Served at Gallipoli 1915 and Palestine 1916-1918.
The name C J Upton, appears on the honour board of Auburn Public School, the Auburn Municipality Honour Roll 1914-1919, and the First World War honour roll of St Philip’s Anglican Church Auburn. Initially, no service records for a C J Upton could be found online in the National Archives of Australia. It turned out, 739 Cecil John Upton did indeed attend Auburn Public School and he did serve under that name in the AIF, enlisting in November 1914 and serving for over four years, first on Gallipoli and then in the Middle East in a machine gun brigade of the Light Horse. His father was Sydney John Upton, a distant relative of Auburn Memorial man Lieutenant Selwyn Upton but his father and mother had only married in 1908, just before his mother, Jane Hennessy died.
In December 1919, his father and mother deceased, Cecil filed a statutory declaration stating his real name was Cecil John Hennessy and henceforth he wished to be known by that name. All the military records were changed over, but clearly, no one informed the various committees responsible for the listing of names on memorials in Auburn.