Tipperary man's Victoria Cross on loan from Australia to National Museum of Ireland

At the National Museum of Ireland - Decorative Arts & History, the Australian Ambassador His Excellency Richard Andrews, in a world first, formally loaned Martin O’Meara’s Victoria Cross to the National Museum of Ireland.
This loan will be for approximately 12 months. This loan marks the first time an Australian Government owned Victoria Cross will have left Australian shores. Until legislative changes were made to Australia’s Protection of Moveable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 a Victoria Cross could not be exported from Australia for any length of time or any purpose. Following the late 2018 amendment of the Act, the loan of Sergeant O’Meara’s Victoria Cross is now possible.
Martin O’Meara VC is Australia’s only Irish-born Victoria Cross recipient of the First World War. He was born on 6 November 1885 in the parish of Lorrha, Tipperary, Ireland. Migrating to Australia in 1911 he was a resident of Western Australia when he joined the Australian Imperial Force in Perth on August 19 1915 and left Australia with the 12th Reinforcements for the 16th Battalion in December 1915. In early 1916, O’Meara joined the Battalion in Egypt where it had returned following the evacuation from Gallipoli. After undertaking training there, the Battalion moved to the Western Front in France.
On August 9-12 the 16th Battalion mounted an attack on German positions at Mouquet Farm near Pozières. During this period O’Meara, an Australian Army scout, behaved in a manner which led one officer to describe him as ‘the most fearless and gallant solider I have ever seen’. He was credited with having saved the lives of over twenty-five wounded men by carrying them in from no man’s land ‘under conditions that are indescribable’. At other times he had, on his own initiative, brought up much-needed supplies of grenades, ammunition and food. For these actions O’Meara was awarded the Victoria Cross.
Tragically, upon returning to Australia in November 1918, O’Meara had some sort of serious mental breakdown between November 8-13. A lack of surviving records make it difficult to accurately determine what actually happened. Institutionalised as someone suffering from ‘delusional insanity’, O’Meara never left institutionalised care and died at the age of 50 on November 6 1935. His will left his Victoria Cross to the care of the 16th Battalion Association, which later donated the medal to the Australian Army Museum of Western Australia, where it has remained on display.
The loan of the VC to the National Museum of Ireland will likely be the second time the medal has visited the shores of Ireland. After receiving his VC from King George V, O’Meara later visited Ireland in October 1917. It is highly likely that he took the VC with him when he visited family in Tipperary, some 102 years ago.
O’Meara’s life is commemorated in both Australia and Ireland. In Ireland, bronze plaques at Lorrha’s Roman Catholic Church commemorate him and in June 2013 a memorial stone was unveiled in Lorrha by the Lorrha Development Association.