Lieutenant-Colonel J.D. Mather
1st Bn., Leinster Regiment (Royal Canadians)

I was just sitting down to breakfast (in the M de Prémesques farm) when the greatest burst of fire I have every heard broke out … C and D companies (Leinster Regt) had been driven out of their trenches by the enemy’s attack.

(J.D. Mather, diary, 20 October 1914 in 2nd Bn., Leinster Regiment War Diary)

Born in North Shields, Northumberland, England on 17 March 1872, John Dryden Mather had been commissioned with the Leinster Regiment in 1892 and served in the Boer War. Following sick leave for bronchitis in April 1915, Mather joined the 1st Leinsters on 26 June 1915. He took command after Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Conyers had been mortally wounded in action on 11 May. Following a relatively quiet summer after the heavy fighting of late 1914 and early 1915, the 1st Leinsters learned their division was to be redeployed from the Western Front. In November 1915, the 27th Division sailed from Marseilles “for an unknown destination.”

On 12 December, the battalion landed in Macedonia and joined the multinational Allied force on the Salonika front. In January and February 1916, Mather temporarily took command of the 82nd Brigade. By the end of 1916, the 1st Leinsters had been reassigned to replenish the ranks of the 10th (Irish) Division. It joined the 29th Brigade alongside the 6th Leinsters under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel John Craske. By early 1917, Mather appears to have left the Salonika theatre and command of the 1st Leinsters passed to Major E.H. Wildblood.

In July 1917, Mather (now a major) led a reinforcement draft to the 7th Leinsters in France and became second-in-command. He then took over the battalion from January until 18 February 1918, when it was broken up along with other Irish units to form the 19th Entrenching Battalion under Mather’s command. Two months later this unit was also broken up to reinforce the 2nd Leinsters following heavy losses during the German Spring Offensive.

By 1919, Mather was back in command of the 1st Leinsters, stationed at Portsmouth, England. The battalion had started the war on a tour of duty in India and were now set to return. The 1st Battalion landed at Bombay in November and arrived to Madras the next month. By mid-1920, Mather would be recalled to Ireland to take command of the 2nd Leinsters.

He retired from the army shortly thereafter and the Royal Canadians would cease to exist as regiment in July 1922. The creation of the Irish Free State and postwar defence spending cuts prompted the British Army to dissolve its six southern Ireland regiments. By that time Mather was living in British Columbia and made an appeal to the Canadian government to somehow save or adopt the old regiment, given its historical links to the dominion. The War Office determined such a proposal impossible and the Canadian militia expressed no interest in concerning itself with British Army reorganization. Ironically, over twenty years earlier a group of Canadian imperialists had petitioned to repatriate the Royal Canadians, although the Leinster officers had expressed no enthusiasm for the ill-conceived project.

Mather died in Sussex, England on 10 June 1945.