Selfless Liverpool lad Corporal John Edmondson was our first VC hero for World War II
LIVERPOOL lad Corporal John Edmondson died at Tobruk in Libya 75 years ago today, earning Australia’s first Victoria Cross awarded for service in World War II.
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“I SHALL never forget today,” Liverpool farmer’s wife Maude Edmondson wrote on April 14, 1941. “It started off so badly and the whole day has been a continuation ... to make it worse Stuffy the cat ... joined in, he came in and simply howled.”
Anxiety had plagued her since Palm Sunday, “another dreadful day. I seem to feel there is something going to happen”.
Maude and her husband Will received the telegram she dreaded on April 26, 1941. Army minister Percy Spender wrote: “It is with deep regret that I have to inform you that NX15705 Corporal John Hurst Edmondson was killed in action on the 14th April.”
Known as Jack, he was the couple’s only child, born at Wagga Wagga on October 8, 1914 and raised near Liverpool. He died at Tobruk in Libya, earning Australia’s first Victoria Cross awarded for service in World War II.
Commemorated by Liverpool’s John Edmondson VC Memorial RSL Club, Edmondson Park at Wattle Grove and John Edmondson High School at Horningsea Park, in 1962 Liverpool Council also voted to name “the rural district where he was raised” as Edmondson Park. The suburb lies between Glenfield and Austral, where Edmondson rode five miles to school “on his fat, white pony Bessie” before he enlisted at Paddington on May 20, 1940.
Hailed as the “Liverpool lad (who) lived up to finest traditions”, Edmondson was injured at Tobruk 75 years ago, overnight on April 13-14, 1941, in an attack on 30 German infantry who had set up six machineguns, mortars and small field pieces.
A champion rifle shooter, in March 1939 Edmondson joined the 4th Militia Battalion. Although plagued by asthma, he enlisted with the 2/17th Battalion, 7th Division, and was quickly promoted to corporal. After training at Ingleburn and Bathurst, his battalion embarked for the Middle East in October 1940 as reinforcements for the 9th Division.
From desert training, they relieved the 6th Australian Division at Marsa al-Brega in Cyrenaica (Libya) in March. German forces under General Erwin Rommel attacked Australian and British positions on March 31, 1941, forcing them to retreat. The 9th Division found themselves besieged in new positions outside the port of Tobruk on April 11.
Edmondson’s section was deployed on the outer perimeter of Tobruk defences, the first area attacked by Rommel’s Panzer Division in the Easter Battle of April 13.
In his first combat experience, the enemy attacked close to Edmondson’s post, R33, pushing through wire defences in an attempt to capture and hold a bridgehead for a tank assault. The German infantry detail set up machinegun and mortar posts within the Australian breached wire defences.
At 11.45pm, Lieutenant Fred Mackell led a bayonet attack in a flanking manoeuvre to repel German attackers. With him were section leader Edmondson, whose red hair earned him the name “Meggsy”, and five privates. Machinegun fire severely wounded Edmondson in his neck and stomach.
Hiding the severity of his wounds, Edmondson continued to rush forward, killing one German, then going to Mackell’s assistance.
“As Germans scattered, he chased them and killed at least two,” Mackell said. “I was in difficulties wrestling one German on the ground whilst another was coming straight for me with a pistol. I called out ‘Jack’ and from about 15 yards away Edmondson ran to help me and bayoneted both Germans ... and bayoneted at least one more. Edmondson saved my life.”
Carried back to his post, Edmondson died early on April 14. On July 1, 1941, the British War Office advised King George “has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the Victoria Cross” to No. 15705 Corporal John Hurst Edmondson, the first of 20 awarded to Australians in World War II.
His mother presented the VC to the Australian War Memorial in 1961, along with diaries recording her memories of Edmondson’s birth during a dusty drought that two years later drove them from their Wagga Wagga farm to Forest Home on Bringelly Rd, Liverpool.
As a student at Hurlstone Agricultural High School, which has a hall named in his honour, Edmondson became involved in showing cattle with the Liverpool Show Society.
“Jack and I had a wonderfully happy life together, from his tiny days to the day of his going away,” Maude wrote, recalling their weekly walks around the farm, admiring views “over sloping paddocks to the Blue Mountains”.
“I have always been proud of him,” she wrote of Edmondson’s VC. “In a way this great honour seems futile. I would rather have my son.”
Originally published as Selfless Liverpool lad Corporal John Edmondson was our first VC hero for World War II