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Private William Matthew Currey

Unit: 53rd Battalion, 14th Brigade, 5th Division
Action: 1 September 1918, near Peronne, France

The 22-year-old Currey was in a battalion that was suffering heavy losses, pinned down by fire from a 77mm field gun. The citation says: ``Private Currey, without hesitation, rushed forward under intense machine-gun fire and succeeded in capturing the gun single handed after killing the entire crew. Later, when the advance of the left flank was checked by an enemy strong point, Private Currey crept around the flank and engaged the post with a Lewis gun.'' At 3am the next day, he volunteered to stand up in no-man's landing and call out to a company that had become isolated, and was gassed in doing so.

Biography: Currey almost never made it to war. He twice attempted to enlist without his parent's permission, giving a false age, and was rejected. When he did get his parent's permission, the army rejected him on medical grounds and he had to undergo surgery for varicoceles -- swollen veins in the testicles -- before he was admitted to the service on 9 October, 1916. His unit sailed out of Sydney in November 1916. After the war, he worked as a NSW railways storeman and became active in the Labor Party, successfully standing for the seat of Kogarah in 1941. He was twice re-elected, and lobbied in parliament on behalf of ex-servicemen.

He served with the militia in the early 1930s and served at a German internment camp in World War II. He collapsed in Parliament House on 27 April 1948 and died three days later aged 52 of coronary vascular disease. He was survived by his wife and two daughters. His ashes are interred at Woronora Cemetery and he is commemorated with a plaque at the Garden of Remembrance, Rookwood Cemetery.