The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (415032) Warrant Officer Clifford Cecil Jones, No. 467 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, Second World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Troy Clayton, the story for this day was on (415032) Warrant Officer Clifford Cecil Jones, No. 467 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force, Second World War.

415032 Warrant Officer Clifford Cecil Jones, No. 467 Squadron, Royal Australian Air Force
KIA 8 July 1944

Today we remember and pay tribute to Warrant Officer Clifford Cecil Jones.

Clifford Jones was born to Abraham and Elizabeth Jones on 18 July 1920 in the Brisbane suburb of Windsor. The family moved around a lot, and as a young man he also lived in South Australia and Western Australia. Growing up, he had an older brother, Graham, and their father was a minister with the Congregational Church.

Clifford was educated at King’s College in Kensington Park, South Australia, and at Fremantle Boys’ School in Western Australia. After taking the public service exam in 1939, he worked as a clerk in the Chief Secretary’s Department in Perth.

Jones enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on 23 June 1941, at the age of 20. He trained as a navigator, and in May 1942 was made sergeant. He embarked for overseas service from Brisbane on 21 April 1943, arriving in Canada in May. As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme he was one of almost 27,000 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined Australian and British squadrons in Britain throughout the course of the war.

Jones underwent months of training in Canada, and in May 1943 was promoted to flight sergeant. The next month he left for the UK. Further specialist training followed and in May 1944 he was made warrant officer. On 6 June he was posted to No. 467 Squadron, RAAF. As part of Bomber Command, the squadron flew the four-engined Avro Lancaster heavy bomber.

On the night of 7 July, Bomber Command launched a major raid on the flying bomb storage sites at St Leu d’Esserent in France. Jones was the navigator aboard Lancaster “PO-U”, which took off shortly before 10.30 pm.

Cloud cover meant that the bombers had to fly lower to see the target, and as a result 31 Lancaster were shot down by enemy fire. One of the aircraft that did not return to base was Jones’s Lancaster, which crashed at the town of Courgent, about 95 kilometres south-west of the target. There were no survivors.

Those killed with Warrant Officer Jones were Australians Flying Officer Phillip Ryan, Flight Sergeants Verne Cockroft, Leonard Porritt, and James Steffan, and Sergeant William Killworth, and British Sergeant George Hayes.
The airmen were buried by the townspeople in a moving ceremony, and after the war the remains of Warrant Officer Jones were identified and reinterred there under the inscription: “A son and brother beloved and ever remembered.”

He was 23 years old.

The locals at Courgent [pron. Coor-jon] held annual ceremonies at the cemetery for years afterwards in honour of the killed airmen, and a monument was erected there in 1951.

Warrant Officer Clifford Jones’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with some 40,000 others from the Second World War. His photograph is displayed beside the Pool of Reflection.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Warrant Officer Clifford Cecil Jones, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Christina Zissis
Editor, Military History Section