fundamental humanity, compassion and spirit of voluntarism that dominated Albert Jacka’s character and deeds. As an officer he did not forsake his former comrades in the ranks, and as mayor he worked tirelessly on behalf of the unemployed of St Kilda. That last meeting Albert chaired at the Town Hall on 18 December, 1931 was to raise funds for a Christmas celebration by the unemployed and their families.
FitzSimons also ignores another key message in my “Quadrant” article: that Albert Jacka was destined to die young due to nephritis or heart failure because it was in his DNA, given that two of his three brothers died from the same illnesses by the age of 56.[lxxvii] Instead Peter writes that Nathaniel “watched his boy die in the hospital from damage done far away.”[lxxviii] There is no doubt that war wounds did speed Albert Jacka’s demise by a decade or more, but the DNA qualifier should have been mentioned.
In FitzSimons’s book, as also in Macklin’s, Jacka is portrayed as an unblemished hero, while everyone who stands in his way is a one-dimensional enemy. Peter also puts Monash into the unblemished hero category, consistently painting him and Albert Jacka as superior battlers who are being suppressed by sinister, presumably “conservative,” forces.
Major Otto Carl Wilhelm Fuhrmann (later amended to Osmond Charles William Fuhrman) is one of the “enemies” who gets kicked at every opportunity. He is painted as a cowardly man who at Pozieres was, “Well back from all.. [and] has found a capacious dugout to establish the B Company HQ.”[lxxix] FitzSimons uses the same words, “capacious dugout,” that were previously used by Newton Wanliss, Grant and Macklin, but the same treatment is not accorded to Monash, who was not close enough to properly observe the misadventures of his 4th Brigade when it was cut to pieces at Gallipoli on 8 August, 2015.[lxxx] In that instance it was the fault of the 4th Brigade “who got lost” a couple of nights earlier. While Grant provides the resident of the “capacious dugout” with recognition for being awarded a Croix de Guerre after mowing down 50 Germans with a machinegun during the battle,[lxxxi] neither Macklin nor FitzSimons mention this.
In FitzSimons’s book Major (later Lt. Colonel) Charles Dare is another “enemy”, and is given no credit – as he is in Grant’s book – for knowing, but not being able to convince senior officers, that the 4th Brigade “was lost” and not on the correct spur of Hill 971 at Gallipoli.[lxxxii] While Macklin does recall Dare’s brave decision to try to hold onto Hill 100 that day, and having to be twice ordered by Monash to retreat,[lxxxiii] this does not fit the caricature that FitzSimons constructs. Nor does FitzSimons report Dare’s later claim that the two thousand Australian lives subsequently lost trying to take Hill 60 would have been spared if Monash had not forced him to abandon his position.[lxxxiv]
However, I do agree with everyone from Newton Wanliss and Ted Rule (who actually saw the bland and inaccurate recommendation on Dare’s desk) to Peter FitzSimons that Fuhrmann and Dare share blame for not investigating Jacka’s extraordinary charge at Pozieres on 7 August, 1916, and not having recommended him for a second VC.
FitzSimons’s negative narrative continues when he recounts how outraged the Jacka family was about the portrayal of Albert and his brother Bill – who post war became respectively the mayors of St Kilda and Footscray – as barely literate yokels in an ABC Radio play in 1950. Understandable rage, but when assessing Albert Jacka’s legacy FitzSimons omits mentioning that in 2015, as part of the ANZAC Centenary, a rock musical titled “Jacka VC: Legend of Gallipoli” was performed by a cast of young Australians.[lxxxv] With music and libretto written by (Dr) William Smith the musical was based on “Hard Jacka” and received high praise from descendants and members of the Jacka, Wanliss, Howard, De Araugo, Poliness, and Wallace-Crabbe families who watched it in Melbourne or Bendigo.
Another example of Peter’s negativity is his portrayal of Albert being “down and out”, and “selling soap door to door” as a Commercial Traveller of the William Angliss Company in his last months prior to hospitalisation. In reality he wasn’t destitute at all: he had a company car, had equity in a comfortable house at 60 Chaucer Street St Kilda, was still a St Kilda councillor, and an “A-lister” who was still helping the unemployed in his neighbourhood. Neither he nor returned Diggers in general had been forgotten by Australian society as Manning Clarke, his disciple Stuart Macintyre,[lxxxvi] and now Peter FitzSimons use Albert Jacka’s example to imply. Had he lived, given his leadership qualities Jacka would have risen in the William Angliss organisation.[lxxxvii]
At the end of his book FitzSimons unleashes an unprecedented torrent of hurtful accusations towards Albert’s wife Vera, presumably for the cardinal sin of having left him. FitzSimons claims that when she left Albert she got a job as “a hostess [not the hostess] at the famous Hotel Australia in Collins Street, welcoming patrons and making sure they needn’t drink alone.”[lxxxviii] On the contrary, Macklin describes it as the “Venetian Room [actually “Venetian Court”] – where afternoon teas were served.”[lxxxix] It was a place where ladies fashion shows were held[xc] rather than being the bar that FitzSimons implies. However, Macklin also speculates that Vera went there to drink prior to the hostess job and cites Jacka family allegations that Vera was “an alcoholic”.[xci] Vera’s daughter Betty denied these assertions, writing to me that “Like Bert, Vera didn’t drink at all at that time. Not until sometime after her second marriage.”[xcii]
One of FitzSimons’s most outlandish assertions is that after Albert’s death, “she [i.e. Vera] did not appear to mourn him for long, if at all. She had, after all, seen him just a couple of times in the year before he died [i.e. 1931] and both were visits to the hospital.”[xciii] How could FitzSimons seriously think this? It was the year that they were the Lord and Lady Mayoress of St Kilda, and there are a number of newspaper reports about the couple participating in functions together (like the fund raising dance at Ormond Hall on 19 March, 1931).[xciv] They posed for an official mayoral photograph together.[xcv] At the 14 December Council meeting the new mayor Cr Moroney referred to Vera as “the lady [who] had been a bulwark to Cr Jacka”, while in response Albert “referred to the great assistance Mrs Jacka had been to him during his period as mayor, and said that the position was too big a job for even two.”[xcvi]
Articles in “The Herald” in the weeks following Jacka’s hospitalisation challenge FitzSimons’s account by reporting that Mrs Jacka was “weary and jaded from days and night[s] of watching at the bedside of her husband”,[xcvii] although Macklin suggests these may have involved “journalistic excess”.[xcviii] However, Betty told me that her mother “liked living with” her father, was “immensely proud of his fame,” [xcix] and cried every ANZAC Day because it reminded her of him.
Then there is Macklin’s[c] and FitzSimons’s accusation that Vera had already taken up with her “new beau” in 1931. According to the latter, “the strong word [among the Jacka family] is that she is already seeing another fella, even living with him, and there are words for women like that – an even worse one than Catholics.”[ci] In her correspondence with me on this matter Betty was unflinching. In her memory, Frank Duncan was:[cii]
A devout Catholic who, in every aspect of his life and in all his life, followed to the letter the teaching of his church. Merely to go out with a married woman he would see as a sin (a biggie) but much worse in his eyes, he would be asking her to sin. There is no way Frank could be guilty of that.
Macklin,[ciii] and therefore FitzSimons, describe Frank Duncan as a “wealthy businessman”,[civ] but do not provide the context that he was twenty years older than Vera, and a widower with seven children. His free standing terrace in Park Terrace Clifton Hill suggests success rather than wealth, and if FitzSimons insists on invoking “class war” he should know that Duncan was a life-long supporter of the Labor Party and a devoted Collingwood fan.[cv]
Finally, there is FitzSimons’s cruel accusation that “in the public outpouring of grief at his [i.e. Albert’s] death, she [i.e. Vera] waited no more than a day before launching an appeal for herself.”[cvi] In the same breath that Peter references the “public grief” he seems oblivious to the fact that Vera was like a leaf tossed into a raging torrent of emotion consuming the whole country. In more balanced tones Robert Macklin notes the role of the Directors of the Herald and Weekly Times Ltd, who immediately launched the appeal[cvii] in the context of previous emotionally charged articles that to him appeared “mawkish, ingenuous and more than a little self-serving.”[cviii] Vera would have been powerless to stop it, and with a young daughter to support, why would she try?[cix]
It is important to preserve the legend of Albert Jacka VC, who was arguably the most outstanding and fascinating Australian front-line soldier of the Great War. That responsibility is too important to be rushed through with incomplete, error-laden research that is overly dependent on, and repeats the errors of previous works while attempting to build or perpetuate false myths with it all.
After Albert Jacka’s death Newton Wanliss foreshadowed that his name and the story of his extraordinary exploits, “will stir the blood of Australians for all time.”[cx] Albert Jacka’s legend does not require myths to be invented – his actual deeds are remarkable enough to more than justify Newton Wanliss’ prediction.
_______________________________________________________________________
Dr Michael Lawriwsky is author of Hard Jacka and Return of the Gallipoli Legend: Jacka VC, and was previously a trustee of the Shrine of Remembrance. This review was previously published in the April 2025 edition of Quadrant magazine.
END NOTES
[i] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), The Legend of Albert Jacka, Hachette.
[ii] Lawriwsky, Michael (2007), Hard Jacka, Mira, Foreword.
[iii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 53.
[iv] See Clem Lloyd, (2000), Australian Prime Ministers, New Holland, in Michelle Grattan (Ed.), who claims that no-one led the Federal Labor Party better , p.86.
[v] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p.377. John Wren was born 3 April, 1871: see James Griffen, (2004), John Wren: A life reconsidered, Scribe, p.6.
[vi] The 17 January, 1921, wedding certificate of Albert Jacka and Frances Veronica Carey has her age as 22. Births Deaths and Marriages Victoria records her age as 63 at her death in Prahran in 1962. Family history results | Births deaths and marriages Victoria
[vii] In addition, Stephen De Araugo’s son Vincent, Kate’s grandfather, was blessed with an operatic tenor voice and appeared on Graham Kennedy’s IMT in the early 1960s.
[viii] This is clear from the advertising campaign launched by Jacka, Edmonds & Co during 1930, which invites customers to visit its store at 101-103 Elizabeth Street, “5 doors down from Collins Street”.
[ix] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 189. During the Great War battalions were commanded by a lieutenant colonel, while brigades (comprising 4 battalions) were commanded by a full colonel or brigadier-general.
[x] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 110.
[xi] Grant, Ian (1989), p.64.
[xii] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.108.
[xiii] See Rule, Ted (1933), pp.50-56. Newton Wanliss (1929) pp.123-124 provides a complete list of the raiders’ names, which does not include Rule’s name.
[xiv] Anderson, Frederick (1956), “Glenthompson, October 5th”.
[xv] Grant, I (1989), p. 144.
[xvi] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 328.
[xvii] Lawriwsky, M. (2007), pp. 349-351.
[xviii] AWM 43 A911.
[xix] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), pp.142-145, especially chapter 6, footnote 9.
[xx] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), Chapter 6, footnote 9.
[xxi] The Bendigo Independent, (3 October, 1916), p.7. It is important to note that Jacka described a “bomb” getting him in the back rather than shrapnel from a “shell” fired by artillery.
[xxii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), pp.143.
[xxiii] In FitzSimons’s other cited source, The Herald (14 October, 1916), p.12, the only mention of a shell-hole was from a Private H.V. Northcote who was not under Jacka’s command, but had been wounded by a bursting shell the night before while sheltering in a shell-hole.
[xxiv] Passmore, David, Harrison, Stephan and david Capps Tunwell (September, 2018), “Revisiting the US military ‘Levels of War’ model as a conceptual tool in conflict archaeology: a case study of WW2landscapes in Normandy, France,” Figure 4, Conference Proceedings, “Fields of Conflict” Conference, Mashantucket Pequot Museum & Research Center.
[xxv] We could also ask why it would have been necessary for Jacka to climb to the top of a shell hole to find out whether things are “just the same” there as they are at the base of the hole? FitzSimons (2024), p. 142 uses this phrase referencing Bean (1940), Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918, Volume II – The Western Front, Chapter XX, p.715, but the latter was referring to Jacka “climb[ing] up from the dugout occupied by his platoon and, after looking out into the dark for any sign of impending attack, returned to his men with the remark that things were ‘just the same.’” The comment only made sense if the men were in a dugout.
[xxvi] Rule, Ted (1933), p.136. This insight from Ted Rule may also explain Jacka’s reluctance to mention to reporters that he and his men were sheltering in a dugout.
[xxvii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 373.
[xxviii] The Argus, (21 October, 1919), p.6.
[xxix] Macklin, Robert (2006), opposite p.143.
[xxx] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 373.
[xxxi] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 378.
[xxxii] For example, The Argus, (31 December, 1923) “Collins Street Fire”, p. 8 describes the effects on “Jacka, Edmonds & Co., manufacturers’ agents portion of top floor and contents severely damaged by fire.”
[xxxiii] The Argus (23 March, 1926), p. 3 ran an advertisement for P.S. Walsh, builder, concerning its offer of “three 6 -r brick BUNGALOWS 21 Murchinson St, all latest American labour saving fittings.”
[xxxiv] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. XV. In addition to the confused timelines described in the body, the reason FitzSimons thinks that Ted Rule was “in the thick” of the trench raid led by Wanliss is likely due to Macklin’s (2006), pp.108-109 account. However, unlike Macklin, FitzSimons (2024), p. 111 recognises that the “streaks of fire curving through the air” described by Rule (1933) p.53 took place “the following night”.
[xxxv] Grant, I. (1989), p. 175.
[xxxvi] Macklin, Robert (2006), p. 261.
[xxxvii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 387.
[xxxviii] Victorian Repatriation Commission (17 December, 1931), Minute Paper, Subject JACKA Albert. V.C. M.C. & BAR. Capt. 14th Btn. R 91031 C37979, Dr. Silberberg. 16.12.31.
[xxxix] Minutes of the St Kilda Council, (8 February, 1932).
[xl] Repatriation Commission, R.G.H. Caulfield, “Advice of Admission as In-Patient Out-Patient”, R. No. 91031 C. No. 37979, dated 21/12/1931, shows “Admitted 18/12/1931”.
[xli] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 389.
[xlii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 396.
[xliii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 397.
[xliv] The Duckboard, (1, February, 1932), “The Passing of Capt. Jacka, V.C. M.C. and Bar”, Vol. 6, No. 2, p.5.
[xlv] The Argus (16 May, 1932), p. 8.
[xlvi] Grant, I. (1989), p.90.
[xlvii] Rule, Ted (1933), pp. 342-343.
[xlviii] Madden, Michael (2018), The Victoria Cross: Australia Remembers, Big Sky Publishing.
[xlix] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. XVI.
[l] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 54.
[li] Lawriwsky, Michael (2010), p.392.
[lii] Jacka, William (1977), audio interview held at the Korong Historical Society.
[liii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 378.
[liv] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.236.
[lv] Giffin, James (2004), p.32. John Wren found out that Dick Lean was a Mason soon after he started working for him, saying “I’m glad of that. You’ve got to be on one side or the other.”
[lvi] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 378.
[lvii] Lawriwsky, Michael (2010), p.404.
[lviii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 382.
[lix] Lawriwsky, Michael (2010), p.411.
[lx] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 382.
[lxi] Lawriwsky, M. (2010), pp. 309, 416-417.
[lxii] Author’s email correspondence (3 August, 2009) with Bernard McGrath, Manager Group Archives, National Australia Bank,
[lxiii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 338, and also p. 53.
[lxiv] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 384.
[lxv] Apart from the fact that the red flag was raised above the Footscray Town Hall a few weeks after William Jacka became mayor in 1940, in 1936 he wrote the Foreword to a pamphlet published by the communist front organisation, the “League for Peace and Democracy” titled “The Truth about Anzac”.
[lxvi] The Argus (29 August, 1921), p.8.
[lxvii] The Argus (30 September, 1925), p.24.
[lxviii] The Argus (4 April, 1925), p.35.
[lxix] Lawriwsky, Michael (2010), p.415.
[lxx] The Argus (10 April, 1931), p.8
[lxxi] Grant, Ian (1989), p.171.
[lxxii] Macklin, Robert (2006), p. 253.
[lxxiii] Lawriwsky, Michael (2010), p.296.
[lxxiv] Griffin, James (January-February, 2002), “Albert Jacka and the Choice of Achilles”, Quadrant, Vol. XLVI Number 1.
[lxxv] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 382.
[lxxvi] Rule, Ted (1933), p.345.
[lxxvii] The two other brothers who died relatively young were David Samuel Jacka (in 1942 aged 56) and Sidney Jacka (in 1950 aged 55).
[lxxviii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p.392.
[lxxix] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p.136.
[lxxx] Bean, C.E.W. (1941), First World War Official Histories – Volume II – The Story of ANZAC from 4 May, 1915, to the evacuation of the Gallipoli Peninsula (11th edition).
[lxxxi] Grant, Ian (1989), p. 82. However, Grant also notes the self-serving nature of Fuhrmann’s reports.
[lxxxii] Bean, C.E.W. (1941), p.658.
[lxxxiii] Macklin, Robert, (2006) p. 78.
[lxxxiv] Dare, Charles (1 August, 1932), “No gains: Many Casualties”, Reveille, p.58.
[lxxxv] “Jacka VC Musical” https://stagewhispers.com.au/news/jacka-vc
[lxxxvi] Macintyre, Stuart (1986), Oxford History of Australia, Volume 4, 1901-1942: the succeeding age.
[lxxxvii] In August 1964 Albert’s brother William Jacka replied to a short but ignorant article in Mufti with a blistering letter to the editor: “It is a horrible untruth to say he [Albert Jacka] hawked soap through the streets of Melbourne… In his own car he travelled various suburbs, calling on grocers seeking orders from his firm, just as other commercial travellers were doing. He did well in this position… He did not die penniless. At his death he owned a motor car, had equity in the house he was buying, and had a current life insurance policy.”
[lxxxviii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p.385.
[lxxxix] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.258.
[xc] The Argus (12 September, 1931), p.3.
[xci] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.244.
[xcii] Author’s email correspondence (1 May, 2009) with Betty Jacka.
[xciii] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p..
[xciv] The Argus (19 March, 1931).
[xcv] Lawriwsky, Michael (2010), photographs opposite p.228.
[xcvi] St Kilda News, (18 December, 1931), p.4.
[xcvii] The Herald (20 January, 1932).
[xcviii] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.267.
[xcix] Author’s email correspondence (3 April, 2009) with Betty Jacka.
[c] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.258.
[ci] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p. 389.
[cii] Author’s email correspondence (3 April, 2009) with Betty Jacka.
[ciii] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.258.
[civ] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p.400.
[cv] Author’s email correspondence (3 April, 2009) with Betty Jacka.
[cvi] FitzSimons, Peter (2024), p.399.
[cvii] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.269.
[cviii] Macklin, Robert (2006), p.269.
[cix] Robert Macklin (2006), noted on p. 267 that “Vera made no attempt to correct the record or to decline the extraordinary response [the Herald & Weekly Times campaign] engendered.” This appears to assume, as does FitzSimons, that Vera was already paired with her future husband Frank Duncan.
[cx] Wanliss, Newton (31 January, 1932), “Nation’s Diadem: The A.I.F.”, Reveille, p.5.
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