8th Field Artillery Brigade Gunner Philip Carl Alwyn GOGLER

Philip Carl Alwyn Gogler was born near Moonta, SA, on 3 April 1886 and completed a boilermakers' apprenticeship in Broken Hill, NSW. He started working with WA Government Railways in Midland in 1913, transferring to Kalgoorlie in March 1915.

On enlistment he was assigned to the 118th Howitzer Battery before being sent to Maribrynong, Victoria, for further training.

He embarked at Melbourne for England and was taken on strength with the 8th Field Artillery Brigade, in France, on 8 February 1917.

After a few bouts of illness, including influenza in May 1917, on 12 October 1917 he was wounded in action, suffering shrapnel wounds to his shoulder. He rejoined his unit on 22 November.

From February to April 1918 he attended 3rd Division Signal School which must’ve kept him busy as in May 1918 Sister A Donovan, of Wooroloo Sanitorium, made enquiries with the army as to his welfare, saying “I had heard regularly from him until a few months ago when I believe, according to casualty lists, that he was wounded but ...no one has heard from him lately.”

After three weeks’ leave in England he rejoined his unit in the field in August 1918 but was admitted to hospital only a short time later with boils. Treated in France, he rejoined his unit on 19 August.

He was absent without leave for three days from 19-22 March 1919, for which he lost ten days’ pay and earned two days' field punishment No: 2 (hard labour, untethered).

He returned to Australia per Mahia, disembarking in Victoria on 17 July 1919 and travelling by rail to South Australia. In August 1919 Miss Hilda Turner wrote to the army asking whether Philip had yet left England, as she’d last heard from him when he was in Southampton in April.

Settling back into civilian life Philip resumed working as a boilermaker with the railways, this time in South Australia. In 1920 he married Hilda and they made their home in Port Augusta.

He retired in 1946 and in apparently good health, died suddenly in his sleep on 13 April 1948.

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