A soldier who survived the entirety of the first World War but was buried in an unmarked grave has finally been given a headstone.
Richard Keogh joined the 6th Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, a cavalry battalion, in 1905 and was stationed in India when the war broke out in 1914. He served until the Armistice in November 1918.
He survived the war unscathed but his brother James, who joined the Irish Guards, was killed by a trench motor bomb in France in February 1918.
Richard Keogh married his teenage bride Alice in St Catherine’s Church, Meath Street, Dublin, in August of that year.
‘I’m hoping at least one girl who is on the fence about reporting her violent boyfriend ... will read about my case’
What Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Greens promised in 2020 - and how much they delivered
Ciara Mageean: ‘I just felt numb. It wasn’t even sadness, it was just emptiness’
Restaurateur Gráinne O’Keefe: I cut out sugar from my diet and here’s how it went
After the Armistice, he got involved in an altercation with a superior officer outside a bar in Belgium and was demoted. He was demobbed early in 1919 but was one of the lucky ones to secure one of the “homes for heroes” built at the end of the first World War for servicemen and their families in Killester Village, Dublin.
Richard Keogh died in 1945 and lay in an unmarked grave in Grangegorman Military Cemetery, Dublin as the family could not afford a headstone.
However, his grandnephew Simon Kehoe, a grandson of James Keogh, has now remedied that omission almost 80 years later. He commissioned a headstone which was unveiled on Friday.
Mr Keogh said his great-uncle had three children, a son, named James, and two girls whose names he does not know.
“He may have had other children, but I can’t find any information about them,” he said.
Mr Keogh (75) and his son visited Grangegorman Cemetery on Friday to pay their respects.
He said he did not like the idea of his great-uncle being in an unmarked grave but “there are many from the Killester Estate like that”.
“I thought the end of my research would be to leave something behind here in Dublin to remember him,” he added.
- Sign up for push alerts and have the best news, analysis and comment delivered directly to your phone
- Join The Irish Times on WhatsApp and stay up to date
- Listen to our Inside Politics podcast for the best political chat and analysis
