Victory Medal : Captain J P Lalor, 12 Battalion, AIF Accession Number: REL/03310

Description

Victory Medal. Impressed edge with recipient's details.

Contextual Description

Joseph Peter 'Joe' Lalor was born at Richmond Victoria on 12 August 1884. He was educated at Xavier College in Kew before leaving Australia circa 1900 and enlisting in the Royal Navy. Tiring of life on the sea he deserted and joined the French Foreign Legion before returning to Australia in 1907. He served in cadet and militia units prior to a commission as a lieutenant into the Australian permanent forces in 1910. In 1912 he was made temporary captain.

Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, his rank of captain was confirmed and he was posted as a company commander with 12th Battalion, AIF. He embarked with the battalion at Fremantle, Western Australia on 2 November 1914. The battalion landed on Gallipoli at around 4.30 am on 25 April 1915 as a reserve unit for the 3rd Brigade. Lalor, with about half his company, the others lost in the confusion of the landing, pushed inland. When he reached Russell's Top near the narrow leading on to The Nek he found that the battalion's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Lancelot Fox Clarke, had been killed. Lalor assumed command, and ordered the men to dig in and await further orders. 'The instincts of this fiery little officer', wrote Charles Bean, Australia's First World War official historian, 'were all for pushing ahead, and it was only his keen sense of the importance of the place, and the duty of the reserve battalion, that kept him there for a minute.'

Beyond Lalor's position rose Baby 700, a dominating feature heavily defended by the Turks. By 10 am the brigade's commander, Colonel Ewen Sinclair-MacLagan, recognised Baby 700 as crucial to the consolidation of the Australians' and New Zealanders' tenuous hold on the peninsula and ordered all available reserves into its capture.

For hours the fight for Baby 700 raged while Lalor, frustrated, kept to his word and remained to maintain the hold on The Nek and prevent any enemy from coming up behind the forces fighting on the hill. 'He was by nature', wrote Bean, 'the last officer in the force to sit still and do nothing in so critical a fight.'

Finally, at around 3.00 pm, Lalor moved across Malone's Gully, to the seaward spur of Baby 700 where he joined up with a party of 2nd Battalion led by Captain Leslie James Morshead. Lalor's and Morshead's parties formed up and as Lalor stood to order the men forward he was killed by a Turkish bullet. By 4.30 pm the attack was lost and the Australian and New Zealanders retired. Despite further attempts over the period of the Gallipoli campaign to take the hill, Baby 700 was never again threatened.

Following the war, the remains of the Australians and New Zealanders were buried in the Baby 700 Cemetery. Though unidentified, Lalor's remains are believed to be buried in the cemetery. He was survived by his wife Hestor and one child, Peter Bernard Lalor. Peter was killed during the Second World War serving with the 4th Parachute Brigade, King's Royal Rifle Corps.

Lalor's grandfather, Peter Lalor, led the miners' revolt at the Eureka Stockade in 1854. Contrary to popular belief, it is highly unlikely that the sword that Joseph took with him Gallipoli was connected to his grandfather or the Eureka Stockade.