MCCULLOUGH, Ralph
| Service Number: | 1219 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 9 February 1915, An original of D Company |
| Last Rank: | Private |
| Last Unit: | 18th Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Killough, County Down, Ireland, 1876 |
| Home Town: | Sydney, City of Sydney, New South Wales |
| Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
| Occupation: | Labourer |
| Died: | Killed in action, France, 5 August 1916 |
| Cemetery: |
Pozières British Cemetery Plot IV, Row N, Grave No. 31 |
| Memorials: | Haymarket NSW Government Railway and Tramway Honour Board |
World War 1 Service
| 9 Feb 1915: | Enlisted AIF WW1, Private, 1219, 18th Infantry Battalion, An original of D Company | |
|---|---|---|
| 25 Jun 1915: | Involvement Private, 1219, 18th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '12' embarkation_place: Sydney embarkation_ship: HMAT Ceramic embarkation_ship_number: A40 public_note: '' | |
| 25 Jun 1915: | Embarked Private, 1219, 18th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Ceramic, Sydney |
Help us honour Ralph McCullough's service by contributing information, stories, and images so that they can be preserved for future generations.
Add my storyBiography contributed by John Oakes
Ralph MCCULLOUGH, (Service Number 1219 was born in 1876 at Killough, County Down, Ireland. He worked with the Permanent Way Branch of the NSW Railways on the deviation between Waterfall and Otford (1914).
He enlisted on 10th February 1915 at Liverpool.
On his Attestation Papers McCullough states that he is not married and nominates his sister, who was living in Ireland, as his next of kin. This claim to be not married was false. He had a wife, Mary Ann, living in England with the care of their daughter, Ann. He served with the 10th Reinforcements to the 18th Battalion.
He travelled on HMAT ‘Ceramic’ and landed in Egypt. McCullough reached Gallipoli on 16th August 1915. He was wounded six days later. He was admitted to the 16th Casualty Clearing Station with gunshot wounds to an arm and a leg and transferred to Mudros (on the Greek island of Lemnos) and then invalided to England on HS ‘Emeraldas’ to the War Hospital at Reading by 17th September 1915.
It was well into January 1916 before he was taken on the strength of the Australian Base Depot at Weymouth and March before he re-joined the 18th Battalion in Egypt. He only stayed there a week before he embarked at Alexandria to join the British Expeditionary Force in France, passing through Marseilles on 25th June.
He ‘Took part in a raid on enemy’s trenches on night of 26-27th June 1916’.
On 5th August he was reported as wounded in action, and in December this report was upgraded to ‘No further information available, now posted as Wounded & Missing’. It was not until nearly a year after he was last seen, at a Court of Enquiry held on 18th July 1917, that it was was formally ruled that he had been killed in action.
Pte. Arthur Wilson (5869) reported:
‘I knew Bob McCullough. He was killed right in front of me while getting through the barbed wire protecting the German trenches during the attack on Marlencourt about August last year. He was ducking into a shell hole and was shot through the brain. I found him lying on his face quite dead, took his pay book and handed it to an officer, Lt. Gartrell. I do not know where he was buried.’
McCullough does have a grave. The first report of burial is ‘4 miles N.E. of Albert.’ or ‘(Pozières 4.28E., SSP. 2060)’, but after the war the remains were located, exhumed and re-interred in the Pozières British Cemetery, France.
McCullough’s widow and her daughter were awarded a pension from 15th February 1917. In 1922 Australia House in London issued the Memorial Scroll and Plaque to the sister. The military authorities in Australia directed London to recall the items and re-issue them to the proper recipient, the widow, who also lived in the United Kingdom.
- based on the Australian War Memorial Honour Roll and notes for the Great Sydney Central Station Honour Board.