John (‘Jack’) Fullarton Aarons was born in December 1881 to Annie (née Hart) and Solomon Aarons, at Hillston near Orange, NSW. The family moved to Victoria and then to Western Australia, where Jack worked as a storeman and despatch clerk. He married Marion (née Allpress), living at 6 Kings Road, Subiaco.

He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 10 July 1916, aged 34, at Blackboy Hill and embarked aboard HMAT Argyllshire on 9 November 1916, as No. 2868 Pte John Aarons, with the 7th Reinforcements of the 51st Battalion, arriving in England 10 January 1917. After further training, he went to France in April 1917, where his younger brother, Lieutenant Daniel Sidney Aarons*, arranged for Jack to join him in the 16th Battalion - part of the 4th Infantry Brigade of the AIF 4th Division on the Western Front. The battalion took part in the later stages of the Battle of Messines in Flanders, Belgium, during June 1917. He was photographed (attached) standing beside the original grave marker of 5392 Pte Thomas James Manners (KiA 4/10/1916) 16Bn, near Ypres.

On 11 July 1917, Jack was having a cup of hot cocoa inside a YMCA dugout in a quiet sector of Ploegsteert Wood, when a rogue bomb hit the dugout and he was mortally wounded. Jack was taken to No.2 Australian Casualty Clearing Station Steenwerck, just across the French border, but died shortly after. Daniel arranged for a temporary grave marker in the shape of a Star of David (pictured) - notwithstanding his brother had enlisted ‘C of E’. Marion chose the inscription on her husband Jack’s permanent headstone, “He died as he lived / honourable, true & bold” - located in Trois Arbres Cemetery, Steenwerck, France.

*Daniel had just been awarded a Military Cross for action during operations near Reincourt on the Hindenburg Line in April 1917 and was, coincidentally, promoted in the field to Captain on the same day his brother, Jack, died. Captain Daniel Aarons is pictured, being stretchered to a First Aid Post in Belgium, likely October 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele. He earned a Bar to his Military Cross for gallantry and leadership near Hebuterne, France, in March/April of 1918.