File:Sergeant John James Dwyer (6282481021).jpg

Sgt Dwyer (left) outside Buckingham Palace, London on the day of his investiture with the Victoria Cross. Sgt Dwyer was awarded the Victoria Cross, aged 29, during the Third Battle of Ypres for the following action:

"On 26 September 1917 at Zonnebeke, Belgium, Sergeant Dwyer, in charge of a Vickers machine gun during an advance, rushed his gun forward to within 30 yards of an enemy machine gun, fired point blank at it and killed the crew.

He then seized the gun and carried it back across shell-swept ground to the Australian front line. On the following day, when the position was being heavily shelled, and his Vickers gun was blown up, he took his team through the enemy barrage and fetched a reserve gun which he put into use in the shortest possible time."

Sgt Dwyer was born in 1890 at Port Cygnet, Tasmania and volunteered for military service on outbreak of war in 1914.

He served with 15th Battalion at Gallipoli in 1915 before transferring to the Machine Gun Company and serving on Western Front. Sgt Dwyer ended the war as a commissioned officer, returning to Tasmania, Australia in 1918 where he opened a sawmill.

He went on develop a career in politics, being elected to the Tasmanian Assembly in 1931, serving as Speaker in the Tasmanian Parliament from 1942 to 1948 and then as Minister of Agriculture and Deputy Prime Minister in the Government of Tasmania from 1948 until his death in 1962.

Faces of the First World War

Find out more about this First World War Centenary project at www.1914.org/faces.

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