Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

# 5700 JONES Adolphus William Percy                       15th Battalion
 
Adolphus (William) Jones was born in Brisbane, the eldest child of Adolphus and Theodosia Jones of Zillmere, Brisbane. Adolphus snr had interests in stock and station management and he may have taken his family to Clifton on the Darling Downs where young William attended school. Adolphus snr was also involved in colonial politics as general secretary of the Liberal Association, a forerunner of conservative parties which dominated Queensland colonial politics. The family moved back to Brisbane where Adolphus snr established his own stock and station enterprise with offices in Queen Street. His son, Will, attended a private college in the city after which he obtained a position with the Australian Commerce Bank.
 
Will served in the Garrison Artillery of the Citizens Forces for 18 months and was till serving when war broke out in August 1914. Will was six months shy of his 18th birthday but he had indicated to his father that he wished to enlist once he turned 18. According to his father’s note on the Roll of Honour Circular, Will agreed to delay joining the AIF until he turned 19. Meanwhile, his banking job led him to Gladstone where he was the ledger clerk in the large Commerce Bank branch.
 
Will travelled to Rockhampton by train to enlist on 7th February 1916. He advised the recruiting officer that he was 19 years and one month old and his occupation was bank clerk. Will rather curiously named both his father of Brisbane and a Miss Bracewell of Gladstone as next of kin. It may well have been Will’s intention to marry Miss Bracewell at some future date although he describes her on his enlistment documents as a friend. After passing his medical examination, Will made his way to Brisbane (probably by coastal steamer) and reported to the Enoggera camp where he was placed initially into a depot battalion before being allocated to the 18th reinforcements of the 15th Infantry Battalion.
 
On 4th May 1916, Will and the rest of the 18th draft of reinforcements boarded the “Seang Choon” and sailed for Egypt. The embarkation roll shows Will’s rank as private but his file indicates that he was appointed acting corporal for the duration of the voyage. He had allocated 3/- to be deducted from his overseas pay of 5/- per day to be placed in a bank account in Brisbane. The reinforcements disembarked at Suez and made their way to the
large Australian depot at Tel el Kabir on 25th June where Will reverted to the rank of private.
The 15th Battalion, to which Will and the other reinforcements would eventually be drafted had departed Egypt for France and the Western Front at the beginning of June. For the time being, the reinforcements were surplus to requirements.
 
On 6th August 1916, Will and his draft of reinforcements sailed from Alexandria and landed in England on 15th August and reported to the 4th Brigade Training Battalion at Fovant in Wiltshire. Will was promoted to the rank of acting sergeant. While the reinforcements were in camps in Egypt and England, the Battle of the Somme was raging in France. The four AIF Divisions that were in France at that time were all involved at Fromelles, Pozieres and Mouquet Farm; incurring an astounding 23,000 casualties of wounded, killed or missing. The reinforcements of the 18th draft proceeded from Fovant across the English Channel to France and were taken on strength by the 15th Battalion on 16th October. The rank of sergeant was rescinded once he was in France.
 
It would take some time for the battered and depleted Australian battalions to return to full fighting strength and most of the units spent considerable time in rest camps while engaging in training, route marches and sports. The arrival of the severest winter in over 40 years brought all offensive operations across the front to a standstill. When Will arrived in the 15th’s billets at Bazentin, he would appear to have dispensed with his first name and was then known as William Percy Jones.
 
Once the spring thaw of 1917 arrived and movement across the battlefield was again possible, the British discovered that during the winter, the Germans had constructed a formidable barrier some distance behind their own lines (The Hindenburg Line). As the Germans began a systematic withdrawal to this new position, the British Command ordered their forces to follow maintaining contact with the withdrawal. On 6th March, Will was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal and was placed in charge of a Lewis gun team.
 
The 15th Battalion and the other three battalions of the 4th Brigade advanced to the outskirts of the Hindenburg Line on 9th April in preparation for an attack the next morning. British General Gough was under orders to attack the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt with his infantry, following which the cavalry would be put into the breach. Gough planned to use the battalions of the 4th and 12th Infantry Brigades of the AIF as his spearhead. Will, still with no experience of actual warfare, and the rest of the 15th Battalion moved up to the assembly areas on the 8th April. Gough’s plan followed the normal pattern beginning with days of artillery bombardment to cut the several bands of barbed wire, followed by an infantry assault supported by a creeping artillery barrage. As the time for the attack drew closer, Gough had a conversation with a junior officer from the British Tank Corps. The junior officer convinced the general that tanks would be able to smash through the wire more effectively than cannon fire. What the officer did not reveal was that the tanks were only training tanks with well-worn machinery prone to breakdown.
 
At the last minute, Gough changed his plans, dispensing with the artillery altogether. He ordered the infantry to move up to the jumping off tapes in preparation for the attack on the 10th April. The men lay on the snow-covered ground awaiting the arrival of the tanks, all of which failed to make the start line on time either because of breakdowns or getting lost. Having revealed his plan to German defenders, Gough postponed the attack for 24 hours. On the 11th April, the 15th Battalion accompanied by 7 other Australian battalions rose up from the snow-covered ground and trudged towards the formidable defences before them following the same plan of the previous day. There was no artillery support and the tanks mainly failed for the second time. The few tanks that did proceed past the start line either became stuck in shell craters and tank traps or were put out of action with accurate artillery fire.
 
Many of the attacking infantry were hung up on the bands of wire which remained intact where they were cut down with enfilading machine gun fire. Remarkably, sufficient numbers of men, including Will and his Lewis Gun team got through to take two lines of the German trenches which they managed to hold for seven and a half hours. The few who had reached the German trenches were under continuous fire from machine guns sweeping the area from both flanks. Will directed his Lewis gun against the strongpoints. At one stage he crawled out into no man’s land to retrieve ammunition from wounded and dead comrades so that he could continue suppressing fire. By the time that ammunition was exhausted, Will’s gun team were all dead except for one other. The situation was hopeless and a withdrawal was ordered. Their retirement across the snowy ground made them easy targets for the defenders on the flanks. Will dragged several wounded men back to the safety of the start line.
 
As a result of Will’s actions on 11th April, the commanding officer of the 15th recommended Will for a decoration. The last sentence of his recommendation reads “…Exceptional performance worthy of the highest award.” In other words, he was recommending that Lance Corporal Jones receive the Victoria Cross. As in many cases such as this, the award was downgraded to the second highest gallantry award, the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
Once the award was approved, Will was entitled to wear the Crimson and Navy medal ribbon but he was never presented with the actual medal which would ordinarily been presented at a ceremony in London.
 
The battle, which became known as 1st Bullecourt was a complete disaster. Writing soon after the battle, the Australian War Historian Charles Bean said the plan to take Bullecourt had as much chance of success as a plan to capture the moon. For the 15th Battalion, the casualty list was sobering. Every one of the officers who took part in the attack except two were either killed or captured; as were 370 other ranks. On 17th April, Will was promoted to Corporal but perhaps as a result of his performance at Bullecourt, Will was promoted to the rank of 2nd Lieutenant three days later. He was 20 years old. There is no indication in Will’s file that he attended any course for junior officers so it must be assumed that all of his preparation for leadership was conducted within his battalion.
 
Bullecourt brought to an end the British campaign in France. General Haig turned his attention north to the Ypres salient in Belgian Flanders and the 15th Battalion was moved north to the farmland around the French Belgian border for a period of rest. The 15th Battalion, as part of the 4th brigade of the 4th Division AIF was called up to take part in the Battle of Messines, which began on the 7th June 1916. The 4th brigade’s main task was to support the New Zealanders in holding the line, once the advance on Messines had been accomplished. The 15th battalion continued to rotate in and out of the line through June and July interspersed with periods of light railway construction and trench repair. During this time, it appears that 2ndLieutenant William Jones was attached to the 4th Brigade Headquarters as an intelligence officer.
 
Once the high ground of Messines had been secured, General Plumer could proceed with his “bite and hold” plan to leapfrog along the axis of the Menin Road which ran from the ruined city of Ypres across low ground to the Broodseinde Ridge and the village of Passchendaele, the ultimate objective. The first of the set piece battles was launched on 20th September by the 1st and 2nd AIF Divisions against German positions on Westhoek Ridge on the north of the Menin Road. Once the ridge was in British hands, the 4th Brigade relieved the 2nd Division units.
 
As a staff officer attached to machine gun section of brigade headquarters, Will moved up with the rest of the staff. He had just been promoted to Lieutenant. The brigade staff took advantage of a number of captured pill boxes to establish their communication networks. Communication between front line units and headquarters was a continual problem and many battles were lost due to poor communication. In the First World War, front line communication was usually by telephone or telegraph. This system relied on cable being laid between the various posts. The cable was frequently cut by enemy artillery action and signallers were constantly repairing cables, often at night or under enemy fire. Advances with lightweight portable radio presented a possible solution and 4th Brigade headquarters was perhaps deploying such a device.
 
Statements to the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Inquiry Service recorded that on the morning of the 24thSeptember 1917, Will left the headquarters pill box for a short walk and was watching a group of signallers erecting a mobile wireless transmitter when a German 5.9” high explosive shell landed right on top of Will, blowing him, and two others to pieces. One witness stated that all that remained was a portion of his tunic with the tattered DCM ribbon attached. There was also a portion of Will’s paybook recovered which aided in identification. Such remains as were able to be gathered were placed on a blanket and the Brigade Major, Major Wilton supervised the burial of the remains and recorded a map reference. Given Adolphus Jones senior’s social standing, it appears that a number of senior 4th Brigade officers wrote to the house at Zillmere and Adolphus’ business office providing details of his son’s death.
 
Will’s personal effects, packed into his officer’s valise and kitbag were sent to his father at Zillmere. As an officer, Will was expected to have purchased his uniform from a London firm (ordinary soldiers were issued a uniform which was not their property) and this full kit, less the uniform items he was wearing when killed were forwarded to Will’s father. Adolphus paid the account for his son’s uniform. Unusually, because Will had named his father and Miss Bracewell of Gladstone as next of kin, the authorities in Melbourne provided official notification to both.
 
The scrap of tunic with the DCM ribbon attached was sent to Will’s mother. His father wrote to the authorities inquiring into the whereabouts of a set of field glasses and Will’s officer sword. The communications went back and forth until finally a rather exasperated staff officer sent a statement to Melbourne advising there was no record of Will having been issued with a sword (even though his kit contained a sword frog that is used to hang a sword from the belt) and if he did have field glasses, they were probably destroyed in the explosion. In due course, the Distinguished Conduct Medal that had yet to be presented was sent to Adolphus Jones along with Will’s campaign medals. Theodosia Jones was granted a pension of £1 per fortnight.
 
In spite of the efforts of Major Wilton in recording the location where Will’s remains were buried, they were never located. Will is one of 56,000 British and Dominion soldiers who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on the Portland Stone Tablets under the arches of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in Ypres. Since the 1930s, with only a brief interval during the German occupation during 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. The ceremony concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps
 
William Jones is also commemorated on the Memorial Gates at Marchant Park, Chermside and on the Kedron Shire Honour Roll. A wooden altar in St Matthias’ Church in Woodford was donated by Will’s uncle, Mr Whitman. It is uncertain if William ever was associated with Woodford but there is a tree dedicated to his memory in the Memorial Avenue at Woodford.