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Lance-Corporal Bernard Sidney Gordon

Unit: 41st Battalion, 11th Brigade, 3rd Division
Action: 27 August 1918, Fargny Wood, east of Bray, France

The men of the 41st Battalion, including the 27-year-old Gordon, launched a dawn attack and then spent the day wedged between the River Somme and the German forces. The citation says: ``Single handed, he attacked an enemy machine-gun which was enfilading the company on his right, killed the man on the gun, and capturing the post, which contained one officer and 10 men. He then cleared up a trench, capturing 29 prisoners and two machine-guns. In clearing up further trenches he captured 22 prisoners, including one officer, and three machine-guns.

Practically unaided, he captured, in the course of these operations, two officers and 61 other ranks, together with six machine-guns, and displayed throughout a wonderful example of fearless initiative.''

Biography: Gordon's military record shows he was a great soldier although never far from trouble. He was born on 16 August 1891 in Launceston, Tasmania and worked as a cooper's machinist before enlisting in the AIF in September 1915. He was wounded in Belgium in October 1917. A few weeks before his VC action he single-handedly attacked a machine-gun crew and stalked and killed a sniper. His actions on that day earned him a Military Medal. Four days after the VC action, he was wounded at Mont St Quentin.

But his military record reveals another side to his character. In 1916, he managed to be absent without leave for two days while still on the ship from Australia to England. Before he was sent to France, he spent 47 days in hospital as a result of his actions while on leave. During three months of 1917, he was four times found guilty of being absent without leave and fined about two months pay. He was also found guilty of urinating on the parade ground, a feat which cost him a further three days pay. After the war, he worked as a grocer at Clayfield in Brisbane before moving to a dairy farm near Beaudesert. He had married in Launceston in 1915 while on leave and remarried in Brisbane in 1938 after his first wife died. He served with the Queensland 31st Battalion in World War II. He died in Torquay, Queensland, on 19 October 1963.