Saturday marks 100 years since death of westmeath vc maurice deaseprint

This Saturday, August 23 marks the 100th anniversary of the death in battle of Westmeath's most famous Victoria Cross recipient.

On August 23, 1914, Westmeath-born army officer Maurice Dease – of Turbotstown House, Coole – became one of the first of the commissioned ranks in the British Army to die in World War I.

The manner of his death earned him a posthumous Victoria Cross, and not only this, but it also flashed an early signal to Europe and the world of the tremendous waste of youth which lay ahead during a war which, it was said – even as Dease died – would be ‘over by Christmas’.

Lieutenant Dease was a company-level officer attached to 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, part of the first wave of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to land in Europe.

In the BEF’s first engagement of the war, the British and the Germans clashed at Mons, Belgium on August 23/24. Lt Dease was in the thick of the action, as the British succeeded in delaying – but not stopping – a German thrust into France.

On August 23, Dease’s company found itself under heavy fire defending a bridge immediately north of Mons. His Victoria Cross citation gave an account of what happened:

“Nimy Bridge was being defended by a single company of Royal Fusiliers and a machine gun section with Lieutenant Dease in command.

“The gunfire was intense, and the casualties were heavy, but the Lieutenant went on firing in spite of his wounds, until he was hit for the fifth time and was carried away to a place of safety, where he died.

“A private (S F Godley) of the same Battalion, who had been assisting the Lieutenant while he was still able to operate the guns, took over, and alone he used the gun to such a good effect that he covered the retreat of his comrades.”

As a result, 24 year old Dease, followed immediately by Private Sydney Godley, became the first British soldier to be awarded the VC, albeit posthumously.

He was laid to rest at St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Belgium, and is remembered in a plaque on Nimy Bridge and in Westminster Cathedral.

Dease’s name is on the Wayside Cross in Woodchester, Stroud, Gloucestershire, and his Victoria Cross is displayed at the Royal Fusiliers Museum in the Tower of London.

Dease's story, and that of Godley, is the subject of a new book entitled The First VCs by Mark Ryan (£18.99, www.thehistorypress.co.uk).