George Jakeman was only 19 when he went to war for his adopted country in South Africa in 1902.
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Born in the US in the town of Florida in Kansas on July 4, 1883, he was one of the two surviving sons of an English couple who had emigrated to America in the early 1880s.
Disenchanted by their experience of the New World, James and Emily Jakeman took their family back to England before sailing for Australia in 1886.
George, who had lost his father at the age of 15, enlisted without his mother's blessing joining the 3rd Battalion of the Commonwealth Horse - the forerunner of the Australian Light Horse - under the assumed name of Robert Harman.
It was the beginning a distinguished record of military service that to him being him awarded the Military Medal as a stretcher bearer in France during World War I.
George, one of more than 16,000 Australians who volunteered to fight the Boers, arrived in South Africa too late for combat. His unit landed at Durban on the Cape of Good Hope on April 30, 1902, just days before the finalisation of a peace agreement.
He was 32 years old when he signed up with the Australian Imperial Force on March 9, 1915. He became an Army Medical Corps stretcher bearer and was assigned to the 20th Battalion. He landed at Gallipoli on August 19 in the same contingent of reinforcements as his brother, Charles who was killed assaulting Hill 60 three days later.
George, who was withdrawn from Gallipoli in October 1915, landed at Marseilles in France on March 25, 1916. Gassed and hospitalised on three occasions, he was one of the first Australians to be awarded the then newly established Military Medal for bravery in the field at the Bridoux Salient on May 5 and May 6, 1916. His citation read, in part: ''during the bombardment he accompanied the medical officer and assisted him throughout the night displaying courage and coolness''. What the citation doesn't mention is that this was a walk into the gates of hell. War historian Charles Bean wrote: ''At nightfall on May 5 there suddenly descended on [the Bridoux Salient] a deluge of German shells and trench-mortar bombs, a concentration of fire such as Australian troops had never known - and probably as severe while it lasted as any they afterwards suffered.
The trenches were a shambles - a mass of tumbled sandbags and other debris [and] about 100 had been killed or wounded.'' By the time his medal came through he had been promoted to Lance- Corporal. He returned to his wife, Elsie, and their children, in 1919. He had been a signalman with the NSW tramways since 1907 and returned to his old job when he was demobbed in January 1920. George died aged 80, in Gosford Hospital on August 31, 1962.
