By GARRY HOWE
THEY were best mates who enlisted together, fought side by side and died on the same day as captains leading their men in one of the last decisive battles of the Great War.
The tragic tale of the two captains, Harry Fletcher and John Mahony, was widely reported at the time.
Gazette readers were already familiar with Captain Fletcher, who a few months before his death had written to his brother Robert Fletcher, the teacher at Pakenham Upper State School, with an account of a day in the life of a soldier on The Somme in France.
The letter – republished in full in the Gazette on 12 July, 1918 – takes his brother through a typical day on the battlefield … from daylight to dark.
By October things had heated up a bit, as the Allies launched a major offensive on the Hindenburg Line, the Germans’ major defensive front in France. In the space of 17 days, 5500 Australian soldiers were killed and wounded.
The 21st and 24th Battalions could muster no more than 240 riflemen in units where once 1000 had taken the field.
Captains Fletcher and Mahony led two of the three reduced companies of the 24th.
They were university mates from Melbourne who fronted up to the enlistment office together – as evidenced by their consecutive service numbers, 1056 and 1057.
A newspaper report at the time noted: “They passed through Broadmeadows, Egypt, Gallipoli, France and Belgium by way of Lone Pine, the evacuation, Pozieres and Bullecourt”. Along the way, they both gained rapid promotion and were awarded Military Crosses for bravery in action.
Back home they would head off together to church on a Sunday – Mahony to the Roman Catholics and Fletcher to the Methodists – and meet up again on the way home.
Now, at dawn on 5 October, 1918, these two friends prepared to lead their men into the Battle of Montbrehain.
The battalion’s left-flanking company, under Captain Fletcher, was 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 simply stated for the record: “At Montbrehain, east of Peronne, at about 9am on the 5th of October 1918, Captain Fletcher was instantly killed by an enemy 77mm shell.”
The tank had been destroyed by this shell and, as all the company officers had been either killed or wounded, the men stayed for the time being where they were.
Meanwhile, Captain John Mahoney’s company had advanced into the village. Mahoney 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.
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 8am, one hour before his friend John Fletcher had been killed.
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 JH Fletcher killed in action 5-10-18, Officially reported Captain JA Mahony, killed in action 5-10-18. Verily these sons of Australia “were pleasantly and lovely in their lives and in their death were not divided”.
However, in death they were divided. Captain Fletcher’s grave is in Calvaire Cemetery and Captain Mahony’s in Tincourt British Cemetery, about seven kilometres to the east.
John Fletcher’s proud father recorded on his Honour Roll, now in the Australian War Memorial, that his son had completed his first year of university, interrupted no doubt by war; risen to be captain; had attended an army school in Aldershot, England, for further promotion; and that he 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 the 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.
