World War 1
Pine Mountain War Memorial Project
The WW1 Memorial Dedication Ceremony held on 7th November 2015 was a huge success with over 160 people attending.
Please email the Society if you have any personal stories, photos, postcards or any information associated with our diggers which could be included in the book.
Pine Mountain War Memorial Project
The WW1 Memorial Dedication Ceremony held on 7th November 2015 was a huge success with over 160 people attending.
Please email the Society if you have any personal stories, photos, postcards or any information associated with our diggers which could be included in the book.
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John Pacey Barnes
1. John Pacey BARNES
Sergeant, 2nd Light Horse Regiment,
Fate Killed in Action 9 January 1917
Edward Patrick Barnes
2. Edward Patrick BARNES
Private, Australian Remount Unit 2, Reinforcement 2
Fate Returned to Australia 13 March 1919
3. Wilfred BRAY (Photo Required)
Private, Regimental number 3748, Unit name 25th Battalion
Fate Returned to Australia 6 June 1918 Invalided.
Albert Thomas Broughton
4. Albert Thomas BROUGHTON
Private, 4th Pioneer Battalion,
Fate Returned to Australia 13 March 1918 Invalided.
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5. Ronald Gilbert BROUGHTON Private, 15th Battalion, Fate Returned to Australia 21 March 1919 Wounded in action twice. |
Ronald Gilbert Broughton
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George Henry Cox
6. George Henry COX
Private, Regimental number 15933, Unit name Australian Army Service Corps, 1st & 2nd Anzac Mounted Divisions,
Fate returned to Australia Invalided 7 April 1919.
7. Hudson COX (Photo Required)
Private, Regimental number 6922, Unit name Tunnelling Companies, 27 February 1917 Reinforcements,
Fate Died from disease 13 December 1917.
John Thomas Doolan
8. John Thomas DOOLAN
Private, 42nd Battalion, 6th Reinforcement
Fate Returned to Australia 18 July 1919 Died 26 May 1920
John Royan Hunter
9. Thomas Arthur FELL (Photo Required)
Lance Corporal, Regimental number 7233, Unit name 15th Battalion,
Fate Returned to Australia 1 July 1919.
10. John Royan HUNTER
Private, Regimental number 1670, Unit name 47th Battalion,
Fate Died of wounds 1 October 1917.
Lance Corporal, Regimental number 7233, Unit name 15th Battalion,
Fate Returned to Australia 1 July 1919.
10. John Royan HUNTER
Private, Regimental number 1670, Unit name 47th Battalion,
Fate Died of wounds 1 October 1917.
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11. John MURTAGH Private, Regimental number 941, Gallipoli Veteran, Unit name 25th Battalion, D Company, Fate Returned to Australia 13 February 1917, Invalided, Date of death 20 April 1917. 
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12. Michael MURTAGH Private, Regimental number 5456, Unit name 15th Battalion, Fate Killed in Action 11 April 1917. |
Michael Murtagh
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13. Harold Curtis VIRGO Private, Regimental number 2407, Unit name 26th Battalion, 5th Reinforcement Fate Killed in Action 25 July 1916. |
Harold Curtis Virgo
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They shall not grow old, as we who are left shall grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Lest We Forget
Jointly Funded by Dept. of Veterans Affairs & Ipswich City Council
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Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Lest We Forget
Jointly Funded by Dept. of Veterans Affairs & Ipswich City Council
*******************************************************************************************************
REMEMBRANCE DAY 2018
An address given by Pastor Phillip Mutzelburg
Catalyst Church, 142 Pine Mountain Road
Precisely a century of years ago at this very hour on the 11 November 1918, time seemed to stand still.
After four frantic years of cut and thrust between determined antagonists the guns of war fell silent. It was at last, all quiet on the western front. In a railway carriage in a forest near Paris a piece of paper was signed and the Great War was over.
Those who were at the front line experienced and understood for the first time the saying, the silence was deafening.
Early this week, soon after daylight while the day was still silent, I came to this special place
to read the names of the gallant men from Pine Mountain who fought for the preservation of peace and freedom. I wanted to sit in the silence surrounded by the spirit of these men for a few minutes. I wanted to see if could catch something of value to say that was more than a bunch of words. I wanted us all to catch in our hearts the significance of this day that would help us honour these men of long ago.
As I stood in the stillness the names of J.P. Barnes, E.P. Barnes, W. Bray, A.T. Broughton, R.G. Broughton, G.H. Cox, H. Cox, J.T. Doolan, T.A. Fell, J.R. Hunter, J.Murtock, M. Murtock, and H.C. Virgo, unexpectedly became much more than a list of names on a memorial stone, but a list of men who had lived and breathed the air in the space where I now stood 100 years later.
They were no longer just names, but the men of Pine Mountain, and I unexpectedly realised that it is a certain thing that every one of them, at some time before leaving our shores to fight in those distant places, would have passed this very spot where we stand today.
For a few fleeting moments last Tuesday morning it was as if I could almost hear their voices as they passed by. So they are no longer merely names on stone, but they are real fathers and sons, husbands and fathers, and friends who lived and worked and laughed and cried, and did life here on this very soil.
I00 years on, we remember them, and their names are on this memorial and live in our hearts for perpetuity.
When the armistice was signed in that French forest so long ago, it is said by those who observed the ceremony of the signing, that no one seemed to know what to do next, and this was reflected at the Australian front.
For the men who had been shooting, stabbing, slashing and bashing at each other only a few hours earlier, there was something bizarre about the news reaching them that the time for killing was over.
One war weary digger wrote to his mother, all along the lines men were testing the news by warily raising their heads above the parapets of the trenches, not daring to believe there would not be a following volley of rifle shots.
Elsewhere, in the villages, and the towns, and the cities where the ebb and flow of the battle lines had left the terrified innocents caught up in the uncertainty of life, there was wild uninhibited celebration. At home here in Australia our new nation partied with unbridled joy. In our streets and towns there was elated anticipation in seeing sons and daughters safely home again.
But it was not so at the front. The euphoric joy was on pause for the moment. The celebration would come later. Across the front it was different for the exhausted Australians who had done more than any other single battle group to end the killing. The moment seemed to call for silent contemplation.
One observer of these events wrote that the over aching sentiment in the first hours after the news of the armistice reached our men was the dreadful thought that so many of their mates would not make the joyful journey home with them. Someone else said in a report that reached home, they could be seen sucking deeply on a roll your own, and sipping a hot brew of tea in the laid back style which was more akin to their national character than that of the warrior race that had characterised them over the years since Gallipoli.
A digger wrote that there were unashamed tears shed as so many came to realise they were leaving their mates behind, in unmarked graves, in places where loved ones would never be able to gather to mourn their loss.
It is not widely known, and rarely talked about, that the first response after the ceasefire of these magnificent Australians was one of personal, private, and quiet reflection, which is after all, the Australian way.
It is therefore appropriate today that we should emulate their response this morning and contemplate the greater triumph of those dark years. In the immediate hours after the guns were silenced, it was all about mateship. Mates with mates consoling mates, mates leaving mates, mates losing mates.
Australia was a brand new democracy when the war broke out. Our nation had been birthed by the stroke of a pen in ink on paper, and not with blood as was the case with every other nation of the modern era.
Those who research and study these things say a nation birthed without the shedding of blood does not have spirit. They agree it is a numinous thing, something impossible to reckon in simple terms. They go so far as to say it is something spiritual.
Our boys went off to war proud of our young nation, and with an unshakable confidence in their capacity to win the day. We were in the eyes of our imperial leaders undisciplined and unproven as a fighting force. We were viewed with great suspicion. That soon changed, because it was at Gallipoli that the spirit of the nation was born, and on the western front where that spirit was entrenched in our national character.
In a word, the spirit of Australia can be best summed up as mateship.
It is too easy to brush this off as a romantic notion which is merely a legend in our own minds. Not so! It is real and it is alive in us.
Mateship which was defined by the diggers in WW1 is a term that conjures up images of young men providing unconditional support for one another amidst the toughest of conditions.
Out of these wartime experiences the spirit of mateship has been embedded in our cultural idiom, and embodies equality loyalty and friendship. Mateship has evolved to become a characteristic of Australian society, and it is why we are stringently anti-hierarchical. It could be said that mateship is the antithesis of class, something which our very British commanders never were able to fully appreciate or understand.
While mateship is seen to be predominately a male thing, sociologists say that it is deeply embedded in female relationships as well, even though it is expressed differently and not as visible.
When the British generals began to realise that the young men from down under were far more than a rabble of rebellious riotous colonials, they wondered at their fighting competence. Major General Sir William Birdwood was viewed by the Australian corps as an honorary Australian, and summed up the reason for the success of the brilliant Australian advances where all other army corps had failed. He said to his contemporaries, one of whom was to become the legendary General Montgomery, it’s this mateship thing, they do it for each other.
I was at the war memorial in Canberra a few weeks ago and I spent time in the hall of valour where the exploits of our Victoria Cross winners are displayed. It is clear that mateship motivated so many of them to greatness. Doing it for a mate underpinned their astonishing acts of courage.
Now we do not have our heads in the sand, and say that all Australians live by this code. In an age where individualism is on the rise, mateship is not as perceptible as it once was, and we are the less as a people because of it.
It is our turn to fight and keep the spirit of Australia alive. We could reinvent Australia if we began to serve each other with the same spirit that the Anzacs served each other. Just imagine the transformation that would take place in this age of selfish individuality if every walk of life, put the interests of others before our own. It is worth fighting for.
We could honour the men of Pine Mountain, those who fell and those who returned, and the 62,000 men and women who sacrificed their lives in no better way than by treating each other equally, by being men and women of trust, and by making our friendships unconditional
This is the legacy these marvellous men and women who served and died in the Great War have left us, and today on the 11 Nov 2018 we have the opportunity to maintain the spirit that was birthed and entrenched in the soul of our Australia 100 years ago.
It’s the mateship thing, let’s do it for each other.
***********************************************************************************************************
An address given by Pastor Phillip Mutzelburg
Catalyst Church, 142 Pine Mountain Road
Precisely a century of years ago at this very hour on the 11 November 1918, time seemed to stand still.
After four frantic years of cut and thrust between determined antagonists the guns of war fell silent. It was at last, all quiet on the western front. In a railway carriage in a forest near Paris a piece of paper was signed and the Great War was over.
Those who were at the front line experienced and understood for the first time the saying, the silence was deafening.
Early this week, soon after daylight while the day was still silent, I came to this special place
to read the names of the gallant men from Pine Mountain who fought for the preservation of peace and freedom. I wanted to sit in the silence surrounded by the spirit of these men for a few minutes. I wanted to see if could catch something of value to say that was more than a bunch of words. I wanted us all to catch in our hearts the significance of this day that would help us honour these men of long ago.
As I stood in the stillness the names of J.P. Barnes, E.P. Barnes, W. Bray, A.T. Broughton, R.G. Broughton, G.H. Cox, H. Cox, J.T. Doolan, T.A. Fell, J.R. Hunter, J.Murtock, M. Murtock, and H.C. Virgo, unexpectedly became much more than a list of names on a memorial stone, but a list of men who had lived and breathed the air in the space where I now stood 100 years later.
They were no longer just names, but the men of Pine Mountain, and I unexpectedly realised that it is a certain thing that every one of them, at some time before leaving our shores to fight in those distant places, would have passed this very spot where we stand today.
For a few fleeting moments last Tuesday morning it was as if I could almost hear their voices as they passed by. So they are no longer merely names on stone, but they are real fathers and sons, husbands and fathers, and friends who lived and worked and laughed and cried, and did life here on this very soil.
I00 years on, we remember them, and their names are on this memorial and live in our hearts for perpetuity.
When the armistice was signed in that French forest so long ago, it is said by those who observed the ceremony of the signing, that no one seemed to know what to do next, and this was reflected at the Australian front.
For the men who had been shooting, stabbing, slashing and bashing at each other only a few hours earlier, there was something bizarre about the news reaching them that the time for killing was over.
One war weary digger wrote to his mother, all along the lines men were testing the news by warily raising their heads above the parapets of the trenches, not daring to believe there would not be a following volley of rifle shots.
Elsewhere, in the villages, and the towns, and the cities where the ebb and flow of the battle lines had left the terrified innocents caught up in the uncertainty of life, there was wild uninhibited celebration. At home here in Australia our new nation partied with unbridled joy. In our streets and towns there was elated anticipation in seeing sons and daughters safely home again.
But it was not so at the front. The euphoric joy was on pause for the moment. The celebration would come later. Across the front it was different for the exhausted Australians who had done more than any other single battle group to end the killing. The moment seemed to call for silent contemplation.
One observer of these events wrote that the over aching sentiment in the first hours after the news of the armistice reached our men was the dreadful thought that so many of their mates would not make the joyful journey home with them. Someone else said in a report that reached home, they could be seen sucking deeply on a roll your own, and sipping a hot brew of tea in the laid back style which was more akin to their national character than that of the warrior race that had characterised them over the years since Gallipoli.
A digger wrote that there were unashamed tears shed as so many came to realise they were leaving their mates behind, in unmarked graves, in places where loved ones would never be able to gather to mourn their loss.
It is not widely known, and rarely talked about, that the first response after the ceasefire of these magnificent Australians was one of personal, private, and quiet reflection, which is after all, the Australian way.
It is therefore appropriate today that we should emulate their response this morning and contemplate the greater triumph of those dark years. In the immediate hours after the guns were silenced, it was all about mateship. Mates with mates consoling mates, mates leaving mates, mates losing mates.
Australia was a brand new democracy when the war broke out. Our nation had been birthed by the stroke of a pen in ink on paper, and not with blood as was the case with every other nation of the modern era.
Those who research and study these things say a nation birthed without the shedding of blood does not have spirit. They agree it is a numinous thing, something impossible to reckon in simple terms. They go so far as to say it is something spiritual.
Our boys went off to war proud of our young nation, and with an unshakable confidence in their capacity to win the day. We were in the eyes of our imperial leaders undisciplined and unproven as a fighting force. We were viewed with great suspicion. That soon changed, because it was at Gallipoli that the spirit of the nation was born, and on the western front where that spirit was entrenched in our national character.
In a word, the spirit of Australia can be best summed up as mateship.
It is too easy to brush this off as a romantic notion which is merely a legend in our own minds. Not so! It is real and it is alive in us.
Mateship which was defined by the diggers in WW1 is a term that conjures up images of young men providing unconditional support for one another amidst the toughest of conditions.
Out of these wartime experiences the spirit of mateship has been embedded in our cultural idiom, and embodies equality loyalty and friendship. Mateship has evolved to become a characteristic of Australian society, and it is why we are stringently anti-hierarchical. It could be said that mateship is the antithesis of class, something which our very British commanders never were able to fully appreciate or understand.
While mateship is seen to be predominately a male thing, sociologists say that it is deeply embedded in female relationships as well, even though it is expressed differently and not as visible.
When the British generals began to realise that the young men from down under were far more than a rabble of rebellious riotous colonials, they wondered at their fighting competence. Major General Sir William Birdwood was viewed by the Australian corps as an honorary Australian, and summed up the reason for the success of the brilliant Australian advances where all other army corps had failed. He said to his contemporaries, one of whom was to become the legendary General Montgomery, it’s this mateship thing, they do it for each other.
I was at the war memorial in Canberra a few weeks ago and I spent time in the hall of valour where the exploits of our Victoria Cross winners are displayed. It is clear that mateship motivated so many of them to greatness. Doing it for a mate underpinned their astonishing acts of courage.
Now we do not have our heads in the sand, and say that all Australians live by this code. In an age where individualism is on the rise, mateship is not as perceptible as it once was, and we are the less as a people because of it.
It is our turn to fight and keep the spirit of Australia alive. We could reinvent Australia if we began to serve each other with the same spirit that the Anzacs served each other. Just imagine the transformation that would take place in this age of selfish individuality if every walk of life, put the interests of others before our own. It is worth fighting for.
We could honour the men of Pine Mountain, those who fell and those who returned, and the 62,000 men and women who sacrificed their lives in no better way than by treating each other equally, by being men and women of trust, and by making our friendships unconditional
This is the legacy these marvellous men and women who served and died in the Great War have left us, and today on the 11 Nov 2018 we have the opportunity to maintain the spirit that was birthed and entrenched in the soul of our Australia 100 years ago.
It’s the mateship thing, let’s do it for each other.
***********************************************************************************************************
AN AFFIRMATION OF PRIDE
Remembrance Day 2018
Given by Flight Lt Matthew Jones
Good morning Pine Mountain community.
Thank you for inviting me to this important occasion.
I am proud to stand here today as a member of the Australian Defence Force and acknowledge those others here who have served or are still serving. I was inspired to join the Defence Force due to its proud traditions and ongoing resolve to serve Australia’s national interests. Hearing F111s and other aircraft fly over while growing up here in Pine Mountain just a short distance from this spot provided added motivation!
I have seen first hand the high levels of professionalism and personal commitment exhibited by Defence Force personnel, whether on operational deployments or during day-to-day service life. I am also fortunate to experience the mateship described by Pastor Mutzelburg, a desire to work hard for your mates and “do it for each other”. I will shortly be deployed to Afghanistan and will take great confidence in knowing that this “spirit of mateship” will be on display by all Australians I will be working with.
In addition to being proud, I am extremely thankful on this centenary of armistice. I am thankful that I have the opportunity and honour to serve. I am thankful for the support the Australian community affords to serving and ex-serving members. I am thankful for my colleagues who are currently deployed away from their families and their normal lives to serve our nation, many in dangerous circumstances. I am also thankful for the people who are today directly contributing to our safety and security in other ways especially the emergency services, the police, fire, ambulance and hospital and emergency department personnel. And I am thankful for these fine Pine Mountain residents who exemplify service and sacrifice. Today we remember them along with the thousands of other Defence members both past and present.
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them
nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning we will remember them.
Lest we forget.
Remembrance Day 2018
Given by Flight Lt Matthew Jones
Good morning Pine Mountain community.
Thank you for inviting me to this important occasion.
I am proud to stand here today as a member of the Australian Defence Force and acknowledge those others here who have served or are still serving. I was inspired to join the Defence Force due to its proud traditions and ongoing resolve to serve Australia’s national interests. Hearing F111s and other aircraft fly over while growing up here in Pine Mountain just a short distance from this spot provided added motivation!
I have seen first hand the high levels of professionalism and personal commitment exhibited by Defence Force personnel, whether on operational deployments or during day-to-day service life. I am also fortunate to experience the mateship described by Pastor Mutzelburg, a desire to work hard for your mates and “do it for each other”. I will shortly be deployed to Afghanistan and will take great confidence in knowing that this “spirit of mateship” will be on display by all Australians I will be working with.
In addition to being proud, I am extremely thankful on this centenary of armistice. I am thankful that I have the opportunity and honour to serve. I am thankful for the support the Australian community affords to serving and ex-serving members. I am thankful for my colleagues who are currently deployed away from their families and their normal lives to serve our nation, many in dangerous circumstances. I am also thankful for the people who are today directly contributing to our safety and security in other ways especially the emergency services, the police, fire, ambulance and hospital and emergency department personnel. And I am thankful for these fine Pine Mountain residents who exemplify service and sacrifice. Today we remember them along with the thousands of other Defence members both past and present.
They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old
Age shall not weary them
nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun
and in the morning we will remember them.
Lest we forget.
