The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (404653) Leading Aircraftman Martin Butler Mahony, No. 8 Elementary Flying Training School Narrandera, Second World War

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Charis May, the story for this day was on (404653) Leading Aircraftman Martin Butler Mahony, No. 8 Elementary Flying Training School Narrandera, Second World War.

404653 Leading Aircraftman Martin Butler Mahony, No. 8 Elementary Flying Training School Narrandera
KIA 26 March 1941
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 10 September 2014

Today we remember Leading Aircraftman Martin Butler Mahony, who died serving in the Royal Australian Air Force in 1941. He was one of nearly 3,000 Australians who died while training in Australia and overseas.

Martin Mahony was born on 20 March 1920 in Toowoomba, south-east Queensland. He was the third of five sons of Thomas and Veronica Mahony. Little is known of Martin Mahony’s early life beyond that his father died when he was five years old, leaving the older Mahony boys to work the family’s dairy farm.

Martin Mahony first attended Leyburn State School from 1925 to 1933, and then attended Christian Brothers College, Warwick, until 1935. The subjects he studied included Latin, history, chemistry and book-keeping. He also played a range of sports, including rugby, cricket, tennis, and boxing. After school, Mahony worked in a clay mine before, in 1937, he began work in a timber mill.
But Mahony wanted to fly. In August 1938 he had applied unsuccessfully to join the air force and tried again on 3 September 1939 – the day war was declared. He applied for a third time in December and finally enlisted in the RAAF in October 1940. His younger brother Desmond Mahony later served in the army.

With brown hair and dark eyes, Martin Mahony was five foot, eight-and-three-quarter inches tall, or 175 centimetres, when he joined the air force. He was initially posted to No. 2 Initial Training School at Bradfield Park (known today as Lindfield on the Upper North Shore of Sydney). In early January 1941 Mahony was promoted to leading aircraftman and, having been selected to become a pilot, in February he was sent to No. 8 Elementary Flying Training School in Narrandera, in southern New South Wales.

Mahony had just begun to fly solo when on 25 March the de Havilland Tiger Moth he was flying crashed. Badly injured, he was flown to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney, but died the next day. Mahony had turned 21 only a few days earlier. He is buried in the Field of Mars Lawn Cemetery in Sydney.

Leading Aircraftman Martin Butler Mahony is also commemorated here, on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with some 40,000 Australians who died during the Second World War.

We now remember his service and all of those Australians, and our Allies, who have given their lives in the service of our nation.