Sunday, 3rd October 2004 is the eighty sixth anniversary of the action on 3rd October 1918 at Beaurevoir on the Hindenburg Line for which Lieutenant Joseph 'Joe' Maxwell VC MC and Bar, DCM of the AIF's 18th Infantry Battalion was recommended for, and received, the Victoria Cross.
The following extract of events comes from CEW Bean's Volume VI of 'The Official History of Australia in the war of 1914-1918':
"There was not much time to warn the 18th (Battalion) of the bombardment, and a remarkable incident occurred. Lieut Joe Maxwell of the 18th this day commanded one of the companies that had seized part of the Beaurevoir Line and tried from the south to bomb out the enemy. He had taken some prisoners, and one, a sergeant-major who spoke English, told him that the Germans in the next post were anxious to be captured but afraid to give themselves up.
Accordingly, with two men, Maxwell went over to them, only to find himself surrounded by about twenty men under an officer who at once closed round the Australians and seized the weapons from their hands.
Presently the first shells of the new bombardment fell in the trench.
Maxwell carried hidden in his respirator a revolver. In the confusion he drew it, shot two of the enemy, and escaped.
His leadership throughout this fight, as in many others, was outstanding; it won him the Victoria Cross."
You may be interested to know that in time for ANZAC Day 2000 the Sandgate Cemetery Trust, near Newcastle, erected a memorial wall bearing the names of ex-service personnel buried in the cemetery as well as those killed overseas whose names are recorded on family headstones.
The wall was named the ‘Currey-Jeffries VC Memorial Wall’ in memory of the ‘two local’ First World War winners of the Victoria Cross, Private William Matthew Currey and Captain Clarence Smith Jeffries who were both born at Wallsend and attended Dudley Public School.
Where as Jeffries became a mine surveyor at the Abermain Collieries and remained in the Hunter, Currey left at a very early age to live in Leichardt, Sydney from where he enlisted in the AIF on 9/10/16.
No mention was made of the other ‘local’ Victoria Cross winner, Lieutenant Joseph Maxwell VC, MC and Bar, DCM in the naming of the wall.
Joseph Maxwell was a 19 year old apprentice boilermaker at the J. and A. Brown Hexham workshops and residing at 5 Nicholson Street, West Maitland when he enlisted on 6/2/15, afterwards seeing action on the Gallipoli Peninsula as well as in France and Belgium.
And this interesting snippet taken from an Australian newspaper dated Wednesday, 11 June 1919 and headed 'More Troops Arrive - Enthusiastic Reception' which makes mention that when he returned home to Australia and was asked about the action for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross, Joe Maxwell replied: "I don't know why they gave it to me."
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Topic: Anniversary of Lieut Joe Maxwell's VC action (Read 332 times)