The following officers and men won the Victoria Cross during the May, June, and July fighting.
Lance-Corporal Albert Jacka, 14th Battalion Australian Imperial forces.
A private of Lance-Corporal Jacka's regiment thus describes the deed which won his chum the V.C.: "There were four Bendigo boys, all mates, in the 14th, and Bert Jacka and I were two of them. The 14th was stationed at Courtney's Post, which shared with Quinn's Post[49] and Pope's Hill all the worst of the fighting during the month of May. On the night of 18th May and the morning of the next day the Turks tried to drive us into the sea, and left eight acres of dead between Quinn's and Courtney's. In the middle of the scrap a wounded man crawled to our trench, and said the Turks had rushed a communication trench, and there was only one man keeping them back. There was a call for volunteers, and I was one of them. When we got near we saw Bert guarding the end of the trench with his bayonet. He looked like a mad thing. When he saw us coming, he let out a roar like a bull and rushed into the trench. I made after him, but I received two bullets, one in the side and the other in the hand. Well, down I went, and before the others got into the trench Bert had done it on his own. Five shot and two killed with the bayonet! He came to see me that night in the dug-out, and I said to him, 'Well, Bert, you've done a big thing;' all he replied was, 'I think I lost my head.'" For this most gallant deed Jacka received not only the coveted cross, but a sum of £500 and a gold medal promised by Mr. John Wren of Melbourne to the first Australian who should win the great distinction.
Second Lieutenant George Dallas Moor, 3rd Battalion Hampshire Regiment.
This young officer was not nineteen when by his splendid bravery and presence of mind he saved a dangerous situation. On 5th June a detachment of a battalion on his left which had lost all its officers was rapidly retiring before a heavy Turkish attack. Second Lieutenant Moor grasped the peril in which the rest of the line was thus placed, and, racing back for some two hundred yards, he stemmed the rout, led back the leaderless, and at their head recaptured the lost trench. In September 1914 he was a schoolboy at Cheltenham; nine months later he had proved himself a born leader of men, and had won the proudest badge of honour that a soldier can wear.
Second Lieutenant Herbert James, 4th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment.
Two fine deeds of outstanding valour stand to the credit of Lieutenant James. On 28th June he rallied a retiring party belonging to a neighbouring unit and led it forward under heavy shell and rifle fire. He then returned, gathered together another party, and once more advanced, thus putting new life into the attack. On 3rd July he headed a party of bomb throwers who pushed up a Turkish communication trench, and after nearly all of his comrades had been killed or wounded, remained alone at the head of the trench, exposed to a murderous fire, but beating back the enemy single-handed till a barrier had been built behind him and the trench secured. Lieutenant James was a Birmingham man, who enlisted in the 21st Lancers in 1908. He was of a studious disposition and had won several prizes for languages. On the outbreak of war he was granted a commission and joined the famous Worcestershires.
Captain Gerald O'Sullivan, 1st Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
This gallant Irishman threw himself into the breach to the south-west of Krithia during a critical moment on the night of the 1st-2nd July. He volunteered to lead a party of bomb throwers against a British trench which the Turks had captured. Advancing in the open under very heavy fire, he climbed on to the parapet and hurled his bombs into the crowd of men below. Of course, he was wounded, but not before his example had inspired his men to such efforts that they recaptured the lost trench. Strange to say, the day after his honour was announced he was reported missing.