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Capt. Daniel Coghlan
British Army 8th Btn. Royal West Surrey Regiment
from:Dublin
Records found to date show that Daniel Coghlan enlisted as a private in the Queens Royal West Surrey Regiment and was sent to France on 23rd February with the British Expeditionary Force. He applied for a commission in April 1917 and was commissioned to the rank of 2nd lieutenant in July 1917 at which time he was transferred to the 116th Labour Corp., Bologne. He was promoted to the rank of acting Captain in July 1918. Records show service in Bologne, Passchendale and Flanders. The records go on to state that when the war ended, he commanded a company of men who were charged with the task of exhuming the bodies of soldiers who had been buried in the field and re-interring them in the official war graves. This company was the 126th Labour Corps which was subsequently re-named "E" Company, Graves Registration and Enquiries in January of 1921. He was de-mobbed in France on 31st March 1921 and given the rank of full Captain. In 1923 he went back to Belgium and married a girl from Poperinghe that he had met during the war. They were married in Ypres Town Hall and he took her back to Ireland with him. He was to become a King's Messenger and to serve as military attache in Paris , Brussels and Petrograd. He was awarded the O.B.E., Croix de Guerre and French Medaille d'Honneu.
