In October 1917 a train from Sydney enroute to Brisbane arrived in Toowoomba containing 250 returning soldiers. The Darling Downs Gazette on 29 October covered the arrival in detail. The mayor and members of the Red Cross Society met with those alighting in Toowoomba, many of whom were injured. One soldier had to be carried off the train having previously had a leg amputated. The soldiers praised the efforts of the Gordon Volunteer Aid Detachment who looked after them on the journey.
The Gazette went on to write short biographies of a number of those who left the train at Toowoomba, including former Corinthians soccer captain Dan Gallogly, which appears below in full.
Perhaps the best known Toowoomba man on the train was Sergt. ‘Dan’ Gallogly of the 6th Field Company Engineers. He has been away two years and four months. He left Queensland as a private but upon arrival in England was transferred to the engineers, where he was a sapper. Later however, he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant. On the morning of 29 July he was blown up by a high explosive shell after the advance on Windmill trenches north-east of Pozieres, and suffered serious injury. Prior to enlisting ‘Dan’ was well known in Toowoomba and on the Downs as a building contractor. He was also prominent in athletic circles and was a soccer footballer of no mean order. The genial Irishman was surrounded by a host of friends and he looks really well.
The fighting around the windmill in Pozieres occurred between July and September 1916. More than 6700 soldiers were killed and another 16000 injured, including Gallogly on 27 July.
Curiously, when a friend, Miss R Kelly, wrote to the Records Office asking for the nature of Gallogly’s injury, she was told it was a mild gunshot wound to the foot. This mild injury still led Gallogly to be evacuated to England in August and sent home to Australia 12 months later with no additional entries to his war record in the intervening period. Mary McMahon had also wrote asking after Gallogly during this time but was told she would not receive a detailed reply as she was not his next of kin.
Gallogly married McMahon in 1918. The same year Gallogly was later added to the Toowoomba British Football Association honour board. He was still remembered as a soccer player in 1927, when he was spotted at a Sheffield Shield game between Queensland and Victoria and described by the Daily Standard as a “builder of churches and other things”. A year later he was awarded the contract to build the Marist Brothers’ Monastery at Rosalie and a school for the Sisters of Mercy.