Hero of the Month
Published in Britain at War - February 2024
Lieutenant Maurice James Dease VC
Lieutenant Maurice Dease was the first officer to be awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously during the Great War. His decoration was for a heroic act of bravery and leadership in August 1914, just days after the outbreak of World War One.
Maurice James Dease was born in Coole, County Westmeath, Ireland, on September 28 1889. He was the only son of Edmund Dease, a Justice of the Peace, and his wife, Katherine (neé Murray). He was educated at Frognal Park School, Hampstead, north London; Stonyhurst College, Lancashire; and the Army College, Wimbledon, south London, before attending the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
Dease was commissioned into the 4th Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), as a second lieutenant on May 27 1910 and later that year underwent a mountain warfare training course in north Wales. He was promoted to a full lieutenant in April 1912 and was serving as an acting adjutant when the regiment was mobilised on August 5 1914. A Roman Catholic, he took his religious beliefs seriously both as a schoolboy and in his Army career.
When war broke out, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by Field Marshal Sir John French, was assembled and dispatched across the Channel to assist the French and Belgians. Dease’s battalion was one of those swiftly mobilised and by August 13 it was in Le Havre, northern France. His battalion then moved on to Belgium and by August 22 it was situated on the French-Belgium border at Mons. Dease and his men were in position and ready to fight just two days after Brussels fell to the Germans.
On August 23, the Germans attacked General Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien’s II Corps, which had been deployed along the Mons-Condé canal. II Corps, a key part of the BEF, consisted of 72,000 men and 300 guns.
The 4th Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers, was defending the Nimy bridges to the north of Mons against a larger force from the German 1st Army. In particular, the railway bridge was defended by two platoons and Company Headquarters under Captain Ashburner, with the machine-gun section of two guns under the command of Lieutenant Dease Overnight, Dease had supervised the protection of the two guns with sacks of shingle. The left-hand gun was positioned on top of the embankment and the right-hand one was positioned below the railway bridge. Everyone knew the tasks of protecting both the guns and the bridge would be huge.
Shortly after 8am on a sweltering summer’s day, the battle for the bridge began in earnest and the Germans’ initial attack was seen off by a combination of the machine-gunners and riflemen. Soon, however, the Germans attacked the bridge with greater intensity and Dease was hit and wounded. As he fought to defend his position, Dease was hit three more times, including in the neck. Close-by there were several other casualties, both dead and wounded.
Despite his injuries, Dease helped to feed ammunition to his men and, when the gunner on the right-hand gun was badly wounded, Dease helped to drag him away and ease him down the embankment to relative safety. Dease then manned the machine-gun himself but, in doing so, exposed himself to a heavy machine gun, rifle and artillery fire. Refusing hospital treatment, Dease rallied his men and tried to ensure both machine-guns were firing simultaneously.
By this point, it seemed only a matter of time before he was killed and the final injury, his fifth wound, later proved to be fatal. He fell on the actual railway lines, having been fighting courageously for several hours. Dease was carried to safety by Lieutenant F.W.A. Steele but died shortly afterwards at around 3.30pm. He was 24 years old and single.
Meanwhile, his men were forced to retreat but, yet again, they put up a brave fight against the numerically-larger enemy force. After Dease had been put out of action, Steele called for a volunteer to man the machine-gun.
Private Frank Godley, who had earlier been assisting Dease, stepped forward and, despite coming under a murderous fire, held the bridge single-handedly for a further two hours while his comrades retreated. When Godley agreed to stay on alone, it effectively meant almost certain capture by the Germans – dead or alive.
Eventually having run out of ammunition, Godley destroyed the gun and threw the pieces into the canal. By this point, he had been wounded twice, yet managed to crawl to the nearby road where he was helped to hospital by two Belgian civilians. However, as the Germans advanced, Godley was taken prisoner.
Although the British had defended their positions well, the French were driven back on the BEF’s right flank. This meant over August 24 and 25, the BEF also had to stage a fighting retreat from Mons. Dease was later buried at St Symphorien Military Cemetery, near Mons. He is remembered with a plaque under the Nimy Railway Bridge, Mons, and in Westminster Cathedral. Dease’s bravery also inspired a painting by the artist Albert Chevallier Tayler [CORRECT] which is on display at the Refectory, Stonyhurst College.
It was his fellow officer, Lieutenant Steele, who wrote to Dease’s family informing them of his courage: “Poor Maurice got shot below the knee or thereabouts about 9 a.m. while he was attending to a machine-gun on the left side of the bridge. Ashburner and I begged him to go off and get fixed up at the hospital, but he refused. He then crawled over to the right-hand side gun. Almost as soon as he got there he was again shot somewhere in the side. I made him lie down near me and with great difficulty kept him quiet as he was worried about his guns. I promised to look after these for him and he settled down a bit quieter. I asked him if he was in any pain and he said ‘No’ and smiled more or less cheerfully. As soon as I managed to get the guns going again he seemed much more happy. He seemed to have been hit again while I was busy on his left. For the next two hours there was a perfect hail of machine-gun fire as well as Artillery and Infantry fire. Maurice during this time became very quiet, and I fancy unconscious. When we retired Maurice had to be left behind…”
It has to be said that the short citation for Dease’s VC, announced in The London Gazette on November 16 1914, did not do full justice to his exceptional bravery, stating only, “Though two or three times badly wounded he continued to control the fire of his machine guns at Mons on 23rd August until all his men were shot. He died of his wounds.” His VC was sent in the post to his parents’ home in Ireland.
Another account of Dease’s bravery is provided by H.C. O’Neill in his book, The Royal Fusiliers in the Great War: “The machine gun crews were constantly being knocked out. So cramped was their position that when a man was hit he had to be removed before another could take his place. The approach from the trench was across the open, and whenever a gun stopped Lieutenant Maurice Dease… went up to see what was wrong. To do this once called for no ordinary courage. To repeat it several times could only be done with real heroism. Dease was badly wounded on these journeys, but insisted on remaining at duty as long as one of his crew could fire. The third wound proved fatal, and a well deserved VC was awarded him posthumously. By this time both guns had ceased firing, and all the crew had been knocked out. In response to an inquiry whether anyone else knew how to operate the guns Private Godley came forward. He cleared the emplacement under heavy fire and brought the gun into action. But he had not been firing long before the gun was hit and put completely out of action. The water jackets of both guns were riddled with bullets, so that they were no longer of any use.”
Godley himself was badly wounded and, as stated earlier, later fell into the hands of the Germans. It is understood he received 26 separate wounds during the intense fighting. His major injuries included a head wound and a deep shrapnel wound to his back.
Godley was decorated on November 25 1914, thereby becoming the first private to be awarded the VC in World War One. After being captured by the Germans he had refused to answer questions. Nevertheless, he was well treated, being sent to Berlin for skin grafts. In fact, his back alone required 150 stitches and parts of his missing and damaged bone were replaced by wire. When he was fit enough, however, Godley was transferred to Doberitz prisoner-of-war camp where he remained for much of the war.
While he was a prisoner at the Doberitz camp, a senior German officer informed Godley that he had been awarded the VC. At the end of the war, his camp guards deserted their position and he and five other men eventually made his way back to Britain via Denmark. Godley, whose “e” to his original surname of “Godly” was added by his recruiting officer in 1909, had been with a PoW for almost the entirety of the war.
Godley was presented with his VC at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on February 15 1919. He later became a school caretaker and retired in 1951, after 30 years’ service. Godley died in Epping, Essex, in June 1957, aged 67. He was buried with full military honours at Loughton cemetery, Essex, close to where he had lived in his later years. In the 2014 television drama, Our World War, Godley was played by the actor Theo Barklem-Biggs.
My admiration for the bravery of Dease and Godley is immense. I do not own either of these two medal groups but I did research their bravery as part of a television series that I presented in 2006 called Victoria Cross Heroes and which was first shown on Channel 5. Dease’s medal group is on display at the Fusilier Museum at the Tower of London. Godley’s medal group was sold to an unidentified private collector when it came up for auction in 2012.