Carl Herman Jess

Carl Herman Jess was one of nine children of George Jess, master painter, a German emigrant to Australia. He began his working life as a school teacher, seemingly having first taught himself. His military interests were apparent from the start. He joined the 5th Battalion Victorian Infantry at the age of 18, transferring to the Australian Permanent Military Force as a sergeant in June 1906. He was commissioned in July 1909. Jess was a dedicated military professional with few outside interests. He wasted no opportunity to further his military education, including enrolling on a military science course at the University of Sydney. His wartime career was closely associated with that of his fellow ‘German’, John Monash. His appointment as Monash’s staff captain at 4th Brigade gave Jess his first opportunity.

He served on Gallipoli from May 1915 as brigade major at 2nd Brigade and was given his first command, as CO 7th Battalion AIF, early in 1916, winning a DSO in the Australians’ first major attack on the Western Front, at Pozières, in September. His appointment as the first Australian to act as an instructor at the Senior Officers’ School, Aldershot, in the spring of 1917 marked the beginning of a wider recognition of his abilities.

On his return to the Western Front he served on the staff of I Anzac Corps and, from January 1918, as GSO1 of Monash’s 3rd Division. Jess’s reputation as coming man was confirmed by his appointment as GOC 10th Brigade, 3rd Australian Division, in October 1918. He was 34. By this time the Australian Corps was out of the Line and victory only days away. There was a sense in which the war ended too soon for Jess.

He was clearly an able soldier, as his brilliant passage through the British Staff College after the war shows, but the inter-war Australian army offered few opportunities to a man of his talents. It took the outbreak of the Second World War to provide him with a satisfactory professional challenge. As Chairman of the Manpower Committee (1938–44), he was a key figure in the mobilisation of Australian society for war. Lieutenant-General Sir Carl Jess retired from the Australian army in April 1946.