After the war ended in June 1902, Gough was among a number of officers who left Cape Town on the SS Kildonan Castle in late July, arriving in Southampton the following month.

[7] Gough was 31 years old, and a brevet major in the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort's Own) during the Third Somaliland Expedition when the following event took place for which he was awarded the VC.

On 22 April 1903, Gough was in command of a column on the march which was attacked by an enemy force in superior numbers, that is the Darawiish army of Diiriye Guure[8] near Daratoleh, British Somaliland.

He played a role in the Curragh Incident in March 1914, in which his brother and other cavalry officers stationed in Ireland threatened to resign rather than coerce Ulster Protestants who had no wish to be part of an Irish state governed from Dublin.

[13] Johnnie was in the War Office on 23 March, when French (CIGS) agreed to Hubert's demand that he amend a Cabinet document to promise that the British Army would not be used to enforce Irish Home Rule on Ulster.

French may have been acting in the belief that the matter needed to be resolved quickly after learning from Haig that afternoon that all the officers of Aldershot Command would resign if Hubert were punished.

By February 1915 whilst working on planning for the forthcoming attack at Neuve Chapelle, Gough was chosen to command one of the British New Army divisions.

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.

[16] 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.

"[20] 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".