Contributed by Ron Inglis, April 2022:
John Poxon was a native of Osmaston, Derby, England. Before migrating to Australia, he had completed a 7-year apprenticeship as a wagon builder with the Midland Railway Company. John was married to Agnes Poxon of Argyle, Livingstone Road, Lidcombe. They had one child, Una Poxon.
Poxon put in an application to enlist in the AIF at Lidcombe in February 1916, but he did not sign up until 10 April 1916 at the Liverpool Camp. He declared his age to be ’28 9/12’. Private Poxon spent seven months and 21 days in Australian training camps before embarking on the Orsova on 1 December 1916.
Following the 11-week journey to the United Kingdom, Poxon spent another seven months in the Australian Training Camps on the Salisbury Plain of England before crossing to France and being taken on strength of the Australian Light Trench Mortar Battery on 5 October 1917.
Poxon survived the harsh northern winter of 1917-1918 in Belgium and was then brought down with the rest of the Australian forces to the valley of the Somme, to defend the city of Amiens. Poxon received shrapnel wounds to his left arm, leg and face on 27 August 1918. He died of his wounds the next day. Originally buried in a battlefield plot, his body was reinterred in the Daours Communal Cemetery Extension. His wife chose the inscription: BELOVED HUSBAND OF AGNES AND FATHER OF UNA FAITHFUL TILL DEATH.
The Daours Extension, near the town of Corbie in the valley of the Somme, contains five Auburn Anzacs, all casualties of actions in the last year of the war: Private John Poxon, Driver Henry Hodgkinson, Private Reginald Cracknell, Private Leslie Power and Signaller Alwyn Dawes. It site has a greater representation of Australian units than any other Western Front cemetery. Almost every infantry battalion is represented as well as Army Service Corps, Machine-Gun Corps, Field Artillery, Field Ambulance, Engineers, Pioneers, Trench Mortar batteries and Light Horse.
John Poxon is honoured on the following memorials in Australia:
- Private John Poxon Memorial Window, Auburn
- Lidcombe War Memorial
- Auburn Presbyterian Church First World War Honour Roll
- Auburn Presbyterian Church First World War Memorial Window
- NSW Government Railways and Tramways, First World War Roll of Honour, Central Station
- Roll of Honour Australian War Memorial Canberra