Rank: Private
Regimental Number: 5699
Place of Birth: Happy Valley, South Australia
Address: 77 Silas Street(WW1: 105), East Fremantle, Western Australia
Next of Kin: Father, Edmund Gallagher
Enlistment Date: 4 September 1915
Unit Name: Field Artillery Brigade 3, Reinforcement 11
Age embarkation: 22
Marital Status: Single
Occupation: Telephone mechanic
Date of Death: 22 October 1917
Place of Burial: -
Links:
History
1 Dec 1917 Hibernian Society. The retiring officers suitably responded. Bro. J.W. O'Brien moved that a letter of condolence be sent Bro. E. Gallagher, who has recently lost a son in action, Gunner Patrick Joseph Gallagher, MM. Gunner Gallagher was a trite son of staunch Irish parents, and it was the hope of the mover of the motion. that sacrifices of the nature our Irish and Australian-Irish boys were daily making in Flanders would awaken the British Government to a proper sense of its responsibilities before those people who were to-day the object of its abuse, goaded by desperation, called home those gallant sons of theirs and hauled up the drawbridge in a determined attempt to secure, by more dramatic measures, that freedom which God intended for them. Bros. J. McNamara and Jas. S. Dowling supported the motion, which was carried in silence, all members standing. (Reference)
GALLAGHER, Patrick, J. MM. 5699.
Born in Happy Valley, South Australia, Pat Gallagher a twenty two year old telephone mechanic, was living with his parents, Edmund and Mary, in North Fremantle when he enlisted in the AIF on 13 September 1915. He was twenty two years old.Allotted to the 11th reinforcements of the 3rd Field Artillery Brigade, Gallagher sailed from Melbourne on 11 October 1915 for Egypt where training continued. He mustered first as a driver, then as a gunner and was taken on strength of the brigade’s 8th Battery in late February. A month later he deployed to France.
Gallagher saw action for the first time on the Somme where his battery fired in support of the 1st Division’s assault on the village of Pozieres. On 24 July he was severely wounded in the ankle by shrapnel and, in a state of shell shock, was invalided to England for treatment and convalescence. While recuperating, he was disciplined for taking five days of unauthorised leave and returned to duty with the 1st Division’s Artillery in mid-February 1917.
Gallagher’s unit followed the advance to the Hindenburg Line where he won a Military Medal for his bravery at Bullecourt in May, after which a lengthy period of training followed in preparation for the more coordinated use of artillery in support of infantry that would be used in the new campaign to be fought at Ypres in Belgium. He was slightly wounded in July 1917 and was away from duty for only a couple of days.
In late September 1917, Gallagher enjoyed a short period of leave in England from which he returned eight days late. A Court Martial, convened on 20 October, sentenced him to 40 days of field punishment but he was killed in action two days later and the sentence was remitted. There are no details as to how Gallagher died nor is there a record of any later burial
