Montbrehain, Calvaire Cemetery

You are here >
Montbrehain, Calvaire Cemetery

Two stricken homes

After his work in the village Lieutenant Ingram went, with a tank, in search of his battalion’s left-flanking company under Captain John Fletcher. He found them pinned down by heavy fire at the north-western end of Montbrehain. Another tank suppressed one of the machine guns but Lieutenant John Gear was killed leading an attack. German guns were firing at the tanks and Captain Fletcher died from the explosion of one of those shells. His acting commanding officer stated simply for the record:

At Montbrehain, east of Peronne, at about 9 a.m. on the 5th of October 1918 Capt. J Fletcher was instantly killed by an enemy 77m shell.

John Harry Fletcher, personal dossier, http://naa12.naa.gov.au/

Montbrehain, after its capture by the Australian troops, France, October 1918. [AWM E03774]

The tank was destroyed by this shell and, as all the company officers had either been killed or wounded, the men stayed for the time being where they were.

Meanwhile, Captain John Mahony’s company had advanced into the village. There they were met by local people who had been hiding in cellars. These, according to Charles Bean, were mostly old people and young girls. One elderly man ‘wandered up the street without helmet or gas mask, saying ‘Anglais, bon, bon!’ The fact that he had been liberated by Australians escaped his notice. Mahony came up and started selecting positions for defensive posts – ‘As he stood in full view a machine-gun bullet passed through his temple’. At this point, a German counter attack temporarily forced the Australians back from the cemetery and the orchards on the outskirts of Montbrehain and from the village centre.

German dead beside their machine gun near France, October 1918. [AWM E03547]

Captain Mahony, fatally wounded, was evacuated to well behind the lines towards Tincourt village where there was a Casualty Clearing Station. He had been wounded at 8 am, one hour before his friend John Fletcher had been killed. The bullet which had entered John Mahony’s skull severed an artery and he died near Tincourt on 9 October 1918. A newspaper report imagined the coming of the news of these two deaths to their respective homes in Victoria:

Then came the tragic and pathetic day when the blow fell, followed by the dread message flashed under the sea, and over the land, to two stricken homes, ‘Officially reported, Captain J H Fletcher, killed in action 5/10/18’, ‘Officially reported, Captain J A Mahony, killed in action 5/10/18’. Verily these sons of Australia … ‘were pleasant and lovely in their lives’ and in ‘death they were not divided’.

Unsourced newspaper article, late 1918, John Austin Mahony, personal dossier, http://naa12.naa.gov.au/

Grave of Captain John Mahony, 24th Battalion AIF, Tincourt British Cemetery, Tincourt, France.

However, in death they were divided. While Captain Fletcher’s grave is in Calvaire Cemetery, Captain Mahony’s body lies in Tincourt British Cemetery, about 7 kilometres east of Péronne, in Plot 7, Row A, Grave 20.

A letter from John Mahony’s aunt, Mrs Dwyer of Wangaratta, Victoria, described him in these words:

We are all broken hearted, especially his mother, to think that on the eve of Peace, he was Called Away. But as it was God’s Holy Will, and he was such a good true boy, it is pleasing to remember him as never doing an injustice to anyone.

Letter, J Dwyer, Wangaratta, to General Paul Pau, 7 December 1918, John Austin Mahony, personal dossier, http://naa12.naa.gov.au/

Montbrehain, France. [DVA]

Calvaire Cemetery, Montbrehain

Grave of Captain John Fletcher, 24th Battalion AIF, Calvaire Cemetery, Montbrehain. [DVA]

Captain John Harry Fletcher lies close to where he died in Calvaire Cemetery, Montbrehain, Plot A, Grave 11. The cemetery, which is close to the municipal cemetery, is at the end of a side road clearly signposted in the middle of the village.

John Fletcher’s father was proud of him. On Captain Fletcher’s Honour Roll Circular, now in the Australian War Memorial, he recorded the fact that his son had completed his first year of university, interrupted no doubt by war; risen to be a captain; had attended an army school at Aldershot, England, for further promotion; and that he had had two cousins also killed in the war in Gallipoli and France. Most sadly of all, perhaps, Mr Fletcher wrote that his son had perished ‘on last day of 24th’s fighting at Montbrehain’. A report of John Fletcher’s time at Aldershot talks of him as ‘cheerful’, ‘reliable’, ‘keen’ and ‘sensible’.

Montbrehain, Calvaire Cemetery

Two stricken homes

This site is being added to progressively. See the Updates page for new regular additions.