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Private Henry "Harry'' Dalziel

Unit: 15th Battalion, 4th Brigade, 4th Division
Action: 4 July 1918, Hamel Wood, France
Dalziel, a 25-year-old Queenslander, was presented with the second of two VCs awarded at the battle of Hamel. The citation says: ``His company met with determined resistance from a strong point which was strongly garrisoned, manned by numerous machine-guns, and undamaged by our artillery fire, was also protected by strong wire entanglements. A heavy concentration of machine-gun fire caused many casualties, and held up our advance.

"His Lewis gun having come into action and silenced enemy guns in one direction, an enemy gun opened fire from another direction. Private Dalziel dashed at it, and with his revolver killed and captured the entire crew and gun, and allowed our advance to continue.

"He was severely wounded in the hand, but carried on and took part in the capture of the final objective. He twice went over open ground under heavy enemy artillery and machine-gun fire to secure ammunition, though suffering from considerable loss of blood. He filled magazines and served his gun until severely wounded through the head.''
Biography: Before the war, Dalziel was a fireman with Queensland Railways on the Cairns-Atherton route.

After the war, he travelled the Queensland coast by train, receiving a hero's welcome at every station from Townsville to Atherton. Born in Irvinebank on 18 February 1893, Dalziel joined the AIF in January 1915 and shipped out from Brisbane about a week before the Anzacs landed at Gallipoli.

He joined the 15th Battalion at Gallipoli in July, and served in France and Belgium, being wounded at Polygon Wood in October 1917. He resumed duty just a month before his VC action, in which his skull was smashed by a sniper's bullet and his brain exposed in an injury so severe doctors expected him not to last an hour.

After treatment in Britain, he was shipped home to Australia in January 1919, having received 32 bullet wounds during the war.

He married in 1920 and took up a soldier settlement block, but left his wife to run the farm while he worked in a Sydney factory and then mined for gold at Bathurst.

He became a published songwriter and artist. He died on July 24, 1965 at Repatriation General Hospital, Greenslopes, and was cremated with military honours.