Fauquissart, about 3 km north of Neuve Chapelle, about 2 km west of Aubers to luncheon at its H.Q.'s Officers' Mess before his imminent departure to the British Isles to assume the command of a new division. Whilst in the line he was hit in the abdomen by a chance ricochet of a German bullet which mortally wounded him. The event was an unlucky one as the bullet that struck him was thought to have been a single shot fired from approximately 1000 yards away from somewhere in the German lines. He was conveyed to the 25th Field Ambulance at nearby Estaires, about 7 km behind the front line, where he succumbed to the wound and died in the early morning of 22 February 1915. His body was buried that afternoon in Estaires Communal Cemetery, located 7 miles to the South-West of Armentières, in Plot II, Row A, Grave No. 7. On 20 April 1915 Gough was posthumously knighted, being gazetted KCB on 22 April 1915. Assessments Gough was quoted as making a famous remark in November 1914 that was to be repeated as inspirational in the dark days of March 1918. "As he watched the enemy swarming over a low ridge one of his staff said the fight was decided. Gough turned with his eyes ablaze and exclaimed: 'God will never let those devils win.'" "Through Johnnie's death Haig lost a sounding board which was highly constructive yet far from uncritical. Had Johnnie gone on to command a division then it seems almost certain that, as predicted by so many contemporaries, he would have risen much further in the army. Johnnie was a convinced 'westerner' in strategic terms and a 'fighting general'. The army high command's commitment to the Western Front and to strategic offensives on that front would not have changed had Johnnie lived, but as he had demonstrated in his Staff College days he was a supreme realist and the conduct of these offensives might well have been modified by his influence with and, especially, by his ability to relate to Douglas Haig." A contemporary, General Sir George Barrow, described John Gough as "a twentieth-century Chevalier Bayard, had he lived he might have gone to the top of the British Army". To some extent Hubert Gough replaced his brother as Haig's sounding board. Memorials There is a memorial to Gough in Winchester Cathedral; his Victoria Cross medal