Gough, Private Stephen

Service highlights

  • Service Number: 477354
  • Born: 16 February 1893, Larne (listed as Larne, Co. Antrim, Ireland).
  • Occupation (at enlistment): laborer.
  • Early enlistment: joined the Royal Canadian Regiment in Bermuda on 4 November 1914 (RCR regimental number 16035).
  • CEF service number: transferred into the Canadian Expeditionary Force at Halifax on 25 August 1915 and carried CEF number 477354.
  • Overseas service: served in France from late 1915, landing at Boulogne-sur-Mer on 1 November 1915 (recorded as “disembarked Boulogne”).
  • Wounded: gunshot wound, left knee, September 1916 (recorded as “wounded, gunshot, left knee”).
  • Evacuation and treatment: moved through hospitals in England including Norfolk War Hospital, Woodcote Park Canadian Convalescent Hospital, and Canadian Military Hospital, Hastings.
  • Returned to Canada: February 1917, after medical boarding for the knee injury.
  • Discharged: 30 September 1917.

A life and service remembered

Private Stephen Gough’s file reads like a family story written across two armies and two countries. Born in Larne and later came to St. Marys with his Brothers James and Samuel to join their sister Elsie Minor and her husband Edward, though his movements don’t show he settled down there as he was in Bermuda in 1914 when he enlisted. His enlistment experience started with a different tone than other young men, he enlisted under a cloud of grief, a month after the loss of his brother Samuel Gough who had been killed in action on 20 September 1914, Stephen entered uniform first with the Royal Canadian Regiment, then transferred into the Canadian Expeditionary Force under CEF number 477354.

He reached the Western Front in late 1915 and remained overseas into 1916, until a gunshot wound to his left knee forced evacuation out of the line. His path after that wound becomes a chain of hospitals and convalescence in England, followed by medical boarding and a return home to Canada in early 1917, ending with discharge later that year.

What makes Stephen’s record especially heavy is where it sits inside the Gough brothers’ timeline. Their family had already lost Samuel Gough in September 1914, very early in the war. Then, while Stephen was himself dealing with the consequences of a disabling knee wound, the family lost James Gough in action in October 1916. Both of his brothers names are engraved on the Cenotaph in St. Marys and Stephen survived to remember them and what the war cost.

Major battles and operations

Because the service pages provided here focus on movements and medical evacuation rather than named engagements, this list stays strictly to what is directly supported:

  • Western Front service (France): from 1 November 1915 (disembarked Boulogne) to September 1916
  • Medical evacuation and convalescence (England): late September 1916 through February 1917
  • Invalided to Canada and discharged: February 1917 return, discharge 30 September 1917

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