Gregory Matrenin

Russian spelling Григорий Михайлович Матренин

Born 1888        Place Krasnoe, Simbirsk (Ulianovsk), Volga River area, Russia     Ethnic origin Russian   Religion Russian Orthodox

Father Mikhail

Family wife Mary Matrenin and 2 children left in Russia

Arrived at Australia

            from Yokohama       on 27.03.1914       per Kumano Maru     disembarked at Brisbane

Residence before enlistment Toowoomba, Qld

Occupation 1915 labourer, 1949 wool rug maker

Service

service number 4166   enlisted 21.09.1915   POE Toowoomba, Qld

unit 26th Battalion   rank Private

place Western Front, 1916-1917; England 1917-1920      casualties WIA 1917 (multiple gun shot wounds, became blind)

discharged 7.09.1920 MU, in England

WWI contacts: arrived, enlisted and served together with Nicholas Silantiff and Michael Wolkoff

Naturalisation served as Russian subject; 1949 naturalised in the UK

Residence after the war 1918-1920 stayed at Dunstans Hostel, Regents Park, lived in the UK; 1949 Alpington, Norfolk

Wife Alice Ballard (1888-1950), married 1928 Marylebone, Middlesex, UK

Died 03.1962, Brighton, Sussex, England

Materials digitised service records (NAA)

Australian Imperial Force Headquarters (London) Administrative Registry (AWM)

application for free transportation to Australia for himself wife and children (NAA)

naturalisation in the UK (National Archives, UK)

From Russian Anzacs in Australian History:

There were also the three friends, Gregory Matrenin, Nicholas Silantiff and Michael Wolkoff, from the remote village of Krasnoe along the River Volga, about 200 km from the nearest city in Simbirsk province. These men left wives and children at home and came on the Kumano Maru to Australia — probably to earn some money — just a few months before the outbreak of the First World War. The three joined up together and served in the 26th (Queensland) Battalion of the AIF. Theirs was a story touched by tragedy [...]

    Gregory Matrenin, one of the three from Krasnoe village whose lives we have followed through the war, was demobilised in London [...]. Once he’d recovered from his wounds, sustained at Bullecourt in May 1917 he was placed in St Dunstan’s hostel for blind soldiers, where he received training in poultry farming and willow basket-making. He applied for his discharge in May 1920, stating his intention was to try to find his wife and two children in Russia, ‘who have not been heard of for some time’. I could not manage to find out whether he succeeded in crossing a Russia gripped in the turmoil of civil war, whether he had reached Krasnoe and was able to tell the families of Silantiff and Wolkoff, his friends, about their fate.

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