Montbrehain, Calvaire Cemetery

You are here >
Montbrehain, Calvaire Cemetery

See that his grave is nicely attended to

After the war the personal effects, including the bravery medals, of both Mahony and Fletcher were returned to their families. Then followed the official recognition of their wartime achievements – the issuing of their service medals. Each family received the official memorial scroll and bronze plaque sent to the families of every British and Empire serviceman or woman who had died on active service between 1914 and 1918. But what the parents of both men probably most cared about was the final resting place of their sons.

Tincourt British Cemetery [DVA]

Did they ever manage to go to Tincourt and Calvaire to see these graves? Both locations are well away from the battlefield tourist route further to the west which encompasses the fields of the Somme with their tragic memorials and cemeteries at places like Theipval. Again, few visitors miss going to Ieper (Ypres) in Belgium with its famous Menin Gate and nightly sounding of the Last Post. But only a few venture east of Péronne to where those last actions of the AIF took their toll on life and limb. The graves at Tincourt and Calvaire today, like every other soldier’s grave on the old Western Front, are well cared for on Australia’s behalf by the masons and gardeners of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. But in the immediate aftermath of the war what most families craved was some visible sign of the last resting place of their loved one, some final contact with them. The War Graves Commission and the Army arranged for photographs of the graves, still mainly wooden crosses at that stage, to be sent home to relatives requesting them.

But Captain John Mahony’s aunt in 1918 wanted something more tangible to be done for her dead nephew. She wrote to French General Paul Pau who was visiting Australia with an official delegation in the last months of the war:

Could you dear General in your goodness of heart, when you go back to France try to find out where he is buried and see that his grave is nicely attended to. We have a lot of beautifully descriptive letters of France written by him during his sojourn there. We are having them put into a book form.

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

The General courteously replied that he would do everything he could but one wonders how many similar letters he received during his time in Australia. The memory of these two friends, John Austin Mahony and John Harry Fletcher, was undoubtedly held close by their parents and immediate families until they too passed on. Like so many households all over Australia in the aftermath of that ‘Great War’ the photographs of the two boys probably graced the mantelpiece in the front room until all who knew and loved them had passed on:

[Left to right] Captain John Harry Fletcher MC (Military Cross), Lieutenant Joseph Lindley Scales MM, DSO (Distinguished Service Order) and Captain John Austin Mahony MC, all of the 24th Battalion, photographed in 1918. [AWM P03668.006]

Sometimes in the homes of the elderly,
Among the shabby, cherished possessions
You will find a framed photograph
Of a young man in quaint uniform.

Slouch-hatted, posing with a full gaze.
‘My brother Jim. He went to the war …’
And something in the aged voice conveys
The unspoken ‘and didn’t come home’ …

The minds wherein he is enshrined
As son, brother, neighbour friend, grow fewer.
Those brief, sliding minutes on the wharf
Have become sixty years.

Now in a musty room somewhere,
And old person makes a cup of tea
And a not-yet anonymous soldier
Stares out of the photograph.

From Peter Kocan, ‘Photograph’, in Geoff Page (ed),
Shadows on Wire: Poems and Photographs of the Great War, Australian War Memorial, 1983, PP.80 – 81

War memorial, Montbrehain, France.

Field near Montbrehain, France. [DVA]

Comrades through thick and thin

Captured the lot – the last VC in WWI

Two stricken homes

See that his grave is nicely attended to

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

© 2008 Department of Veterans' Affairs and Board of Studies NSW :: Last update - November 2008