Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Jack Balfour-Ogilvy, a Grazier from South Australia, joined the Army in 1940. The contribution made by Jack during the next 5 years to his men, his battalion, and his country, would epitomise the courage and spirit of ANZAC. Joining the battalion in England in 1940, Jack eventually served in every campaign the battalion fought in; one of only four Bn officers to do so.

As a measure of his contribution, Australian soldiers were expected to serve one tour in combat for a maximum of nine months. Jack served five tours, spending nearly three and a half years in direct combat service and witnessing some of the most horrific facets of the war. In June 1941, when his Platoon lost its Officer in battle, Jack assumed command without question. At Jezzine, just before the end of the Syrian campaign, Jack was one of the first two Australian soldiers commissioned in the field in WWII. It was a fitting reward for inspirational leadership.

But even greater trials were to come in the steaming, disease-ridden jungles of New Guinea. Fighting under the most difficult of physical and mental conditions, the tenacious Japanese enemy made the Australians pay for every foot of ground they won. Then on September 7 1943, Jack’s own company was to suffer one of the greatest single tragedies to befall the AIF in WWII. Waiting in trucks for their turn to emplane for battle raging up the Markham Valley, a USAAF bomber taking off from the strip suddenly veered and crashed into the truck-line; 62 men died and a further 90 were badly injured. It was an event of devastating carnage that left the young Lt. Balfour-Ogilvy aghast at the magnitude of the calamity which, for the next three hours, caused him the grim, self-appointed task of organising and laying out the bodies and remains of his soldiers. In further testimony to Jack’s courage, he along with the other survivors of the Battalion, accepted there was no time for grieving, flying out a few hours later to join the action in the Markham Valley.

In early 1945, following rebuilding and retraining in Australia, the 2/33rd joined the amphibious assault into Balikpapan, Borneo. It was here that the now Captain Balfour-Ogilvy displayed one of his most selfless acts of heroism, going in under direct enemy fire to rescue a mortally wounded patrol leader after they had been caught in a Japanese ambush. Jack received no medals for his heroism, but the story of Jack Balfour-Ogilvy, grazier turned soldier, is the story of an ordinary Australian’s courage and spirit against the odds. It’s the story of an ANZAC. Lest we forget.