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Corporal Alexander Stewart Burton

Unit: 7th Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Division
Action: 9 August 1915, Lone Pine trenches, Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey
When Lieutenant Symons left Goldenstedt's Post to recapture Jacob's Trench, Captain Frederick Harold Tubb, 33, was put in charge of the post, and ordered to defend it with a group of men including two corporals from the 7th Battalion, Alexander Burton, 22, and William Dunstan, 20.
This is the only occasion when three Australians, fighting side-by-side, all were awarded the Victoria Cross. Burton, who died in the action, was the first Australian soldier to receive the award posthumously.

Australia's official war historian C.E.W. Bean describes the action: ``Tubb had at that position 10 men, eight of whom were on the parapet, while two corporals, Webb and Wright, were told to remain on the floor of the trench in order to catch and throw back the enemy's bombs, or else to smother their explosion by throwing over them Turkish overcoats which were lying about the trenches.

"A few of the enemy, shouting `Allah!', had in the first rush scrambled into the Australian trench, but had been shot or bayoneted.''

"Tubb and his men now fired at them over the parapet, shooting all who came up Goldenstendt's Trench or who attempted to creep over the open ...

"But one by one the men who were catching bombs were mutilated. Wright clutched at one which burst in his face and killed him. Webb, an orphan from Essendon, continued to catch them, but presently both his hands were blown away and, after walking out of the Pine, he died at Brown's Dip.

"At one moment several bombs burst simultaneously in Tubb's recess. Four men in it were killed or wounded; a fifth was blown down and his rifle shattered. Tubb, bleeding from bomb wounds in arm and scalp, continued to fight, supported in the end only by a Ballarat recruit, Corporal Dunstan, and a personal friend of his own, Corporal Burton of Euroa.

"At this stage there occurred at the barricade a violent explosion, which threw back the defenders and tumbled down the sandbags ... Dunstan and Burton were helping to rebuild the barrier when a bomb went off between them, killing Burton and temporarily blinding his comrade. Tubb obtained further men from the next post, Tubb's Corner; but the enemy's attack weakened ...''

Biography: Burton was born at Kyneton, Victoria on 20 January 1893. After going to school locally, he worked at the family store at Euroa, joined the Euroa Presbyterian Church choir and the town band.

He enlisted on 18 August, 1914 and with an army number of 348, was among the first to sign up. One account says he was injured in the April 25 landing at Gallipoli, another says he was ill with a throat infection and had to watch the Gallipoli landing from a hospital ship.

He rejoined his unit on 18 May, volunteered to take part in tunnel digging in the face of the enemy
in July and was promoted to corporal shortly before his death.

His body was never recovered. For many years, his VC was kept in a drawer in a desk at the family store but is now on display at the Australian War Memorial.