Corporal Arthur Balshaw Jones

Arthur Balshaw Jones was a school teacher in Victoria at the time he enlisted in the AIF on 13 July 1915, aged 19 years. He embarked from Port Melbourne on 11 September 1916, on HMAT Euripides, and disembarked in Plymouth on 20 October 1916. He initially joined the 5th Battalion, and later, in mid-1917, the 39th Battalion; he was promoted from Private to Corporal in May 2017. Notably he received First Class (Distinguished) qualifications at the 7th Rifle Course, held at the Australian School of Musketry in Tidworth, in February 2017. A few months later, in May 2017, at the nearby Southern Command Bombing School in Lyndhurst, Jones extended his technical skill in handling musketry, and created a highly detailed munitions sketchbook profiling 13 different grenades, including the Mills Hand Grenade, the Hales Rifle Percussion Grenade, the Mills, Pippin, and Sangster Rifle Grenades, and various German equivalents. At this time he was stationed with the 2nd Victorian Training Battalion (V.T.B.). The following month, in late June, Jones joined the 39th Battalion in France, where he remained in the field until March 1918. He then returned to England, as staff with the Australian School of Musketry in Tidworth. On 12 December 1918 Jones Returned to Australia. He was discharged on 22 February 1919. He died at age 55 years, on 22 July 1951.