John Langford Naylor (also known as Jack) was born in St Arnaud in August 1893 to George Naylor (Stawell) and Margaret Jean Naylor (nee Leach) originally from Barkly. 

The family, including a daughter Vivia, relocated to Stawell where Margaret died of illness. Jack was only three and his sister was five. 

His father then remarried Margaret Elizabeth Delaney from Ararat and they went on to have five children, also raising the two from George’s previous marriage. 

The Delaney family were pioneers to Ararat and the Naylors had been in Stawell since the early mining days as George’s father John Dudley Naylor was a mining engineer as well as Mayor of Stawell for a term.

Jack was involved with football and his name appears in the Rupanyup under 14s between 1911 and 1912. 

He was a volunteer fire fighter in Stawell, employed at the Moonlight Mine Battery in Darlington Road and in 1915, he worked as a blacksmith in Stawell just prior to enlisting in the AIF which he did on July 24, 1915 at age 22.

On December 29, 1915 Private John Langford Naylor left Australia having joined the 13th Rifles 8th Battalion and had previously trained in both Broadmeadows and Warrnambool before embarkation. 

For the next three years he represented his country many times in fierce battle and trench warfare, excluding leave taken in London and two visits to hospital and rehabilitation units, but he never returned to Australia.  

In an early morning raid on August 23, 1918 just three months short of the end of WW1, Private Naylor was wounded in action at Rouen and moved to a casualty clearing station where he was regarded as seriously ill. 

He was then transported to the hospital ship ‘Guildford Castle’ where he died a few days later on August 28, 1918 before the ship reached England. He was buried in the Netley British Military Cemetery on September 2, 1918 in a military funeral.  

I visited the Netley Military Cemetery in Southampton, England and found his resting place in beautiful wooded grounds just behind Netley Victoria Park’s impressive Chapel and, in the recently refurbished Chapel Museum, a photo of Private John Langford Naylor and a brief story of his life. 

His name is also listed on the Honour Roll at St Mary’s Primary School in Ararat as well as on the Epitaph in Stawell and the newly-erected WW1 Stawell Avenue of Honour in Patrick Street.

Among his belongings which were sent home to Stawell to his father George Naylor there was ‘one pipe’.