People profiles
Captain Clarence Smith Jeffries VC
P09373.001
Date of birth: 26 October 1894
Place of birth: Wallsend, NSW
Date of death: 12 October 1917
Place of death: Passchendaele, Belgium
The 9th Australian Brigade suffered bitter losses in its ill-fated attack on Passchendaele on 12 October 1917. Before he became one of the officers killed there, Clarence "Jeff" Jeffries had led attacks on German machine-gun posts, capturing several guns and killing or capturing their crews.
Jeffries was just 22 and his family was well known in the Newcastle region, where he had been a mining surveyor on the state's northern coalfields. After the war his father went to Belgium and for a while personally led an ultimately successful search for his grave.
