Reginald Healey

Service number: 3511B

Rank: Private

Unit: 54th Battalion (Infantry)

Service: Australian Army

Date of death: 19 July 1916

Cause of death: Killed in action

Cemetery or memorial details: VC Corner Australian Cemetery, Fromelles, France.

War Grave Register notes:

HEALEY, Pte. Reginald Alfred Charles, 3511B. 54th Bn. Killed in action 19th/20th July, 1916. Son of Henry Percival Healey; husband of Irene Healey, of Osborne Rd., Manly Vale. Native of Scarborough, New South Wales. 10.

Source: AWM145 Roll of Honour cards, 1914-1918 War, Army

The photo of Reginald Healey appeared in Sydney Mail 28 April 1917 along with those of his brothers Harry and Steve. Harry was also killed in WWI but for some reason was not commemorated on the Manly War Memorial. The Sun, 14 August 1915 carried an article and photos of “the four Healeys of Manly”: Steve, Frank, Harry and Reg:

“Harry was killed at the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915; three days later Frank (at present at Randwick Hospital) received a bullet in the spine, and as a result is paralysed from the hips downwards; Steve is fighting in France; according to private cables received by Mrs Reg Healey her husband was killed on July 22 in France. Her father and only brother are also in khaki. By an unhappy coincidence, the father of the Healey boys, Rev H P Healey, was buried at Dudley [near Newcastle, NSW] on the day Reg was killed. In his early days he had been a chaplain in the Imperial Army.”

In fact, Harry died of wounds received at the Dardanelles on the hospital ship HMT Devanha on 3 May 1915 and was buried at sea. Frank was the first cot case and a long-term inmate of Randwick Hospital and died in 1928. Harry does not appear to have been living at Manly when he enlisted, and his name does not appear on the Corso War Memorial. Reg was a painter before enlisting. He was killed just three weeks after arrival in France.[1]

[1] See also Sunday Times 20 August 1916, p9, photo and photo of his son Jack.