On 23 August 2016, a memorial service in honour of Lieutenant Maurice Dease VC, 4th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, took place in Coole, County Westmeath. Manning a machine gun, Lieutenant Dease was killed during action in Mons on 23 August 1914. The 2 Artillery Regiment provided the National Colour Flag Party, and Standards of the Royal British Legion, ONET and IUNVA were on parade. As part of the Decade of Centenaries, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, with the support of the Irish Government, have commissioned paving stones for all 24 recipients of the Victoria Cross during the First World War who were born in the Republic of Ireland.
On 23 August, 2014, the 100th anniversary of Lieutenant Dease’s death, the first of the 24 commemorative Victory Cross Paving Stones was presented to Minster Humphreys TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, Parliamentary Under-secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Lieutenant Maurice Dease VC of Turbotstown House was born on 28 September 1889 in Coole, County Westmeath. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and the Army Department of Wimbleton College, before attending the Royal Military College Sandhurst. He was one of the first British Army officer battle casualties of the First World War, when at the age of 24 he was killed in action at Mons on 23 August 1914. It was the first battle fought by the British Army in the war.
Lieutenant Dease was a company-level officer attached to 4th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, part of the first wave of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to land in Europe. In the BEF’s first engagement of the war, the British and the Germans clashed at Mons, Belgium on 23 and 24 August. The British Army succeeded in delaying, but not halting a German advancement into France.
Lieutenant Dease was the first posthumous recipient of the Victory Cross in the war which was awarded on 16 November, 1914. The citation reads: “Though two or three times badly wounded he continued to control the fire of his machine guns at Mons on August 23 until all his men were shot. He died of his wounds.”
Lieutenant Dease VC is buried at Saint Symphirein military cemetery, Mons. Plagues in his memory can be seen under the Nimy Railway Bridge in Mons and in Westminster Cathedral.
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Royal Fusiliers Museum in the Tower of London.
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