The Braddon businessman, who has never held the medal awarded to Sir Neville Howse VC, will make do with a replica. The original holds pride of place in the Australian War Memorial’s Hall of Valour.

While all Victoria Crosses are special, this one is more special than most. Why? Because it was the first ever to be awarded to an Australian.

“The AWM has all his medals, including the miniatures,” Mr Howse said. “We’ve got copies of the military medals and I wear them on Anzac Day. The Victoria Cross is not a flashy or colourful thing but people are always interested when they see it.”

Mr Howse said marching with the replica VC was a profoundly moving experience. “You cannot put it on without thinking of the sacrifices so many people have made,” he said. “102,000 Australian have lost their lives in war. Some were in battles we should have been in and some were in battles we should not have been in; but they were all doing what they had to do; doing their duty.”

Born in Somerset, England, in 1863, Sir Neville Howse had migrated to Australia after training as a doctor. Between 1889 and 1900 he practiced medicine in Newcastle, Taree and finally Orange.

Commissioned as a lieutenant in the NSW Medical Corps in 1900, the then 37-year-old was dispatched to South Africa. On July 24, during an action at Vredefort in the Orange Free State, he saw a trumpeter fall, apparently badly wounded. Galloping to the man’s assistance through heavy crossfire, Howse had his horse shot out from under him.

Witnesses described how, undaunted, he continued on foot to reach the wounded man. After dressing the trumpeter’s wound Howse then carried the soldier back to the safety of the Australian line.

Jon Howse, one of three brothers all of whom live in the ACT, said while the VC was a remarkable achievement it was just one chapter in his grandfather’s remarkable life of courage, dedication and service. “He was incredible”.

Howse, who was to serve two terms as the mayor of Orange, married Evelyn Pilcher of Bathurst in 1905 and, when war broke out in 1914, was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the AIF. The then 51-year-old’s first World War I posting was as the principal medical officer to the Austral Naval and Military Expeditionary Force to German New Guinea.

In December 1914 he was made a full colonel and named as the assistant director of medical services to the 1st Australian Division, AIF and, the following month, was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath.

Howse’s attachment to the Anzac force, commanded by Brigadier General Bridges, did not come about as a matter of course according to official war historian, Charles Bean. “The two officers chose for the head of his medical service proved, before long, to be inadequate for the exacting demands of the highest positions,” he wrote in Anzac to Amiens. “(they) were successively displaced by a dynamic personality, Colonel Neville R. Howse, a country surgeon who had won the VC in South Africa and who, through the influence given him by that decoration, managed to return from New Guinea just in time to secure a post as ‘supernumerary medical officer’ with Bridges’ staff.”

Colonel Howse landed at Gallipoli on the first day and, over the months to come, was confronted with the awful challenge of dealing with horrendous casualties in a beach head less than two kilometres square. Medical supplies and trained personnel were in short supply and Howse, never one to mince his words, later told the Royal Commission into the Dardanelles catastrophe the arrangements for medical care had been “inadequate to the point of criminal negligence” on the part of mission planners.

The loss rate at Gallipoli was just as high as on the Western Front. An attack force of 580 men suffered 430 killed and wounded during the attack at Lone Pine on August 6.

By November 1915 Howse was the director of all the AIF’s medical services. He was knighted in 1917, the same year he was promoted to major general. After the war he worked to help rehabilitate wounded diggers before winning the federal seat of Calare in 1922. Howse represented the Nationalist Party, a predecessor to the Liberal Party which had come into being in 1917 after Billy Hughes was expelled from the Labor Party for supporting conscription. Howse went on to serve as both minister for health and minister for defence before his death in England from cancer in 1930.

Jon Howse, who was born in 1951, said one of his life’s great regrets was never having the opportunity to meet his grandfather who was a relatively young 67 at the time of his death.

“He was a great humanitarian for his time and was always concerned about the welfare of all the wounded troops, regardless of what side they had been fighting on,” he said. “I am very sorry that while I have been able to read about his life and what he achieved I have no personal memories of him.”

Mr Howse said this year’s Anzac Day would be particularly special for the family as his mother, a long-time volunteer at the Australian War Memorial and supporter of the push for a national Boer War Memorial, had died in 2012.

“My brothers Robert and Charles and I and other members of the family will all be there (on Thursday),” he said. “Our children are also involved and the great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren are all very interested in keeping the legacy alive.”