JOYCE, Joshua James (1874-1915).JPG)
J J Joyce (War Service)
Joshua James Joyce was born in Geelong on 14 August 1874, the seventh born of twelve children of Robert James Joyce and Harriett, nee Bowen he was educated at the College, enrolling there on 30 August 1888.
He volunteered for service with the Tasmanian forces (No. 197), 1 Battalion Australian Commonwealth Horse and 2nd Imperial Bushmen Contingent, in the Anglo-South African War, where he was wounded and repatriated to Tasmania. He re-enlisted and returned to that theatre, serving with the 4th Imperial Bushman Contingent till the end of the war. He spent time in Western Australia with his brother, working as a miner, prior to re-enlisting at Pinjarra at the outbreak of the Great War, on 19 August 1914, serving with B Company 11 Battalion, a Western Australian-based unit, and embarked at Fremantle on
HMAT A11 Ascanius on 2 November 1914.
He had claimed that on the day of the Landing he was part of a group that penetrated further inland than any others. Lance Corporal Joyce was killed, aged 42, by a sniper on 9 July 1915, while extending a sap at Silt Spur, and buried initially at Victoria Gully Cemetery. These graves were relocated at the end of the war to Lone Pine Cemetery, his grave details being I.H.4. His epitaph reads:
‘HE GAVE ALL FOR HIS COUNTRY
AND BESTOWED HONOUR ON HIS KIN’
Sources: 'Geelong Collegians at the Great War' compiled by J Affleck. p57 (citing Australian War Memorial; Commonwealth War Graves Commission; Photo Pegasus August 1915.)