Regimental number | 4516 |
Place of birth | South Africa |
School | Christian Brothers, Windsor, Victoria (Catholic) |
Age on arrival in Australia | 3 |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Law student |
Address | 89 Alma Road, St Kilda, Victoria |
Marital status | Married |
Age at embarkation | 22 |
Next of kin | Wife, Mrs Marth E Colahan, 'Kangatong', 89 Alma Road, East St Kilda, Victoria |
Previous military service | Served in the Citizen Military Forces. |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 29th Battalion, 12th Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/46/3 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board HMAT A7 Medic on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Gunner |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 5th Field Artillery Brigade |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Passchendaele, Ypres, Belgium |
Age at death | 23 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 23 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 7), Belgium The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936. Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. |
Panel number, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial | 13 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: Surgeon-Gen. and Elizabeth Newton Orr COLAHAN, husband of Mrs M. Ede B. Whitehouse (formerly COLAHAN), Telok, Anson, Perak, Federated Malay States. Native of South Africa |
Family/military connections | Brothers-in-law: Lt Andrew Christopher FOGARTY, 24th Bn, killed in action, 29 November 1915; Major J.P. Fogarty MC and CBE. |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |