Prowse Point burial 22 July-HOM speech - Australian Embassy and Mission to the EU

Australian Embassy and Mission to the EU

Belgium-Luxembourg

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ADDRESS BY AMBASSADOR OF AUSTRALIA
AT THE REINTERNMENT OF PRIVATE ALAN JAMES MATHER

PROWSE POINT CEMETERY, HAINAUT PROVINCE , 22 JULY 2010

‘Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free.’

The first line of our nation’s anthem is a national epitaph to those whose sacrifice gave us that freedom - in peace and in war.

Family epitaphs to the dead, in so few words say that which we cannot - of love, life, loss and us.

Private Alan Mather’s family has written in perpetuity of him:

SO FAR FROM HOME
NEVER FORGOTTEN
MAY YOU REST IN PEACE
BEARING AN HONOURED NAME

Today we come here with a sense of pride and awkward humility to honour one man among many.

For he is us - and we are him.

We do so as free and confident heirs to that given us by Alan Mather.

We do so in renewed commitment to not ever allow the past to become a distant stranger, to never settle for the broad brushstrokes of our history and in neglectful ignorance to forget individual sacrifice made in our name, that of our country and the ideals of mankind.

Mary Anne Mather gave birth to Alan at Inverell in northern NSW on the 25th October, 1879. One of six children, his father Thomas owned and worked on the land in his vineyard, later also serving as the Inverell Mayor.

Alan attended the Armidale School where he excelled. He was a keen horseman, served in the New England Light Horse Squadron and was something of a military buff.

He studied viticulture at Hawkesbury Agricultural College and went on to be an award winning vigneron, leasing a grazing property near Pindari running sheep and growing grapes.

He did not marry.

His younger brother Douglas had a son, John who is with us here today. He said of his family’s understanding, “Uncle Alan was killed in the war. That is all we knew”.

Alan Mather was thirty five when the War broke out. He could have left it to other, younger men, but he did not.

He left his comfortable life in January 1916, enlisting at the Armidale Showground in NSW. It was here that the 33rd Battalion of the 9th Brigade, 3rd Division was formed.

He joined in that early muster with many of his mates to form the ‘Kurrajongs’ or ‘New England’s Own’.

Having recovered from a bout of Typhoid, Alan finally left Australia in September 1916.

Today we come here to this beautiful cemetery and a peaceful serenity broken only by birds, grazing animals, farming and the sound of occasional pilgrims to this most sacred site.

But in 1917 this was a killing field - a landscape violently torn by bullets, bombs, and shells.

British, Australian and New Zealand forces encountered also death in arguably its worst form - gas.

The 33rd Battalion’s first major action was the Battle of Messines which commenced on the 7th June, 1917. Nineteen huge mines were detonated under the German lines south of Messines allowing the assaulting British and Empire troops to rapidly occupy the enemy lines in one of the most complete tactical victories of the War to that point.

Alan Mather’s company was one of the lead infantry units that captured the German lines.

Tragically, the next day, Alan Mather was struck by enemy shellfire and killed instantly while working on a new line of trenches in St Yvon.
He died wearing his slouch hat, carrying his heavy knapsack, ammunition and grenades.

Thought at home to have been buried by his mates on the battlefield, the ravages of war in this then hostile location meant his resting place in death was unknown.

That is, until August 2008.

British anthropologists in the Plugsteert Project uncovered a soldier’s remains near the Ultimo Crater, St Yvon. With him were artefacts which, along with a corroded identity disc and DNA examination of samples offered by his elderly cousin, Cath Mitchell, identified the remains as those of Private Alan James Mather.

We are here today as a result of some extraordinary work by the archaeological team from No Man’s Land and its many professional links and partners. They were assisted by the Australian Army History Unit and the Belgian National Institute of Criminology, whose DNA matching process was invaluable.

But ultimately we are here because of the unshakeable love, perseverance and faith of just one Australian family - the Mathers of Inverell, their descendants and relatives.

Officiating recently at a Menin Gate Last Post Ceremony, a voice behind me observed in a tone of surprise, “There are a lot of Australians here. I’m not sure what their interest is.”

I won’t tell you what I thought, but I turned and said, “Yes. There are a lot of Australians here. So long as we are a nation there always will be. If you look at the wall there are 6,178 Australian names up there, men whose bodies were never found. There are a further 6,200 in marked graves buried in Belgium”.

As of today there will be one less name on the Menin Gate.

Alan Mather, like us, had but only one life.

Only one chance to use his life in the service of others and our nation.

He chose us.

We did not see him in battle, his courage or his support of other men. Nor did we sense his heroic fear.

The nature and magnitude of his sacrifice and that of the other 60,000 Australians who gave their lives for us in this conflict, laid the foundation for belief in ourselves.

It is easy from the safe distance of almost a century to look back and settle for the abstract. But this man who lies before us is real.

He will join these other silent witnesses to the future they have given us.

We will honour him best by the way we live our lives and shape our nation.

His sacrifice, the uniform he wore, the Australian Army Rising Sun and the flag of the nation for which he fought, remind us that there are some truths by which we live that are worth fighting to defend.

The Australian War Historian Charles Bean, at the end of it all, penned the words etched into the Australian memorial at Le Hamel.

To paraphrase Bean:

What this man did, nothing can alter now.
The greatness and the smallness of his story
Will rise as it will always rise,
Above the mists of time,
As a monument to a great hearted man
And his nation to cherish for all time.

Here now will lie one, ‘never forgotten, bearing an honoured name’.

Lest we Forget.

BRENDAN NELSON