Lieutenant Reginald BreePrint Page

The plaque erected by past and present students at Hamilton College commemorates Lieutenant Reginald S. R. S. Bree who died in the South African (Boer) War in May 1900. Lieutenant Bree was the first person from Hamilton to die on active service. 

The memorial brass to the late Lieutenant Bree, which is being erected in Christ Church by past and present students of the Hamilton College, will be unveiled by the Ven. Archdeacon Tucker at the morning service on Sunday next. There will be a church parade of the Mounted Rifles and cadets, and the town band will also attend. Canon Haymon, in referring to the matter on Sunday morning, said that the date fixed for the unveiling was most opportune. It was not only that it would occur on the exact anniversary of the day that Reginald Bree gave up his life for his Sovereign, but that it would occur immediately after the great celebrations in Melbourne.

These celebrations would go down to history. The story of them would be told to our children's children. They would be cherished as one of the most delightful memories of the Australian people. But what lay behind all that magnificent pageantry, that superb and, so far as this hemisphere was concerned that unrivalled demonstration? What was the secret, the motive power, of it all? Was it the opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament ? No ! Was it even the presence of late King's son, with all its splendid and historic significance? No! What then ? It was because Australia and the motherland had cemented their union with the blood of their sons. It was because Reggie Bree and others like him went out and laid down their lives in South Africa.  

The great underlying sentiment in the welcome to the Empire's Heir was, he believed this— that the Empire had been knit for ever together in the fellowship of a common sacrifice. And that being so, it was surely most fitting that we should by such a ceremony as that of next Sunday show that our gratitude to our dead heroes was not a thing of a day or a year, but that so far as we were concerned we were resolved to hand down their names to the generations that should come after us. 

The simple tablet that was to be erected to Reggie Bree would be placed in the next bay of the church to that containing Archdeacon Innes's. The man of peace and the man of war would be commemorated side by side. There were memorial brasses upon the walls of English churches that had rested there for over 600 years. There was no reason why the memorial that was to be unveiled in Christ Church next Sunday should not remain for centuries, a reminder not only of the first Hamiltonian who died on active service, but of the spirit and temper of the early Australians who fought for the Empire in the days of the great Queen.
Hamilton Spectator (Vic. : 1870 - 1918), Tuesday 21 May 1901. 

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