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Jack Counter Close is a small states housing development, dating back to the early seventies. It's on the inner road to St Aubin just past First Tower. The signs have faded and peeled, but they still bear the name of a man who was once a household name in Jersey, and lived just a stone’s throw away by St Andrews Park.

Jack Counter was from Dorset originally, and enlisted in the army in February 1917, at the age of eighteen.

A year later, his battalion was fighting in the trenches of the Somme. They were at a place called Boisleux St Marc, trying to fend off a German counter attack. On 16 April, officers decided they had to get an accurate idea of the enemy's strength. They sent out five messengers, all of whom were killed one after another.

Jack Counter then volunteered to try - and succeeded, not once but five times – risking his life to bring essential information which meant the attack could be beaten off. Just a few weeks later the King himself presented him with the Victoria Cross (VC).

After the war, Jack Counter moved to Jersey, where he married and worked as a postman. He became known as 'Jersey's VC', and was a stalwart of the Royal British Legion. He became so well-known and popular that when he died in 1970, the island authorities wanted to have a permanent way to remember him. When a new set of states homes were planned just down the road from where he lived, they decided to name them after him. His medals are on display at the Jersey Museum.

Location: Jack Counter Close, St Helier, Jersey JE2 3LN
Photograph of Private Jack Thomas Counter VC, courtesy of Imperial War Museums

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