John Kenneally won his VC as a lance corporal in the Irish Guards during the penultimate phase of the Tunisian campaign in April 1943. General Sir Harold Alexander, commanding 18th Army Group comprising the 1st and 8th Armies, had decided to launch the final assault on Tunis direct along the main Medjez el Bab road towards the city. The Germans held the massive rock-strewn feature of Djebel Bou Azoukaz, which dominated his proposed axis of advance.

After just failing to secure the "Bou" on April 27, the 24th Guards Brigade attacked again next day. The 1st Battalion Irish Guards suffered heavy losses in securing the mile-long ridge between Points 212 and 214 in the centre of the feature, and then came under vicious counter-attacks by a battle group of the 8th Panzer Regiment in desperate German attempts to retake this tactically important ridge.

It was vital that the Irish Guards, already reduced to 173 men, maintained their precarious footholds on the ridge while further attacks were organised to secure the rest of the "Bou". Kenneally, who was one of the Bren gunners of No1 Company, holding Point 212, played a decisive part in its defence. He was one of those extraordinary men who emerge in times of crisis to inspire their colleagues. He spotted a company of Panzer Grenadiers forming up in a re-entrant below the crest, preparing to assault his company's position. On his own initiative, he decided that it was the moment to attack them himself. Single-handed, he charged down the bare stony forward slope, firing his Bren light machinegun from the hip as he ran. The enemy company broke and ran, while he scrambled back up the slope to his fire position and continued to harass their withdrawal.

Next day, April 30, he repeated his feat, this time accompanied by a Reconnaissance Corps sergeant. He again spotted a German force trying to exploit the same re-entrant. The two men charged and routed the enemy, but in scrambling back up to the crest again, Kenneally was hit by a 9mm bullet in the calf. It was not until he was seen hopping from one fire position to another with his Bren in one hand and supported by another Guardsman with the other that it was realised he had been wounded. Nothing would persuade him to give up his Bren, which he claimed only he could handle, nor to leave the position. The final words of the citation for his Victoria Cross read:

His rapid appreciation of the situation, his initiative and extraordinary gallantry in attacking single-handed a massed body of the enemy and breaking up an attack on two occasions, was an achievement that can seldom have been equalled. His courage in fighting all day when wounded was an inspiration to all ranks."

John Patrick Kenneally was an assumed name. He was the illegitimate son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer in Manchester. His mother was an 18-year-old un-married daughter of a Birmingham pharmacist, who was disowned by her family. She changed her name to Jackson, and had her son christened Leslie.

He was brought up in one of the roughest areas of Birmingham, where he learnt to live by his wits and fists, if need be; and where his mother earned enough as a lady's hairdresser and a high-class prostitute to give him a good education at King Edward's, Birmingham. He proved himself a fine athlete, and as his autobiography, Kenneally VC, shows, he acquired a love for the Army through the Cadets.

When war broke out in 1939, he had already joined the TA as a Gunner. Transferred to the Honourable Artillery Company, he overstayed his leave and found himself serving a spell of detention in Wellington Barracks guardroom in the charge of the Irish Guards. Struck by their high standards, he wanted to transfer to them.

The Gunners refused his application, and so he deserted, joining a gang of rough Irish building labourers, whose leader purloined for him an identity card and national insurance number, belonging to an Irishman, John Patrick Kenneally, who had returned home.

Armed with this new identity, he enlisted in the Irish Guards - no questions asked - and by March 1943 he was sailing with the 1st Battalion for Tunisia. A month later he was making his name in the epic action on the "Bou". With no Irish blood in his veins, and being half-Jewish, John Kenneally, as he was to be known for the rest of his life, was to become one of the most loyal of Irish Guardsmen.

Promoted sergeant after the fall of Tunis, he was again wounded fighting with his battalion in the hell of the Anzio beachhead in February 1944. The battalion's losses were, this time, so heavy that it was withdrawn to England.

After training an intake of reluctant airmen transferred from the RAF to help to make good the Army's dearth of reinforcements, he took them across to Germany to join the 3rd Battalion just as the war was ending. Finding occupation duties and the accompanying relaxation of discipline anathema, he was about to leave the Army in disgust, when he saw a notice calling for volunteers for the new 1st Guards Parachute Battalion. Much to his wife's distress, he went out to Palestine wearing a red beret.

British troops were faced with the task of keeping Arabs and Jews apart. Being half-Jewish, he was delighted to be given the task of organising the defence of a kibbutz in northern Galilee. Thanks to his efforts and tactical skills, the kibbutz survived a major Arab night attack just before the final British withdrawal through Haifa began, following relinquishment of the League of Nations mandate to the United Nations in 1948. He was sorely tempted to take up an offer to join the Israeli forces, but thoughts of his wife and now two sons, and loyalty to the Guards, stopped him doing so.

When he returned to England, he had hoped for a home posting to spend some time with his family, but none could be made available for him, and so with great regret he bought himself out of the Army in July 1948. Subsequently, he made a successful civilian career for himself in the motor industry, and always kept in close touch with his regiment, attending many of its veterans' reunions, latterly as the last surviving Irish Guards VC.

John Kenneally's death reduces to 23 the number of living holders of the Victoria Cross.

He married Elizabeth Francis by special licence just before embarking for North Africa in 1943. They had three sons and a daughter. One son was killed in a road accident. The rest of his family survive him.

John Kenneally, VC, was born on March 15, 1921. He died yesterday aged 79