Lance Corporal Joseph Keating, <\/b>6505, 1st Battalion Irish Guards.<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
An Unfortunate Son<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
By Julie O\u2019Donoghue<\/b><\/p>\n
Joseph Keating was born in November 1896, the third son of farmers Garrett and Margaret Keating in Usk County Kildare.\u00a0 Margaret Keating died in 1900 leaving a young family and the 1901 census finds Joseph living with his maternal grandparents Richard and Kate Whittle in Brewel East (Usk).\u00a0 In the 1911 census he is back in the family home with his father, brothers Patrick and Richard, and sister Catherine.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joseph Keating was one of the 50,000 recruits raised in Ireland for the war between 4th August 1914 and February 1915.\u00a0 According to his Service Record he joined the Irish Guards in the Curragh Camp on the 12th January 1915 for the \u2018duration of the war\u2019 and on his Attestation Form he describes himself as a \u2018labourer\u2019.\u00a0 On January 13th, he was shipped to England to the Guards\u2019 Depot in Caterham, Surrey.\u00a0 He completed his sixteen weeks basic training in the old barracks at Warley, once used by the Honourable East India Company, and condemned as unfit to live in fifty years earlier.\u00a0 The story is told of the Commanding Officer, asking about the offensive smell in the barracks, being told that it couldn\u2019t possibly be drains because there weren\u2019t any!\u00a0 During his training period Joseph wrote several letters home to his sister Catherine enquiring about family members, friends and acquaintances from the district.\u00a0 He tells her that should anyone be killed their parents will receive fifteen pounds according to his \u201cRegimental paper\u201d.\u00a0 In the only letter addressed to his father he tells him that he is \u201clisted in the Irish Guards and getting on pretty well \u2026 training for the front<\/i>\u201d and signs it \u201cyour Unfortunate Son, Joe Keating<\/i>\u201d.\u00a0 A photograph taken in March 1915 shows him as a member of Corporal D. J. William\u2019s Squad, Irish Guards.<\/p>\n
Joseph joined the British Expeditionary forces to France on the 16th August 1915 and was wounded in action on the 27th September.\u00a0 He arrived back in England on the 2nd October 1915 on the hospital ship the HMS Brighton<\/i> to recover from a gunshot wound to the head and to be \u201cfattened at Warley\u201d for the front again.\u00a0 While on leave he received fourteen days confined to barracks for the offence \u201cGambling in barracks\u201d and another fourteen days on the 13th January 1917 for being \u201cDrunk in the streets of Dublin when on leave\u201d.\u00a0 According to his Service Record he returned to France on the 23rd January 1917 and was appointed \u201cunpaid Lance Corporal\u201d 6th October 1917.\u00a0 He was killed in action on the 5th December 1917, the penultimate day of the Battle of Cambrai.\u00a0 He is mentioned as one of five Irish Guards killed on that date in Rudyard Kipling\u2019s second volume of the history of the Irish Guards, \u2018The Irish Guards in the Great War\u2019<\/i>.\u00a0 His campaign medals include the 1914\u20131915 Star<\/b>; British War Medal 1914\u20131918<\/b> and the Victory Medal<\/b>.<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of Cambrai the British gained some territory around Flesquieres but lost approximately the same amount to the south of the town.\u00a0 British losses included 44,207 men killed, wounded and missing and German casualties have been estimated at 45,000.\u00a0 Joseph Keating is remembered on the Cambrai Memorial, Louverval Military Cemetery in northern France.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Lance Corporal Joseph Keating, 6505, 1st Battalion Irish Guards.\u00a0 An Unfortunate Son By Julie O\u2019Donoghue Joseph Keating was born in November 1896, the third son of farmers Garrett and Margaret Keating in Usk County Kildare.\u00a0 Margaret Keating died in 1900 leaving a young family and the 1901 census finds Joseph living with his maternal grandparents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genealogical-resources"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Kildare Local Studies","author_link":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/author\/localstudies\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildarelibraries.ie\/ehistory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}