REMEMBERING OUR LOCAL HEROES – CORPORAL JIM DONAGHY MBE

Cadets from Newbuildings Army Cadet Force chose to pursue information about another hero of ‘The Derrys’, Corporal Jim Donaghy MBE.

James ‘Jim’ Donaghy was born in 1897 to Robert and Sarah Donaghy, the fifth of eight children who survived birth. According to Census Records in 1901 the family lived in the Bonds area of Waterside, later moving to Drumahoe. 

Times were hard for Jim who later said of his early life, “My father died in June 1914 when there was talk of Home Rule and then War. War was finally declared on the 4th of August 1914. During the first week I was made redundant at the linen mill where I worked, as orders for the continent had been cancelled. It was in May 1915 that my mother finally conceded to let me go.”

In October of that year Jim found himself at war in France. Cadet Colour Sergeant Rebekah Thompson says, “Jim must have faced considerable hardships in the trenches of World War 1 but we were pleased to find out that he spent the Christmas of 1915 holed up in a cosy barn.  After they had helped an elderly farmer with some work around the farm, his daughter fed them a celebration dinner of roast pig and vegetables … I am sure they were really grateful!”

Happily Jim was to survive the war, but it left him mentally scarred and, until the day he died, some seventy years later, he carried around a small picture of a Jack Cochrane, a close friend who had joined up with him but who lost his life in the war.  

Jim later recalled the death of another close friend on one of the most terrible nights he endured in France, saying, “Around midnight we heard the clanging of the gas alarms. Jerry had released phosgene. You could hear it hissing out of the cylinders. It was sweet smelling like pear drops. We quickly fumbled on our gas masks … our Lewis guns opened up on the German line awaiting the attack through the gas. The Germans started to shell our trenches as well. We were ordered to keep firing during the attack and as I was shooting away George Leonard kept coming up to me. He was panicking and kept tugging at me shouting, “I’m choking Jim, I’m choking! Oh 
God, Jim, what am I going to do? I canny breathe!”

Jim saw action at The Battle of Albert in 1916 as well as The Battle of Messines, The Battle of Langemarck, The Cambrai Operations and The Capture of Bourlon Wood. 

Cadet Lance Corporal Ryan Dunn says, “We learnt a lot from the research exercise and it made us really think about the nature of war and its lasting legacy.  Jim Donaghy, for example, was one of the ’lucky ones’ who survived, but he never forgot his experiences in World War 1 and always remembered the men who laid down their lives.  On Somme Day – July 1st – 1990 he was the last of The Derrys to lay a wreath of remembrance.  He died not long after.”