The AIF Project

George David Charles JONES

Regimental number2935
Place of birthBallarat, Victoria
SchoolWendouree and Ballarat State School, Victoria
ReligionMethodist
OccupationFarmer
AddressPithara, Western Australia
Marital statusMarried
Age at embarkation38
Next of kinWife, Mrs Anice Johanna Jones, Amherst Road, West Midland Junction, Western Australia
Previous military serviceMember of Artillery Perth - served with Mounted Infantry in South Africa
Enlistment date10 July 1916
Rank on enlistmentPrivate
Unit name51st Battalion, 7th Reinforcement
AWM Embarkation Roll number23/68/3
Embarkation detailsUnit embarked from Fremantle, Western Australia, on board HMAT A8 Argyllshire on 9 November 1916
Rank from Nominal RollPrivate
Unit from Nominal Roll51st Battalion
Other details from Roll of Honour CircularSouth African Medal and three bars attached.
FateKilled in Action 26 September 1917
Place of death or woundingYpres, Belgium
Age at death39
Age at death from cemetery records39
Place of burialNo known grave
Commemoration detailsThe Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 29), Belgium

The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave.

The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936.

Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign.

Panel number, Roll of Honour,
  Australian War Memorial
158
Miscellaneous information from
  cemetery records
Parents: William and Sarah JONES; husband of Anice Johanna JONES, 24 Collins Street, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. Native of Ballarat, Victoria
Other details

War service: Western Front

Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal

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