Jacob Sorsky was born on 3 August 1926 in Liverpool, UK, to Dora (née Goss) and Maurice Sorsky, a vest machinist. The couple were originally from Poland/Russia and had five more children. At the time WWII broke out in September 1939, Jacob was bar mitzvah, was a member of the local Jewish Lads’ Brigade and had become known as 'Jack’ or ‘Jacky’. Still only thirteen years of age, Jacky left home on a fateful adventure and joined the merchant ship MV Armadale as galley boy ‘T. Drummond’, embarking from Liverpool on 24 April 1940. After an unknown number of doubtless risky voyages, Jacky eventually “jumped ship” in Melbourne, Australia, and found lodgings in South Yarra.

On 14 October 1941, some two months after his fifteenth birthday, Jacky presented himself to the Army Recruitment Office. He not only signed up under his assumed name as VX64715 Private James Terence Drummond but brazenly lied about his age, occupation, and religion, attesting to being a 21-year-old labourer and Roman Catholic. He gave his mother’s details in England as next-of-kin but nominated her as his aunt.

Jacky was assigned to the Signals Training Depot at Bonegilla, near Albury-Wodonga, where he trained as a motor-cycle despatch rider over the ensuing three months. During that time the German raider, Kormoran, sank HMAS Sydney with the loss of all 645 sailors, and Japan attacked Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, bringing the USA into the war. The Japanese took Rabaul in New Britain on 23 January 1942 and Singapore on 15 February, then bombed Darwin four days later. On 27 January, during this intense period of hostilities, Jacky was transferred to the Army Headquarters (AHQ) Signals unit at Ringwood, Melbourne, with the rank of Signalman. With the increased tempo of the war, he was likely kept very busy delivering vital messages across Melbourne. He was billeted in the Prahran home of Mr and Mrs Charles Conacher, appointing them Executors and Beneficiaries in his Will.

On 21 March 1942, the USA’s General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Melbourne to a hero’s welcome, having just escaped from the Japanese in the Phillipines and, no doubt, the volume of AHQ messages rose to an even higher level. Two days later, Jacky was riding his motor-cycle along Whitehorse Road, Balwyn, when he collided with a bus at the intersection with Barnsbury Road and was critically injured. He was admitted to the 115th (Heidelberg) Military Hospital with a fractured skull, fractured jaw and broken thigh. Within 48 hours, on 25 March 1942, Jacky died, barely eight weeks after starting his role as a military despatch rider.

While the Army recorded his age at death as 21, in fact the young Signalman was only 15½ years old: likely the second-youngest soldier to die whilst serving in the Australian Army in WWII. The pretence continued when Jacob Sorsky was buried as Signalman James Terence Drummond of the Signals Australia AHQ in the Roman Catholic Section of Springvale Cemetery, Melbourne. Shortly afterwards and almost two years after they had last seen him, his parents were advised of his death, duly reporting it and his service as ‘Private Drummond’ in the Liverpool Echo of 10 April 1942. However, as they subsequently relocated - compounded by the frequent bombings of Liverpool by the German Luftwaffe plus the fog of war - the family was not contacted by the Imperial War Graves Commission so that, when Jacob’s headstone was erected in December 1948 it made no reference to his birth name or true age and had no religious emblem inscribed. The following year, Jacob Sorsky’s name was inscribed on a Memorial plaque in Liverpool, UK, to “Honour members of the Liverpool Companies of the Jewish Lads Brigade ... who gave their lives in WW2” - dedicated on 4 September 1949. The Liverpool Jewish Gazette reported that Brigade Lieut. Col. A. A. Isaac, unveiling the plaque, said he “had known everyone of those whose names were inscribed on it,” i.e. including 'Jack Sorsky' named at the end of its report.

But the family remained unaware of the location of their son’s final resting place, on the other side of the world.

POSTSCRIPT

In 2015 Martin Sugarman, historian for AJEX (UK’s Jewish ex-service association), unravelled Jacky’s sad story after tracking down his four surviving siblings - more than 70 years after his death - and alerting them to the gravesite they had never known of. On behalf of the family, Martin submitted a request to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), with evidence including a letter from the Chief Rabbi. By 2019, the CWGC eventually accepted that Jacob Sorsky had in fact enlisted under a pseudonym and had put his age up six years, but would not agree to amend his headstone nor to accept that Jacob was actually Jewish and therefore have a Star of David inscribed as desired by his family.

In 2021 and in Jacob’s honour, Peter Allen and Dr Merrilyn Sernack (the author and proof-reader, respectively, of these narratives) commenced Operation Jacob with Dr Keith Shilkin AM (President of FAJEX) to seek the correction of headstones of Australian Jewish servicemen. On behalf of Jacky’s family, Operation Jacob pursued this matter and gained agreement from the Office of Australian War Graves (OAWG) for it to change his headstone, but it would only reflect the CWGC position.

In 2022, Operation Jacob is making a detailed submission to the CWGC to fully right this woeful, long-overdue wrong by agreeing to also inscribe a Star of David on Jacob Sorky’s amended headstone.

Ultimately, Jacob’s name will also be added to the Australian Jewish War Memorial cenotaph.  

Jacob Sorsky was born on 3 August 1926 in Liverpool, UK, the eldest child of Jews from Lithuania/Poland, Dora (née Goss), a ‘tailoress’ and Maurice (aka Morris or ‘Maishe’) Sorsky, a ‘vest machinist.’ They were both 21 when they married on 12 May 1925, and after Jacob they had three more sons: Percy (aka Peter), Solomon (aka Solly or Robert) and Bertram (aka Philip), and three daughters: Rachel (aka Faye), Clarice (died as infant) and Sylvia. The family lived in rented housing in the Jewish neighbourhood known as Paddington (after the main street of the area, Paddington Street).

Jacob became known as ‘Jack’ or ‘Jacky’ to his friends and family. Like his younger siblings, Jacky attended the [public] Hebrew School in Pilgrim Street, and (potentially from the age of eight) was a member of the Liverpool Company of the Jewish Lads’ Brigade (JLB) that met at ‘Harold House.’ (Similarly, the Jewish Girls’ Brigade met at ‘Hope House.’) Founded in 1895, the organisation was modelled on the Church Lads’ Brigade [later known as the Boys’ Brigade] and came to share the ideals of Baden-Powell’s Boy Scouts. One major difference between the JLB and other youth groups was its intention that membership would help the children of Jewish immigrants integrate themselves into their new surroundings and learn to be good citizens (see Image 1.) Liverpool being a major trading port, and with his uncle Harry a merchant seaman, Jacky likely spent much of his time around the docks and mingling with the seafarers, hearing stories about far-away places.

World War Two broke out on 1 September 1939, just around the time Jacob was bar mitzvah - likely at the Princes Road Synagogue of Liverpool’s Old Hebrew Congregation. He was the only one of the Sorsky siblings to have that opportunity, as the family was quite poor. Perhaps those experiences stirred Jacky to set off on a fateful adventure, when he was still thirteen years old, determined to join the fight against tyranny and realising he could not readily enlist in the UK for several years. Family recalled later that Jacky was: “big and well-built – very athletic – looked older than his age.” He left home and - using the pseudonym ‘T. Drummond’ - joined a merchant ship of the Western Australia Steam Navigation Company, MV Armadale, as a galley boy. The vessel departed Liverpool on 24 April 1940 - coincidentally the day before the 25th anniversary of ANZAC Day – and shortly before the Battle of Britain commenced. It is not known what routes the bold, young Jacky survived the risk of sinking while crossing enemy-infested seas and oceans, but he eventually arrived in Melbourne, Australia, where he “jumped ship” and found lodgings in South Yarra. It seems he may have worked as a labourer and briefly corresponded with his family in 1940-41, but the letter/s have been lost.

Meanwhile from August 1940, Liverpool, its critical wharves and the rest of Merseyside were bombed by the German Luftwaffe on dozens of occasions - the most targeted area of the UK outside of London. The final raids occurred during the first eight days of May 1941, when Merseyside was bombed almost every night: 1,900 people were killed, 1,450 seriously wounded and 70,000 made homeless. Consequently, it was not uncommon for residents to move numerous times. Indeed, Jacky’s mother would later tell the darkly humorous, but true, story of how the Sorsky family had been ‘bombed out’ of their rental accommodation at least twice. So she went to see their landlord, a Mr Bennett, and asked him, yet again: “Can you give me a house [to rent] please?” Mr Bennett replied: “I can’t give you a house, Dora … you keep getting bombed!” Winston Churchill later concluded that, if the German attacks on Liverpool had continued: “the Battle of the Atlantic would have been even more closely run than it was.”

On 14 October 1941, Jacky presented himself to the Australian Army Recruitment Office in Melbourne Town Hall, maybe hoping to go back to Europe and fight against the Germans. Just two months after his fifteenth birthday, Jacob (‘Jacky’) Sorsky not only signed up under his assumed name, ‘James Terrence Drummond’, but brazenly lied about his age and religion, attesting that he was a 21-year-old labourer and Roman Catholic. Despite his child-like looks that are apparent in the young enlistee’s portrait photo (Image 3) and the fact that parental consent was required for youths between 18 and 21 to enlist - such that many of them put up their age - it seems that the recruiting officer was not sufficiently suspicious or concerned to query James’s (i.e. Jacky’s) age [see Footnotes]. When he completed his enlistment at Royal Park later that day, VX64715 Private James Drummond gave the details of his mother at 64 Grierson St, Lodge Lane, Liverpool, England, as next-of-kin but referred to her as his ‘aunt’, subsequently mis-transcribed as “Mrs Sausky.”

The following week, on 22 October, he was assigned to the Signals Training Depot at Bonegilla Camp, which had been established the year before 12km west of Albury-Wodonga on the Victorian side of the NSW border. With more than 6,000 troops, it comprised 24 camp blocks, including over 800 buildings and a 600-bed hospital. ‘James’ (aka Jacky) trained as a motor-cycle despatch rider over the ensuing three months. During that time, HMAS Sydney was sunk by the German raider, Kormoran, on 19 November with the loss of all 645 sailors, and Pearl Harbour was attacked by the Japanese on 7 December, bringing the USA into the war.

On 23 January 1942 Rabaul, New Britain, was overrun by the Japanese, and four days later ‘James’ was transferred to the Army Headquarters (AHQ) Signals unit at Ringwood, Melbourne, with the rank of Signalman. This continued to be an extremely distressing time for the Australian armed forces and population generally, as Singapore fell on 15 February with 130,000 men passing into Japanese captivity – including 18,500 Australians, mostly of the 8th Division – and, in the wake of the Japanese bombing of Darwin four days later, the Government was desperate to have the other divisions return from the Middle East to defend Australia. So it is likely that delivering vital messages across Melbourne, if not elsewhere in Victoria, kept Signalman James Drummond very busy: a small but vital cog in the big wheels of war.

Meanwhile, as the number of American troops arriving in Australia virtually exploded, accommodation for them and Australian servicemen was in such short supply that many of the men were billeted in private homes, with the Army paying 3s 6d (35 cents) per day to accepting householders. Thus, Jacky was billeted in the home of Mr and Mrs Charles Conacher at 68 Clarke Street, Prahran. Moreover, in his Will ‘James Drummond’ had appointed them Executors and beneficiaries of his estate, and he nominated Mr Conacher as his Guardian.

Shortly after General Thomas Blamey returned from North Africa as Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Military Forces, on 21 March 1942, an even bigger ‘cog in the wheels of war’, the USA’s General Douglas MacArthur - fresh from escaping the Japanese at Manila, Philippines, via Darwin - arrived in Melbourne to a hero’s welcome from the Australian Government and people. MacArthur was appointed Supreme Commander Allied Forces South-West Pacific Area, and no doubt the volume of AHQ messages rose to an even higher level.

Just two days later, on Monday 23 March, bold young ‘Jacky’ – aka Signalman James Drummond - was riding his motor-cycle along Whitehorse Road, Balwyn, when he collided with a bus at the intersection with Barnsbury Road. Jacky was critically injured and taken by ambulance to the recently opened, 115th (Heidelberg) Military Hospital, where he was admitted with a fracture to the base of his skull, fractured jaw and broken thigh. Within 48 hours, on 25 March 1942 Jacky died due to his multiple injuries that were a result of the accident – barely eight weeks after starting his role as a military despatch rider and five months after enlisting. Although the Army recorded his age at death as 21, the young Signalman was in fact only 15½ years old. Thus Jacky was likely the second-youngest soldier to die whilst serving in the Australian Army in WWII*.

The pretence continued when, two days later, Jacob Sorsky was buried as Signalman James Terence Drummond of the Signals Australia AHQ in the Roman Catholic Section of Springvale Cemetery, Melbourne. It seems that Jacky’s parents were advised of his death shortly afterwards - almost two years since they had last seen him - as they reported that and his alias enlistment as ‘J. T. Drummond’ in the Liverpool Echo of 10 April 1942. However, subsequently the family was not contacted by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) so that, when Jacob’s headstone was erected in December 1948, it made no reference to his birth name or his true age, and had no religious emblem or epitaph inscribed.

The following year, Jacob Sorsky’s parents arranged for his name to be inscribed on the memorial plaque located at Harold House Boys' Club, Liverpool, UK, to honour “members of the Liverpool Companies of the Jewish Lads Brigade who lost their lives in the Second World War,” dedicated on 4 September 1949. The Liverpool Jewish Gazette went on to report that Brigade Lieut. Col. A. A. Isaac, unveiling the plaque, said he “had known everyone of those whose names were inscribed on it,” i.e. including 'Jack Sorsky' named at the end of the report.

In seeking details for Signalman James Drummond’s headstone installation after the war, it seems that correspondence from the War Graves Commission did not find Jacky’s family in Liverpool, likely because they repeatedly relocated. However, War Graves corresponded with Mr Conacher (as James’s Guardian) or Mr and Mrs Conacher (as James’s Executors), but who had no knowledge of his true identity, age or religion, and gave his occupation as merchant seaman. As his nominated Next of Kin (that is, his mother Mrs Sorsky, described by James as his “aunt” and mis-transcribed subsequently as Mrs Sausky) of 64 Grierson St, Lodge Lane, Liverpool, England, was almost certainly not contacted by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), the family had no voice in the installation of the headstone, resulting in its erroneous inscription and their complete unawareness of the location of their son’s final resting place, on the other side of the world.

POSTSCRIPT

By the time Jacky’s father and mother had passed away in 1979, the family in England had grown and the existence of his incorrect headstone in Australia – and indeed his true identity - would have remained undiscovered forever, had it not been for Martin Sugarman’s efforts. As historian and archivist for AJEX (the UK’s Jewish ex-service organisation), in 2015 Martin was researching Jewish Merchant Seamen when he spoke to Peter Sorsky, who advised that his eldest brother, Jacky, had served before him as a merchant seaman and subsequently enlisted in the Australian Army, then been killed in an accident in 1942. From that brief encounter, Martin unravelled Jacky’s story more than 70 years after his death, and began investigations to prove that Jacob Sorsky was indeed buried beneath the headstone anonymously labelled ‘James Drummond.’ Martin then alerted Jacky’s four surviving siblings to the gravesite they had never known of. He discovered that in the 1990’s, the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha had also determined that Jacob was Jewish and so had recorded his grave in its database.

Martin compiled statements from all four surviving siblings (Peter and Philip Sorsky of Liverpool, Sylvia Gold in Cyprus and Rachel Faye Horesh in Israel), who strongly confirmed that, not only did their late brother enlist in the AIF under a pseudonym and over-state his age (verified by his birth certificate), but was Jewish and most especially, they wanted his headstone to be corrected with the inclusion of a Magen David. On behalf of the family, Martin submitted their request and corroborating evidence to the CWGC. Correspondence continued between the parties over the following years, including a letter of support from the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. By 2020, the CWGC eventually accepted that Jacob Sorsky had in fact enlisted under the pseudonym ‘James Terence Drummond’ and had put his age up six years, but astonishingly, they would not agree to amend his headstone nor to accept that Jacob was actually Jewish and therefore have a Star of David religious symbol, as desired by his family.

In 2021, Peter Allen (the author of these narratives) was made aware of Jacob Sorsky’s story and Martin’s resolute struggle to have his headstone corrected on behalf of his family. So in Jacob’s honour, Peter launched Operation Jacob as its Coordinator, with Dr Keith Shilkin AM (President of FAJEX) as Chair and Dr Merrilyn Sernack as Advocate, to seek the correction of headstones of Australian Jewish servicemen - inspired by the USA’s Operation Benjamin and also mirroring the UK’s Operation Gideon. Consequently, on behalf of Jacky’s family, Operation Jacob pursued this matter and gained agreement from the Office of Australian War Graves (OAWG) for it to change his headstone, but it would only reflect the CWGC position.

In 2022, Operation Jacob is making a detailed submission to the CWGC to fully right this woeful, long-overdue wrong by agreeing to also inscribe a Star of David on Jacob Sorky’s amended headstone.

Ultimately, Jacob’s name will also be added to the Australian Jewish War Memorial cenotaph in the grounds of the ACT Jewish Community Centre, Forrest, ACT.

FOOTNOTES:

* Jacob Sorsky was likely the second-youngest soldier to die whilst serving in the Australian Army in WWII. In a bizarre coincidence, it seems that Ronald Keith Thomas was born in Melbourne on the same day that Jacky was born in England: 3 August 1926. As reported in the Argus newspaper on 6 December 1945: “Altering his name, and giving his age as 19, Pte Ronald Keith Thomas, of Dandenong, enlisted when he was 15, and was posted missing six months later, when he was taken prisoner by the Japanese at Laha, Amboina. His mother, Mrs O. T. Thomas, of Scott St, Dandenong, has been officially advised there is no likelihood that her son, an only child, is alive. When Mrs Thomas refused her son permission to enlist in the Navy or Air Force, he waited until shortly after his 15th birthday, and then went to Melbourne, and enlisted on September 1, 1941. A lad of good physique, he was readily accepted by the Army. Because he admired Lord Baden Powell, Pte Thomas substituted ‘Baden’ for his proper name, ‘Keith.’ Mrs Thomas did not know her son was in the Army until he was serving in the islands. She did not hear from him after he left home.”

Therefore VX62736 Private Ronald Thomas of 2/21st Battalion was one month younger than Jacob Sorsky when murdered by the Japanese on 20 February 1942. That was five days after another Jewish soldier, who also enlisted without his parents’ consent, was one of hundreds of 2/21st men slaughtered as POWs in what became known as the ‘Laha Massacre’: 18-year-old Private Leon Alfred Berliner – see his separate narrative.

As Ronald Thomas enlisted just six weeks before both Jacob Sorsky and Leon Berliner enlisted at Royal Park, perhaps they were all accepted into the Army by the same, neglectful recruitment officer. His signature is identical on the attestations of the latter two, while Ronald Thomas’s service record has not yet been digitised by the NAA to allow that signature to be readily checked.