Jack Emanuel Barnston
Rifleman, Rifle Brigade
Service number: 6970504
Died 17 Feb 1940
Buried Dover Jewish Cemetery, United Kingdom
Age 18
Jack was born on 15 January 1922 in Marylebone, London to Montague, a bank clerk and Queenie nee Rosenbaum and he had two younger siblings, Eve and David. The family surname was originally Barnstein and this was changed legally before Montague’s marriage to Queenie in January 1921. Jack attended Marylebone Grammar school between 1932 and 1938 before enlisting into the Rifle Brigade at the age of seventeen.
Jack was a cadet, training at an officer’s training unit at Shorncliffe Camp, Folkestone in Kent. He was not making satisfactory progress and was given several chances. His commanding officer gave him the choice of remaining or going to other unit and on return to his barracks he told a friend ‘he was stuck here for another 18 months on clerical duties’. Tragically, Jack took his own life and the inquest found he had shot himself whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed.