Martin Henry Collins

When I was growing up, my mother used to show me a parcel wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

Inside was a body belt made from a flour bag, stitched into little pockets for a soldier’s belongings. A small Bible. A notebook and pencil. A cigarette case. Cigarette cards. And a pair of hand-knitted mittens.

The mittens had her father’s initials embroidered on them. I used to wonder about those mittens. Had they come from home? From a Red Cross parcel? From some kind woman who would never know where they had ended up? Had Martin himself stitched those initials, sitting somewhere in Belgium, thinking of the wife and two little girls he had left behind?

My grandfather, Martin Henry Collins, was a bombardier with the Australian Field Artillery. He was killed in action in Belgium on the 21st of September, 1917. He was twenty-seven years old.

He left behind my grandmother and two little girls, one of them my mother. That parcel was almost all she had of him.

My mother’s great wish, all her life, was to visit her father’s grave. But her health was poor and the journey was beyond her. So I promised her that if she could not go, I would go for her.

In 1980, my husband Vic and I made that journey to Belgium.

When we arrived what struck me first was how quiet it was. The station master asked if we were looking for a war grave, and directed us to the British War Graves Commission. They welcomed us warmly. They sent us first to a florist, and when we returned they had an official car waiting.

As we drove out of the township, I understood why. On either side of the road were endless rows of white headstones. Endless. You could not have found one grave in all of that without help.

Our driver turned into one entrance without hesitation, drove through the cemetery, and stopped. Our guide led us directly to Martin’s grave.

And what startled me first was that there were already flowers there. A small posy. Wildflowers, or flowers from somebody’s cottage garden. As I looked along the row I could see other graves had little bunches too.

I asked the guide about it later. He told me that local schoolchildren are encouraged to tend the graves, and that some of them choose particular graves to care for.

This young father, who had died so far from home, who never saw his little daughters grow up – was being remembered, all these years later, by a new generation of children.

Children leaving flowers on his grave.
That evening, we were invited to stay for the daily service at the Menin Gate. As evening fell, the whole town fell silent. The shops closed. People gathered. The traffic stopped. And then the bugle sounded.

So many Australians who died in that place have no known grave. Their names – six thousand, one hundred and sixty of them – are recorded on the walls of the Menin Gate instead.
On the journey back to Brussels, I had a great deal of time to think. I had gone for her. I had stood where she had longed to stand. I had seen the grave of the father she never really knew.

And the mittens, and the brown paper parcel, and the grave in Belgium, and the schoolchildren laying flowers – all of that is part of the inheritance I was given.