John Thomas GOODFELLOW

John Thomas Goodfellow was born in Yungaburra or Cairns Queensland, 17 April 1895 to John Goodfellow from Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland and Margaret Warren from Galway, Ireland. John and Margaret married in Bogantungan, Queensland 1 January 1882.  They had another five children; Francis born 1882 died 1884, John Frances born 1884 died 1885, Elizabeth born 1886, Margaret born 1888 and Mary Agnes born 1892. John Thomas’s father John died 20 November 1900. By 1903 Margaret and the children were living in Cairns where John attended the Cairns State School.

On his enlistment in Townsville he was 21 years 6 months, his occupation an ironmonger. His mother, Mrs. Margaret Goodfellow of Yungaburra, (changed to Minnie Street, Cairns), is named as his next of kin. His height was 5 feet 6 ½ inches, weighed 8 stone 5 pounds with fair complexion, blue eyes and light brown hair. Before joining the AIF, John had served in the Citizen Forces.

John Thomas Goodfellow embarked on the HMAT Kyarra and arrived in Plymouth on 30 January 1917.

John Thomas was taken on strength to France 1 June 1917 and was killed in action in Belgium on the 1 November 1917 in the third battle for Ypres, the Battle of Passchendaele. John does not have a grave, but he is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Flanders, Belgium. In his will he left everything to his mother.

” In Flanders Fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row.

That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amind the guns below.

Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae; Punch Magazine, 1915