St. Mary's Catholic Church, East St. Kilda was described by Miles Lewis as architect 'Wardell's most complete Australian parish church'. The First World War memorial was erected in a side chapel, probably in the 1930s or '40s, and many years after the death of John Maurice Orr Colahan in 1917. The right hand light was signed 'Mathieson & Gibson Melb' a firm that operated from 1930 for the next twenty years or more.
John Colahan was the second son of Surgeon Major General Colahan of 'Kangatong', Alma Road, St. Kilda, one of four sons and two daughters, and married to Mattie Orr Colahan. When he enlisted on 9 March 1916 at Prahran he was a 22-year old law student, with some years military experience in Senior Cadets and as a Corporal in the University Rifles. He landed at Plymouth, England on 10 February 1917, was among the reinforcements for 29 Battalion in France on 25 June 1917, and then joined 14 Battery Field Artillery as Gunner Colahan. At the end of July he sustained a gun shot wound to his right knee that required surgery and took him out of the action for the next two months. Back with his old unit for only two weeks, he was killed by a gas shell explosion at Sans Souci, Belgium on 14 October 1917. He was buried by his 14 Battery comrades not far from Zonnebecke and is now commemorated at the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres in Belgium.
References & Acknowledgements
AWM Roll of Honour; NAA: B2455, Colahan JM; Argus, 9 November 1917, p.1; 21 November 1918, p.6; Ballarat Courier, 1 September 1917, p.3; Examiner, 9 November 1917, p.3; Miles Lewis (ed), Victorian Churches, 1991, p.84.
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