John Robert Skinner

Service number: 777

Rank: Lance Sergeant

Unit: 3rd Battalion (Infantry)

Service: Australian Army

Date of death: 6 August 1915

Cause of death: Killed in action

Cemetery or memorial details: Lone Pine Memorial, Turkey

War Grave Register notes:

SKINNER, Lce. Serjt. John Robert, 777. 3rd Bn. Killed in action 6th/12th Aug., 1915. Age 21. Son of Clara Skinner, of 7 Ashburner St., Manly, New South Wales, and the late John Manly Skinner. 19.

Source: AWM145 Roll of Honour cards, 1914-1918 War, Army

John Skinner was born at Manly in 1894. He was a carpenter to trade.

He enlisted on 22 August 1914 and embarked on the Euripides on 20 October 1914. He served at Gallipoli and was promoted first to corporal then to lance-sergeant on 23 June 1915. He was in an attack on the Turkish trenches at Lone Pine on 6th August. A later Court of Inquiry heard that he was shot down in the third line of enemy trenches.

A letter printed in the Manly Daily in 1915 by Private J H Collins stated: “A man named Sergeant Skinner from Manly was killed.”