Join Australia’s best selling non-fiction author, Peter FitzSimons, as he discusses one of Australia’s greatest war heroes, Albert Jacka.
The Legend of Albert Jacka – from the shores of Gallipoli to the battlefields of France, the epic story and fierce battles of the first Australian solider to be awarded the Victoria Cross in World War 1.
Local booksellers, Umina Beach Book Nook will be there on the day to sell copies of a range of Peter’s books and there will be time for signing at the end of the event.
About the Author
Peter FitzSimons AM is Australia’s bestselling non-fiction writer, and for the past 35 years has also been a journalist and columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun Herald.
He is the author of a number of highly successful books, including Breaker Morant, Burke and Wills, Monash’s Masterpiece, Kokoda, Ned Kelly and Gallipoli, as well as biographies of such notable Australians as Sir Douglas Mawson, Nancy Wake and Nick Farr-Jones. His passion is to tell Australian stories, our own stories: of great men and women, of stirring events in our history.
Peter grew up on a farm north of Sydney, went to boarding school in Sydney and attended Sydney University. An ex-Wallaby, he also lived for several years in rural France and Italy, playing rugby for regional clubs. He and his wife Lisa Wilkinson AM – journalist, magazine editor and television presenter – have three children; they live in Sydney.
About the Book
Our heroes can come from the most ordinary of places. As a shy young lad growing up on a dairy farm in Victoria, no one in the district had any idea the man Albert Jacka would become…
Albert ‘Bert’ Jacka was 21 when Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914. A month and a half later, Bert enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and the young private was assigned to 14 Battalion D company. By the time they shipped out to Egypt he’d been made a Lance-Corporal.
On 26 April 1915, 14 Battalion landed at Gallipoli under the command of Brigadier-General Monash’s 4th Infantry Brigade. And it was here, in the early hours of 20 May, that Lance-Corporal Albert Jacka proved he was ‘the bravest of the brave’. The Turks were gaining ground with a full-scale frontal attack. As his comrades lay dead or dying around him, Jacka single-handedly held off the enemy onslaught. The Turks retreated.
Word spread of Jacka’s lone efforts to recapture the trench and his extraordinary efforts saw him awarded the Victoria Cross, the first for a soldier in World War I. He was a national hero, but Jacka’s wartime exploits had only just begun. Moving on to France he battled the Germans at Pozieres, earning a Military Cross for what historian Charles Bean called ‘the most dramatic and effective act of individual audacity in the history of the AIF’. Then at Bullecourt, his efforts would again turn the tide against the enemy. There would be more accolades before a sniper’s bullet and then gassing at Villers-Bretonneux would send Bert home.
An unforgettable story of bravery and sacrifice, FitzSimons brings the memory of the first Australian soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross in WW1 back to life.
