Maurice Gerald “Gerry” Hevey, one of the last surviving members of Jacka’s Mob – the 14th Battalion, Ist A.I.F. and pioneer archer passed away in Ivanhoe, Victoria on Tuesday 21 June 1994. He was aged 95 years.
As a young man Gerry had been very keen to join the fight. “I, like many others, went to the station to see the Adelaide Express, this night and saw the first lot of wounded from the war. It was awful. They were back from Gallipoli, many of the chaps I was at school with.” He wrote in a short history many years later. He attempted to enlist in 1915, but his boss refused to let him go.
“After he found out I had enlisted, he dragged me down to the enlisting office and tore blazes out of me and ended up having my enlistment annulled all together,” he said in an interview approaching Anzac Day in 1994.
“A year later I went back and enlisted. I went and told him what I had done and he called me a lot of funny names.”
“I guess I’m just a pig-headed old coote.”
Gerry was born in Maryborough in 1898 to William Hevey and Susannah Hevey (nee Palmer). As a boy he served in the boys’ militia and began his working life in Ararat.
Following his first attempt to enlist, his employee’s business burnt down and together with his Boss, Gerry and his family moved to Melbourne. Among many homes he built was the first house in Rockbear Grove, Ivanhoe. “I had to get the train from home in Elsternwick and get out there by the steam train. The war was getting worse each day”
With his parent’s consent nineteen year old Gerry did enlist in 1917 with a three years carpentry apprenticeship under his belt (but which he was indentured for eight years as a carpenter and joiner).
He became part of the 3rd reinforcements of the 14th Battalion. The Battalion had already fought at Gallipoli during which Albert Jacka served and subsequently received the first Victoria Cross (and for whom a street is named in the VC estate near Mcleod Railway Station). The Battalion became known as “Jacka’s Mob”.
After brief training at Broadmeadows he embarked for Egypt, leaving Melbourne on the 17th November 1917 aboard the HMAT Nestor A71 – and then Taranto, Italy. Many years later he told genealogist Neal Butterworth that they headed up the leg of Italy by electric train, the first one they had ever seen, fighting the Austrians. “Thank God the little mountain goats rallied and we were then sent to France. Egypt’s heat, Italy’s rain and snow then France’s winter- the worst ever experience by the frogs. There was a scare of meningitis and a number of us were classed as carriers and put in a camp guarded by troops with fixed bayonets and ball ammo”. He was in quarantine with friend Charlie Bell from Fairfield who was later killed in action.
He was soon released from quarantine and was for a time at the Codford Training Camp on the Salisbury Plains, then sent to the front line. “At Villers Bretonneux the unit had some fun. After we pushed the Germans out we got into a factory. It turned out to be a silk factory. The boys were throwing their uniform away and wearing the silk. They had silk pants on, silk socks. There was a lot of happiness as well as misery. “
Gerry’s battalion was involved in the attack at Hindenburg.
While in the trenches he thought as the enemy was only forty to fifty yards away he would attempt something not described in the training manuals. He attached a Mills Bomb to one of his arrows and shot it towards the enemy. Unfortunately it only just cleared the parapet of his trench and blew the top out. His Sergeant Dinny Curry said “to hell with your idea Hevey, use your **** arms like the rest of us.
“At times, we would lie in trenches weeks on end. But one day, I was standing on top of the trench when a shell landed in it. All I remember, after it blew, was checking myself for injuries.
“I had wounds and I was bleeding like a stuck pig. I scrambled for the first aid kits.
“I looked around and out of the six of us in the trench, I was the only one alive, the other five were killed.
“Eventually I made my way out of there and ended up in a hospital in the south of France.
“It took doctors 69 years to figure out that the pains in my neck I was having were being caused by small pieces of shrapnel in my neck.”
His “tangle with some of the Fritz ironmongery” resulted in a gun- shot wound to the hand which necessitated a post to “Blighty” and hospitalisation in Birmingham. “There was myself, another digger and two pommies. The matron looked at the three of them and the two of us, and she said: “Two bushrangers and three gentlemen! And she meant it too! She kept us just as though we were bushrangers.”
During this period Gerry constructed another bow, this one capable of sending rifle grenades 60 yards into enemy lines.
Gerry arrived home safe with memories and stories that he would recount later in life and others would record. He discovered many years later that he also had a piece of shrapnel imbedded in his chest to remind him of his war service.
Stepping of the ship at Port Melbourne pier he was met by “a number of Anzac House blokes .. with applications for membership. This we did and I am proud that I have been a member ever since”. He was a member at various sub branches including Ivanhoe. “We used to use the top of the corner shop, now a hairdresser, Farrow was President there… “ After further stints in country Victoria he permanently settled in Ivanhoe.
As a young boy in country Victoria Gerry taught himself archery by taking a paling off the fence and making his own arrows. He used two inch nails attached as piles (arrow tips) and feathers of a goose were used for fletching. The bow was devised from the rib of an umbrella. He would go rabbit shooting, often bringing home the family dinner. He also saved the family’s chickens from a marauding hawk on a number of occasions. He became a skilled and keen archer.
After his discharge in early 1919 Gerry formed the first archery club in the RSL – the Ballarat Returned Servicemen Archery Club.
His carpentry company got the job of putting in the first shop faces in Canberra. “There wasn’t much there in those days” – he told genealogist Neal Butterworth.
In 1939, Gerry signed up again.
“I was in the 22nd Battalion, but because of my age and my wounds, they wouldn’t allow me to fight so I did industrial education jobs,” he said. Signed on as instructional staff, he was discharged in 1945.
In 1950 Gerry relocated back to Melbourne from Ballarat being active with the RSL Archery Club, he had also been President of the Ballarat Branch of the Public Service Association.
After the Second World War when he had two archery clubs vying for his services, he could not choose which one so decided in 1948 to found his own club – the Kew City Archers: which still exists today. Their clubrooms, situated in Hay’s Paddock were later named for him. That same year he also established the Archery Society of Victoria. In 1959 he became a life member of Archery Victoria in addition to being their life President. He was also made a life member of the national archery body.
In 1985 an archery magazine named him “Archery’s personality of the year” – at aged 86.
In 1986 Gerry was awarded the Order of the British Empire medal (civil) for his services to the sport of archery. That same year he donated his wooden storage case, used for storing archery arrows to Museum Victoria. I wonder with his carpentry skills, if Gerry hand made the case himself?
Also that same year, during a stint in hospital, his home in Ivanhoe was broken into and his war service medals including his Victory Medal was stolen.
Gerry attended his last Anzac Day service in 1994. But it was a special one for him. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs organised replacement medals for those that had been stolen six years earlier. They were presented to him by Ivanhoe RSL President Fred Cullen with the City of Heidelberg Mayor Michelle Penson.
Less than two months later Gerry passed away. Gerry was the last survivor of the 14th Battalion. He was also the oldest member and sole World War 1 survivor in the Ivanhoe Returned Services League.
Photo: Ivanhoe RSL 1988 Heidelberg Historical Society in partnership with Yarra Plenty Regional Library
Sources
Ancestry.com. Australia, Birth Index, 1788-1922 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Vic 1898/12603 Hevey, Maurice Gerald
Australian Archery Hall of Fame and Museum
Australian War Memorial: First World War Embarkation Rolls
Australian War Memorial 14th Australian Infantry Battalion
Butterworth, Neal The Last of the 14th Battalion 1st A.I.F. “Jacka’s mob” Did Diggers fight in Italy in 1918 Ancestor Vol 22 No 7 Spring 1995 page 43-44.
Memories of the Wars by Jodie Pine Heidelberg Leader 20 April 1994 page 10
Museum Victoria Collections – Accessed 20 February 2016
National Archives of Australia: First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914 – 1920: B2455, HEVEY, MAURICE
War Memorials in Australia: Macleod Avenue of Honour (via Pandora Archive)
Transfer to Melb. (1950, January 16). The Age , p. 3. Retrieved February 20, 2016, from
by Liz Pidgeon
This story was first published in “Fine Spirit and Pluck: World War One Stories from Banyule, Nillumbik and Whittlesea” published by Yarra Plenty Regional Library, August 2016
