In a way this great honour seems futile.
I would rather have my son.
Like thousands of her countrymen and women, the well-known Australian poet Dame Mary Gilmore was affected by Corporal John (Jack) Edmondson's brave actions and tragic death at Tobruk. Although her verse praises the young soldier's gallantry, her words highlight the loss suffered by his family, and particularly the anguish of his mother.
Jack and his mother appear to have had a particularly close relationship and, according to newspaper reports at the time, she educated him at home for the first years of his school life. Before he left for overseas she had promised Jack that she would keep 'notes' of her day-to-day home life while he was away and he was to do the same.
Mrs Edmondson's diary
A copy of Mrs Edmondson's diary is in the Australian War Memorial together with a large scrapbook filled with Jack's childhood photographs and the many newspaper accounts of her son's death at Tobruk on the night of 13-14 April 1941.
In her diary she not only kept detailed accounts of her day-to-day activities but she also noted details of the radio and newspaper reports of the battles being fought by Jack's division, the 9th Division, in North Africa.
Mrs Edmondson's earlier entries during the first months of 1941 finish with the news of her son's death and the entries after 26 April are sparse.
April 26th 1941
Received notice Jack killed in action 14th April 1941.July 4th 1941
Notice of award posthumously of Victoria Cross.4th Sept 1941
Notice from DRO. Interred 15th April 1941 Tobruk war Cemetery. Grave No 108.
- since altered to 111 –September 27th 1941
Investiture Ceremony by Lord Gowrie at Admiralty House18th Dec 1941
Hurlstone Memorial unveiling photograph etc.25th October 1941
Royal Horse Show. Granville. Silver memorial cup to be annual.Nov 16th 1941
War Veterans' Home Narrabeen unveiling enlarged photograph etc.Dec 21st 1941
Requiem Eucharist and unveiling memorial tablet. St Johns Church Wagga Archdeacon ..the ceremony and unveiling of tablet by W M Curry VC.June 27th 1942
Hurlstone Memorial plaque of bronze. Unveiling ceremony etc.
Jack's mother didn't mention all the other requests she received. People everywhere wished to commemorate her son's actions. She was asked to give her permission for numerous streets around Australia to be named after her son and he was to be commemorated by a new clock tower in Liverpool, New South Wales.
Jack Edmondson's heroism was widely acclaimed. Newspapers around Australia featured articles and stories of his bravery together with accounts of the battle in which he was injured. Officers and men from his unit, the 2/17th Battalion, wrote to his parents praising John. Many of the letters are in the collection at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. There are also numerous press accounts and photographs of his parents attending his posthumous investiture at Government House, Sydney, and other services to commemorate their son.
Pasted on one page of the scrapbook, among the newspaper reports applauding her son's heroism, is a small cutting in which his mother is quoted:
Of course I am proud of him. I have always been proud of him. In a way this great honour seems futile. I would rather have my son.
[An uncited report of an interview with Mrs Edmondson: press cutting, Edmondson scrapbook, PR 86/56 AWM]
Mrs Edmondson's poem
Edmondson VC
By Dame Mary Gilmore
Let the kings pass, and shallow pomp retreat,
This is the day of men greater than kings!
For them the drums of time shall ever beat,
And at their tomb death stands with fallen wings.
They shall not know decay, for down the years
The bugles shall declare their full renown;
Though in the eyes of grief may brim the tears,
Above grief stands a pride tears cannot drown.
And this Australia's son! The desert watched
Him thrusting through the flames of war, as, there,
From out the very jaws of death, he snatched
A comrade from the foe he might not spare.
Twice was he wounded — yet, when asked for aid,
Swift as the eagles of his native land
He swung, and fighting there, and unafraid,
He flung defeat upon the blood-stained sand.
[But sometimes walking in the night,
His mother will remember only
The little lad she nurses; and then
How empty all the house, how lonely!]
Hail and farewell O gallant young VC —
The Anzac echoes answer bound to bound!
Then, for all loved and lost, O memory,
Let your reveille never cease to sound.
[All night he lay waiting the end maybe
Remembering Parramatta oaks,
Where as a boy he played, or heard the sea
Of Sydney beat with silken strokes.
Maybe he thought of home, dreaming he saw
His mother stand beside the door,
Watching his father rake the windlestraw —
And then he saw no more.]