Dominic GONLEY was the only son of Patrick GONLEY and Mary Ann DOOLEY. He was born 12 July 1894 in Milltown, County Kerry. Dominic’s name was spelt with a ‘k’ at the registration of his birth and thereafter without.
In the 1911 census Dominic Gonley was listed as 16 years old, born Co. Kerry, at St Colman’s College, a boarding school at Grubbs Hill, Fermoy, Co. Cork. He spoke Irish and English. St. Colman’s College opened in 1858, and was the diocesan college for the Cloyne diocese. Was Dominic headed for the religious life?
I found no further records of Dominic in Ireland and turned to WW1 records.
The Irish Memorial Records has a record of Dominic Gonley, Signaller, New Zealand Rifle Brigade, who died Friday 12th October 1917.[1] [2]
How did Dominic end up at the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium’s Ypres Salient with the New Zealand Rifle Brigade 4th Battalion, D Company?
Dominic Gonley, then a 19 year old clerk, had arrived in Wellington, New Zealand from London, on the ship Athenic on 30th September 1913. He was single and travelling alone on ticket number 3298. He gave New Zealand as his country of intended future permanent residence.
Dominic moved to Otautau, Southland, which is a small town 40km north west of Invercargill, New Zealand’s southern most city. He resided with and worked for his uncle as a salesman. Mick Gonley, his father’s brother, a former seaman and boxer was a barber, tobacconist and news agent. Mick’s wife, New Zealand born of an Irish family, managed the news agent while he also ran a billiard room out the back of the shop.
Conscription was introduced in NZ on 1st August 1916 for pakeha (white) men but Dominic had signed up early. He enlisted on 11 October 1915 and joined the 8th Regiment in the Infantry. He initially held the rank of Rifleman.
Dominic embarked for Suez, Egypt on 5th February 1916 and served in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and then on the Western European Front.
12th October 1917, the First Battle of Passchendaele, was a dark day for New Zealand with 2000 injured and 846 killed in just a few hours.
Lance Corporal Dominic Gonley 26/561, aged 23, is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial N.Z. Apse, Panel 7.
Dominic is listed in the dead of the The Official History of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade:
| 26/561 | Gonley, L/Cpl. D. 12.10.17 |
Lance Corporal Gonley is also named on the Otautau and Districts Soldiers Memorial (or Otautau War Memorial). [3]
This CWG record shows that Dominic attended not one but two prestigious schools.
A death notice was placed in the Southland Times on 5th November 1917 under a section headed For the Empire’s Cause. He was incorrectly noted as aged 22 and having died ‘somewhere in France’:
The following obituary is from the Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Vol XIII, Issue 648, 6 November 1917.
The Otautau memorial centenary project includes an information panel on, and photo of, Dominic the later provided by a Gonley cousin’s daughter.
We will remember him.
[1] http://imr.inflandersfields.be/search.html
[2] Never have more New Zealanders met with a violent death. Dominic was one of approximately 18,000 NZ men who were killed in WW1. A week earlier (4th October) during the Battle of Broodseinde the NZ Division had taken 1000 plus German soldiers prisoners of war and pushed the frontline back more than one and a half kilometres with the Australians. In doing so they lost 450 NZ men including David Gallagher, the County Donegal born former captain of the All Blacks.
[3] http://otautaumuseum.blogspot.com/
Interestingly, Dominic’s first cousin was Winnie (Gonley) DAVIN, a significant literary figure. https://teara.govt.nz/mi/biographies/5d8/davin-winifred-kathleen-joan
Visiting Otautau in 2021 we took some time to clean Mick Gonley and family’s grave.
In Search of Thomas Davis 