Robert MacTier VC

b. 17/05/1890 Tatura, Australia. d. 01/09/1918 Mont St Quentin, Peronne, France.

Robert “Bob” McTier (1890-1918) was born on 17th May 1890 at Reitcam (Mactier reversed), Tatura, Victoria, Australia. His father, also Robert, was originally from Mochrum, Wigtownshire, Scotland, who emigrated to Australia and owned properties at Tatura and Caniambo, Victoria. He married Christina Innes nee Ross, born at Flemington, Victoria, on 19th June 1878. Robert junior had nine siblings.Robert was educated at Tatura State School and then worked on his father’s property. He was stocky and athletic and excelled in football and shooting.

Robert Mactier VC

He enlisted at Seymour, Victoria on 1st March 1917, joined the Recruits Battalion at Broadmeadows, Melbourne on 23rd March and joined 1st (Depot) Battalion AIF on 10th April. In his will, dated 2nd May 1917, he left everything to his mother. Robert embarked aboard HMAT A11 Ascanius at Melbourne with 19th Reinforcement Group, 23rd Battalion on 11th May. He disembarked at Devonport, Devon and was posted to 6th Training Battalion, Rollestone, Wiltshire on Salisbury Plain on 20th July 1917.

Robert embarked for France on 14th November, joined 2nd Australian Division Base Depot, Le Havre next day and joined B Company, 23rd Battalion on 23rd November. In April 1918 he was gassed on the Somme.

On 1st September 1918, north of Péronne, Mactier earned his battalion’s only Victoria Cross. The 23rd was moving into position for the early morning assault on Mont St Quentin. With only twenty minutes left until zero hour, it was stopped by an enemy machine-gun behind a barbed-wire barricade. Two similar posts could be seen further on. An attack on the first position failed and Private Mactier, his company’s runner, was sent to investigate. Armed with bombs and a revolver, he ran forward, sized up the situation and dashed to the barricade. He threw a bomb, climbed over the wire and toppled the machine-gun out of the trench. His comrades then advanced, found the eight-man gun-crew dead and saw Mactier capturing all occupants of the next post. He charged the third post, bombing and killing the garrison and discovered yet another obstacle. To avoid wire in the trench he ran into the open and was rushing in for his fourth attack when shot by a gunner on his flank, though one of his friends said that he was ‘killed by concussion from a hand grenade’. Through his actions the assaulting companies filed into position just as the barrage fell on Mont St Quentin.

Mactier was buried nearby but was reinterred in the Hem Farm cemetery, Hem-Monacu. In noting his posthumous award the London Times praised his ‘exceptional valour and determination’, describing him as ‘a fine type of the wiry Colonial’. His mates, in their battalion newspaper, remembered him as ‘only one of the boys’ while his letters home are those of a genial unpretentious man. A radio series on VC recipients, broadcast in 1936-37, ably summed him up: ‘Bob Mactier was typical of his kind, the countryman who became a soldier … a healthy man … well-behaved … quiet and unassuming; he had nothing spectacular in his make-up’.

The VC was presented to his father by the Governor General of Australia, Sir Ronald Craufurd Munro-Ferguson GCMG on 13th June 1919 at Melbourne Town Hall. Robert is commemorated on the VC recipients plaque at Campbell, ACT, on the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial, with Mactier Place in Canberra, on the VC Memorial in Sydney, on the VC Memorial at Ingleburn RSL, Sydney, with Mactier VC Club in Watsonia Barracks, Melbourne, on the VC Memorial in Springvale Botanical Cemetery, with Mactier Avenue in Wodonga, Victoria and with a VC commemorative stone at the National Memorial Arboretum, Alrewas, Staffordshire.

In addition to the VC he was awarded the British War Medal 1914-20 and Victory Medal 1914-19. The medals were presented to the Australian War Memorial by his family on 25th September 1983.

LOCATION OF MEDAL:AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL, CANBERRA.

BURIAL PLACE: HEM FARM MILITARY CEMETERY, PERONNE, FRANCE.

PLOT II, ROW J, GRAVE 3.