Joseph E. Gallagher 195636

Joseph Edward Gallagher was born in Dummer Township on April 26^th 1893 to parents, James and Annie Gallagher. 

He enlisted in the 93^rd Peterborough Battalion on January 19^th, 1916 in Peterborough, Ontario.  He was three months shy of being 23 years old, had no previous military experience and listed his occupation as a farm labourer.  He was a small man, standing only 5 feet ¼ inch tall. He was described as having a dark complexion, dark brown hair and brown eyes.  He was single and a Methodist.

Pte. Gallagher spent the winter of 1916 drilling in Peterborough as the Battalion continued to recruit  around the area.  He left the city for Barriefield Camp in Kingston on May 30, 1916.  The men of the 93^rd received further training there before they left for Halifax on July 15, 1916, where they boarded the S.S. Empress of Britain for overseas.   The 93^rd arrived in England on the 25^th of July and was directed to Otterpool Camp for training.  Immediately the Peterborough Battalion was broken up and Pte. Gallagher was one of a handful of 93^rd men who were reassigned to the 19^th Canadian Infantry Battalion. 

He arrived in France on October 2^nd 1916 and joined the 19^th Battalion on the Somme front the next day.   Gallagher would have seen action immediately during the Canadian attack on Regina Trench during  the first three weeks of October.  Pte. Gallagher survived his first major engagement, but later entered the No.4 General Hospital, in Camiers, France on November 2^nd, with a case of Influenza.  He spent close to two weeks recovering before being posted to the 2^nd Entrenching Battalion, essentially a labour battalion, which he spent three months with before rejoining the 19^th Battalion on March 6^th. 

By March 19^th his battalion had moved to the Vimy Ridge sector of the front line to prepare for the major offensive the Ridge in April.  Pte. Gallagher would have began the routine of holding the line in front of Vimy, up to April 10th, when he and his battalion stormed up the Ridge in the early morning of April 9^th.  After hard fighting and pushing the Germans off Vimy Ridge, the Canadians consolidated and held off counter attacks and retribution shelling from the enemy throughout the end of April and into May.  Pte. Gallagher’s received his first serious wound on May 10^th.  He entered the Australian General Hospital in Wimereux, France with what was then recorded as a gunshot wound to the face, but what later described by Gallagher as a flesh wound (from shrapnel) to the neck.

Gallagher spent close to a month in the hospital and a week in a French Rest Camp when a case of appendicitis sent him back to hospital until June 29^th 1917.  He was discharged, and eventually returned to the 19^th Battalion at the front on August 21^st 1917.  Gallagher joined his battalion which was still in the Vimy sector holding on to their newly won territory and withstanding the constant pounding of German shells.  Pte. Gallagher remained with his battalion throughout the Summer and Fall of 1917 taking part  in the bloody offensive at Passchendaele, a battle in which claimed 16,000 Canadian casualties.  On November 10, 1917 he was granted leave 10 days leave.

Pte. Gallagher would have returned to the Vimy sector for the winter of 1918 and held the trenches there, until launching into renewed fighting in August at the Battle of Amiens from August 8-14 and then later the Battle of Arras. 

It was during the Arras Offensive, on August 27, 1918, that Pte. Gallagher was wounded when he was hit by shrapnel which fractured his right arm.  He was evacuated the No.53 General Hospital in Boulogne, France on August 28, 1918, and four days later to the North War Hospital, in Dunston, England where surgeons removed the splintered bone from his arm and re-grafted the fractured bones.

Recovering from this painful surgery, Gallagher transferred to Granville Canadian Base, in Buxton, England on December 31 1918, and later to No.5 Canadian General Hospital, in Liverpool on April 05, 1919.  He was invalided back to Canada a month later, being considered medically unfit for further duty.   He spent another five months in the care of Queen’s University Military Hospital receiving massage and remedial exercise in an attempt to regain use of his shattered arm.  

Joseph Gallagher left the hospital at the end of December 1919 and headed back to continue life in Dummer.  He would continue to suffer from marked weakness and loss of function of his right wrist, hand and elbow.  He would wear an 8-inch long scar down the length of his forearm for the rest of his life.  Joseph married Eva Moore of Dummer Township and died in 1958 in Warsaw, Ontario.  He is buried in St. Mark's Cemetery in Warsaw, Ontario.