Mourning card for Lieutenant Jack Jennings

Mourning card for Lt J E Jennings, courtesy of John Taylor

John Edgar (Jack) Jennings, who embarked with the 24 Inf Bn, was the son of a former Mayor of Essendon.    Jack fell at Bullecourt on 3 May 1917.  His name is included on the Villers-Bretonneux Memorial.  He was a highly regarded young man, and many tributes to him were published in the Essendon Gazette.

Cpl Horace Lang, lost in the Battle of Bullecourt, 1917

Australian troops prepare to attack at Bullecourt, May 1917.  Australian War Memorial Collection.

Horace Lang was a twenty-two year old clerk from North Street, Ascot Vale when he joined up  in March 1915. He arrived in the Middle East in time to see service on the Gallipoli Peninsual, and later took part in operations in France.  His brother Sergeant Thomas Lang of the NZEF subsequently died of illness in Cairo in 1918.  See Rod Martin's story of Horace Lang's part in the Great War.

He was only nineteen: Private Will Manderson

Rod Martin tells the story of young Will Manderson, a 'Fair Dinkum', who enlisted at the age of 18, and who died at the age of 19.  His body was removed from its original burial site to the one above at Queant Road Cemetery, Buissy,  France.

Pte Frank Archer - Missing In Action, Bullecourt, 1917

Dora Archer's husband kept her well supplied with letters and postcards (such as the one above) while he was away on Active Service, but one day the letters stopped coming.  Rod Martin tells Dora's poignant story here.

Did this man die at Bullecourt?

Why did George Abbott enlist in 1915, and then desert?  Why did he rejoin the army under another name, George T Connors, and desert again?

Rod Martin asks these questions and more in his new article "Private George Abbott - the man who wasn't there?"

When George Connors was released from a one month prison sentence in August 1916, the MPs picked him up as George Abbott and returned him to training. 

Who was he really?