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Lieutenant Arthur Seaforth Blackburn

Unit: 10th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Division
Action: 23 July 1916, Pozieres, France
A few hours after the action which resulted in Private Leak receiving a VC, the 23-year-old Blackburn led 50 men in a push to drive the men out of the same trench. The citation says: "By dogged determination he essentially captured their (250m) trench after personally leading four separate parties of bombers against it... Then after crawling with a sergeant to reconnoitre, he returned, attacked, and seized another 120 yards of trench.'' Blackburn's platoon Sergeant Robert Inwood was killed in the action. Inwood's brother, Corporal Reginald Inwood, was awarded the VC in 1917.

Biography: Aside from his VC, Blackburn made a notable achievement. On April 25 1915, he and Private Phil Robing penetrated 1800m inland at Anzac Cove, the furthest point the Australians reached at Gallipoli. Blackburn was born in Adelaide on 25 November 1892, graduated in law and was called to the bar in 1913 but enlisted in the AIF in August 1914. He was evacuated a few months after the action in Pozieres and was discharged in 1917, returning to the law. He served in the South Australian Parliament as a National Party member from 1918 to 1921 and was a founding member of the RSL in that state. He joined the militia in 1925 and led the 2/3rd Machine-gun Battalion in the Syria campaign in 1941.

The following year he was promoted to temporary brigadier and commanded Blackforce, which surrendered under Dutch orders. Blackburn spent the rest of the war in POW camps in Singapore, Japan, Korea and Manchuria. After the war he worked for the RSL. He died in 1960, survived by his wife and four children.