Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Captain Thomas Jack, MC, was posted as missing, at Proyart, France 12 August 1918. He has no known grave and remembered on the panels of the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux.
Captain Jack was the officer commanding C Company, 42nd Battalion AIF. On the morning of 12 Aug 1918 the 42nd Battalion had been ordered to advance their line to a position about 1000 yards due north of Proyart. This action is described in the “Spirit of the Forty-Second” by Vivian Brahams, as “The Daylight Stunt”. A “stunt” at that time was the term used by the troops for an attack, and the fact that it was carried out in daylight was significant as most actions used the cover of darkness of the early morning. It was significant in that the attack did not have artillery support. A platoon from C Coy had gone forward and within two minutes the platoon commander and most of the NCOs had been wounded. Capt Jack made arrangements for the remainder of the company to advance. They reached the objective which was simply a line, with much difficulty. At about 4pm, Capt Jack was taking cover in a shell hole with his runner, Lance Corporal Daley. In this shell hole, Jack received multiple gunshot wounds to the chest from a MG, but he did not die immediately. LCPL Daley, also wounded, cared for him briefly before himself being shot again and killed. Jack was seen alive waiting for a stretcher party to rescue him. A party did go out, but one of the party was killed before they found Capt Jack.

The enemy retook the position later that evening, before themselves withdrawing again under the pressure of an attack by a battalion of the Sherwood Forresters. It’s not clear whether the Germans evacuated him as wounded or buried him. A soldier of the Sherwood Forresters was reported to have said that he saw a sign “English buried here” where Jack and Daly were shot but that wasn’t substantiated.

Thomas Jack was from Brisbane and had attended New Farm State School and Brisbane Grammar School. At the time of enlistment into the AIF in June 1915, he was a dental student at the University of Queensland and was a Sergeant in the Citizens Military Forces. At the time of his death he was 23 years old. His father, James Jack, wrote of him, “A brilliant scholar, fine athlete, and of loveable disposition. Passed all examinations at school, in his profession as a dentist, and in the military, top of list”.

Thomas Jack’s body was never recovered, and after significant research by the Red Cross who interviewed many soldiers form the 42nd Battalion, a military Court of Inquiry on 6 March 1919, declared that he had been killed in action on 12 August 1918. The National Archives of Australia holds a digitised record of over 100 pages of his service record and communication between his father and the military authorities in the years following the War. Some of the letters concerned getting a death certificate so that the Australian Mutual Providential Society could execute his life assurance policy. Also, his parents were keen to get the medal of his Military Cross that he won for bravery in August 1917 as part of the process of returning his belongings to them in Brisbane. In 1924 his father was still writing to the authorities regarding the location of a memorial to honour those who have no known grave, as he and his wife were planning to travel to France to visit the place where their son fell and in lieu of his grave, the place where he was to be honoured. In early 1925 they received a reply that he would be honoured on the Memorial at Villers Bretonneux, but at that stage it had not been built. It is not clear whether his parents ever made to journey to France to honour their son.