James Thomas (“Ginger” at school, also “Jimmy”) Jones

• Matriculated: Did not matriculate

• Born: 28 October 1896

• Died: 24 August 1917

• Regiment: London Regiment

• Grave/Memorial: Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery: XVI.A.15

Family background

b. 28 October 1896 in Bromley, Kent. Third and youngest son of David Rees Jones (1866–1945) and Mary Jones (née Jones) (1865–1943) (m. 1890). In 1901 the family was living at 47, Aberfeldy Street, Bromley, London E14 (two lodgers and no servants); in 1911 it was living at 26, Ludwick Road, Deptford, London SE14 (no lodgers or servants); and by 1916 it was living at 13, Amersham Grove, New Cross, London SE14.

Parents and antecedents

Jones’s paternal grandfather was John Jones (b. 1837), a carpenter, of Nantcwnlle in Cardiganshire; and his maternal grandfather was a sailor of Henfynyw, Cardiganshire. At some time Jones’s father and mother moved to London and were married in St Saviour’s Southwark in 1890. In the 1891 census they lived in Limehouse and he was a dairyman, and in 1901 a carpenter’s labourer. But by 1911 he had become a tram conductor, and by the time of Jones’s commission in 1915, he had been promoted to a London County Council Tramways Depôt Inspector.

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) John David (1891–1964); married (1920) Caroline Susan Davies (1896–1985); one son;

(2) Enoch Aeron (1893–1959); married (1924) Kathleen Edith Hill (1898–1997); two daughters;

(3) Hannah Jane Ellen (b. c.1898–1956), later Lowe after her marriage in 1929 to Walter Davenport Lowe (1903–78).

John David began his professional life as an insurance clerk and worked in the Limehouse area of Middlesex. After the outbreak of war, he, like his two brothers, joined the 1/20th (County of London) Battalion, London Regiment (Blackheath and Woolwich Rifles). He began as a Private, was promoted Corporal, went to France on 9 October 1915, was wounded by the same shell which killed his brother on 24 August 1917, and ended the war as a Temporary Second Lieutenant. After the war he became a schoolmaster.

At the time of the 1911 Census Caroline Susan Davies was a milliner’s assistant; she was the daughter of James Arthur Davies (1864–1939), a shopkeeper (oil and colours) in Deptford but from Llanbadarn in Cardiganshire.

Enoch Aeron also enlisted as a Private in the 1/20th (County of London) Battalion, London Regiment (Blackheath and Woolwich Rifles), at Blackheath on 23 October 1915, but was discharged on 28 June 1916 because a badly set broken tibia (acquired when playing football at Aberystwyth on 5 February 1913) had left him lame and unsuitable for the Army, even as a clerk. He subsequently became a schoolmaster. His wife was the daughter of a cashier at a fruit broker’s.

Walter Davenport Lowe was a bank official.

Education

Jones attended Brockley Secondary School, Adelaide Avenue, London SE4, from c.1907 to 1911 and St Olave’s Grammar School (founded 1561), near Tower Bridge, Southwark, London, from September 1912 to July 1915, where he became School Captain and Captain of both the Football and the Cricket XIs. He was elected to a Demyship in Natural Science at Magdalen in 1915 but did not matriculate.

War service

On 4 October 1915 Jones joined the Inns of Court Officers’ Training Corps (“The Devil’s Own”), one of the Junior Division OTCs that had been selected to train suitable candidates as officers by means of a four-week course, and served in No. 6 and No. 1 Companies. On 4 February 1916 he applied for a commission with the 3/5th (Reserve) Battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, but after being rejected for that Regiment on 28 February, he was accepted for the 3/20th (Reserve) Battalion of the London Regiment on 13 April 1916 and commissioned Second Lieutenant on probation in that unit with effect from 15 July 1916 (London Gazette, no. 29,674, 18 July 1916, p. 7,206). At some point after that, Jones must have been transferred into the 1/20th (County of London) Battalion, the London Regiment (Blackheath and Woolwich Rifles), in which his older brother was already serving.

The Battalion had been raised at Blackheath in south-east London on 4 August 1914 and was sent to France in March 1915 as part of the 5th (London) Brigade in the 2nd (London) Division (Territorial Force). On 11 May 1915, the Battalion became part of 141st Brigade, in the 47th (1/2nd London) Division (TF), and served alongside 11 other London Battalions. The 47th Division, including 141st Brigade, was involved in the attack on Flers-Courcelette on 15 September 1916, when tanks were used for the first time (see H.R. Bell), and on 14 September the 1/20th Battalion was positioned in the north-east corner of Mametz Wood, waiting for the attack on the following day. Although 141st Brigade managed to take and hold High Wood (see J.B. Hichens and J.A.P. Parnell), the 1/20th Battalion suffered heavy casualties – 13 officers and 250 other ranks (ORs) killed wounded or missing. We do not know exactly when Jones joined the Battalion in France since its War Diary rarely mentions names. But his medal card says that he arrived in France on 21 September 1917, which is almost certainly a misprint for 21 September 1916, when the Battalion needed replacement officers and ORs after the losses it had incurred at Flers. When he finally arrived, he became a subaltern in ‘B’ Company.

On 27 September 1916, in the lead-up to the Battle of Transloy Ridge (1–18 October 1916), Jones’s Battalion was back in the north-east corner of Mametz Wood, and on 1 October, with the 2nd New Zealand Brigade on their right and the 50th (Northumbrian) Division on their left, the 1/20th Battalion, supported by two tanks, attacked north-north-eastwards in four waves, advanced a good seven miles, and passed through the village of Warlencourt-Eaucourt l’Abbaye, three miles to the south-east of Bapaume on the D929, without difficulty; two days later, other Battalions of 47th Division linked up with the 1/20th Battalion and consolidated the capture of that village. So on 4 October the Battalion was withdrawn to Black Wood, near Albert, and allowed to rest for three days before being sent back to Mametz Wood in reserve. On 8 October 1916, the Battalion was pulled back about seven miles west-south-westwards to Franvillers, north of Corbie, where it rested for a week until it marched back to Albert on 14 October and entrained for the Ypres Salient. It arrived finally at Godewaersvelde, in northern France, just below the Franco-Belgian border, on 17 October, marched the six miles north-eastwards to Poperinghe, where it spent the night of 20/21 October, before doing a 19-day stint in unidentified trenches somewhere in the Ypres Salient “which were found to be very wet and in a very bad state of repair”.

For the next six months, the Battalion War Diary refers to places only via code names and code words, but Jones’s Battalion seems to have spent the period from 18 November 1916 to 12 April 1917 in trenches and billets that were in a very cratered area, not far from Hill 60 and Dickebusch, and opposite Germans who, in February 1917, were declared “inactive”. On 12 April 1917 the Battalion was in Steenvoorde, seven miles south-west of Poperinghe and just over the border in northern France, and for the next eight weeks it was mainly in barracks in Ypres. After that Jones’s Battalion was in billets for six weeks at or near Blaringhem, some seven miles south-east of St-Omer, and from 1 to 15 August 1917, i.e. during the first two weeks of the Third Battle of Ypres (28 July–10 November 1917) it was in the trenches at Ridge Wood, near Voormezele, about two miles south of Ypres. It then withdrew for a few days to Quelmes, about six miles west-south-west of St-Omer, before being sent to the trenches on Bellewaerde Ridge in the Ypres Salient, just south of Hooge (see B. Pawle) where it was heavily shelled for days on end and took casualties.

Jones, who had become the Commanding Officer of ‘C’ Company, was mortally wounded in the head by a shell fragment during the shelling on 24 August 1917 while standing outside his Company dugout with a group of other men that included one of his brothers, probably John David. Whereas the latter’s wound was relatively light, Jones never regained consciousness and died of wounds received in action at Westhoek, near Hooge, aged 20, later in the day in an ambulance car en route to a Casualty Clearing Station. In the evening, the Battalion was relieved by the 24th (County of London) Battalion (The Queen’s) and returned to billets. He is buried in Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Poperinghe, Grave XVI.A.15. The inscription reads: “Hyn a allodd hwn efe a I gwnaeth” (“He did all that was expected of him”).

A long and remarkable obituary of Jones appeared in The Olavian, all of which is reproduced here:

Jimmy Jones, for that was the name by which everybody quickly came to know him, won his way with singular rapidity into all our hearts, and few successes ever caused more general pleasure than this. For, like nearly all our Captains, he was distinguished in games, and acted as Captain both in Football and Cricket. The School had had no finer, “more dashing” back in the Football Eleven. He was sent here together with George Ernest Mann (1891–1915) [kia on 1 October 1915 during the Battle of Loos while serving as a Private in the 7th Battalion, The Norfolk Regiment] by Mr W.J. Addis, the Head Master of Brockley Secondary School, where both boys had held Junior County Council Scholarships for some years. Their course here was parallel, for they entered the Matriculation Class in September 1912 and left in July 1915, Mann with a Cambridge Scholarship, and James with a Demyship of £80 at Magdalen College, Oxford. We were informed that in that examination Jones was practically top of all the candidates. He joined the Inns of Court O.T.C. in September [recte October] 1915, and gained his commission in the London Regiment in July of the following year.

Exceedingly shy, if not timid, on his entrance into the School, he retained till the day of his leaving a certain diffidence which was perhaps the chief weakness he had to be urged to cure. A want of faith in his own powers led him at times into gloomy prognostications as to his University chances, but his self-distrust was gradually breaking down owing in part to the general trust that was reposed in him and the falsification of his own fears. It was partly perhaps due to his natural diffidence that he became fond of committing himself to paper, and the series of long letters the present writer had from him from the time when he succeeded Laurie Neal as tenant of a bed at [nearby] Guy’s [Hospital], was of continually increasing interest, and of unfailing humour. Few boys ever had a more encouraging series of terminal reports. Here is a quotation from the last: “A useful Captain and one who would shrink perhaps, but would not fail to do his duty. He has been a thoroughly good and increasingly powerful influence in the School, and I regret for the School’s sake that he must now leave it.”

His growth was rapid, his ripening complete. His glad consciousness that he was doing his utmost in a cause that thrilled him by its greatness and the greatness of its issues was obvious and unconcealed on his last leave in the summer. It was so great that one observer thought it unnatural, and suspected febrile excitement from some nervous shock. There was nothing of that kind behind it. But it was the happy revulsion from the heartsickness of hope deferred. The year before he had been writing: “Five months in the army and still no nearer to getting into the firing line makes me feel like an absolute shirker, and yet I can do nothing.” Teddy Cock [Edwin James Cock, killed in action on 28 May 1915 while serving as a Private with the 2nd Battalion, The Buffs (The East Kent Regiment), no known grave] – so different in so many ways from Jimmy – was sick with the same longing and glad with the same gladness when the time for action came. But Teddy was called away [i.e. killed] in the first blast of battle: Jimmy lived to fight and prove his mettle in the fray and make himself a leader beloved. The testimonies to his worth from his Commanding Officer and others are very striking: “A better, nobler, braver, straighter fellow never lived”; “The best-known and best-loved officer the battalion has ever had”; “I can pay no higher compliment to him than [to] say that he was a man in the true sense of the word. Never at any time did he fail to keep the high standard of living taught him in his home life. In the field he was one of the bravest men I have ever seen, and the fine example he set did much to cheer his men up and help them along in many unpleasant moments. It did not matter how small it was, and how much it might inconvenience himself, if there was anything he could do for the comfort of his men it was done. He was, indeed, a fine example of the true British officer, and his men would have followed him anywhere.”

Yes, there was a womanly tenderness about him as well as a great strength and courage. And it was natural that he should win confidence and friendship. His nature expanded with responsibility and kindled in the presence of danger and the possibility of helpfulness. The writer must be pardoned for recalling his last sight of Jimmy. The taxi drive had come to an end. And Jimmy spent his last few moments in an unexpected burst of solicitude for his Head Master’s health. And the wistful affectionateness of his words and his look are a possession that will be treasured till the end.

It is good to know that though – as the phrase goes – he died of wounds, he had no lingering pain and probably no pain at all. A shell burst near a little group in which he and an elder brother were standing. Both were wounded, Jimmy fatally. But the fragment that killed him struck his head, and he never regained consciousness. It is good also to know that “some men pluckily carried him away in full view of the enemy under shelter of a white flag, which, fortunately for once, the enemy respected”. He was then taken off in an ambulance car, and died before reaching the [Casualty] Clearing Station. So after a short life, nobly lived and nobly surrendered, the seventh of our Captains passed on to join the great company of those who, like them, hating war, have accepted war that war may be no more known upon earth, but that we and our country and the world may have peace.

The following tribute comes from a School contemporary:

There is a power of suggestion and of poignancy in a view of the back which has attracted the mind of poets and painters from long ages. There is the instance of Agamemnon turning away from the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia; there is the instance of the man “who had great possessions” and who was brought up against reality by a few simple words of truth; and there are those other great pictures of Watts [George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was an English painter and sculptor who was associated with the Symbolist movement and who is best-known for such allegorical works as Hope and Love and Life], each with their lesson. It is perhaps something above art and psychology: it is inspiration, half-hinting at things too big to be uncovered.

I have in mind a pencil sketch of Jimmy Jones done by a friend whom he had helped through the latter’s first experience of night-patrol – just a haphazard sketch, but rightly chosen – that has caught something of the rather ungainly, strong-legged figure with the shoulders stooping slightly; and the back is turned as he goes out to No Man’s Land.

It was drawn only a little while before his death, and has its significance; and on seeing it I had something of the old wonder as at Stogs with Jimmy perhaps strolling along in front of me, hands in his pocket, across the fields – “How would he look if I whistled him to turn?”

There would be surface-waters of playfulness, I felt, and of shy whimsical mirth; but beneath were the depths of half-awkward silence and of firm purpose, together with a good obstinacy and high resolve.

Jimmy was Captain of the School and captain of the football eleven from 1914 to 1915. That was an outstanding achievement for one who had only entered the School a brief two or three years before. Indeed, he might almost have effaced himself and much of his sterling work by his reticence, were it not for his frolic humour and unaffected ways which had won the affection of us all. “Ginger” is a catching name and a sure mark. It may be a friendly name and a pleasant mark of warm regard: and you knew how the School meant it in Jimmy’s case when they shouted it and cheered it loudest on the Sports’ ground.

Many of us must have watched him on that ground, especially at the starting of a footer match: very quiet and a little nervous, but scarcely tense or even alert; and you probably under-estimated your man. Give him five minutes, however, and you would have picked him out from the ruck of the players and noted him mentally as the man to keep your eye on. It would be difficult to beat him for his strenuous and untiring efforts. Keen watchfulness, ready resource, a cheerful courage and an inspiring lead – these were all his. And then if you had a heart and a voice in you, you would have cheered a direct tackle that meant a complete saving of the situation; and next – defence swiftly changed to assault, and Jimmy off up the field with ball still miraculously at his feet and the forwards in line with him. It was good to have such a player with you.

There was much that was wistful about him, too, and occasionally he unveiled things ordinarily hidden but always strongly felt: for his was a playful, sunny character, but with a very steady undercurrent of seriousness and of reserved feeling.

I’m thinking again of that little sketch, and I’m somehow waiting for Jimmy to turn. I know it would be the same jolly smile, and there would be a good clean grip of the hand. There would be something more. Words yet unspoken might still remain unspoken; and he might blush quickly and keep silent; but I think we should understand quite fully then. Yes, that shall be some future day.

L.E.N.

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

Printed sources

[Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 36, no. 1 (19 October 1917), p. 9.

L.E.N., ‘James Thomas Jones’ [obituary], The Olavian, 22, no. 4 (November 1917), pp. 255–8.

Errington (1922), p. 220.

McCarthy (1998), pp. 105 and 124–30.

Archival sources:

WO95/2738.

WO374/38353.