Cheryl's learned that Joseph served with a Durham light infantry during World War
one he volunteered to join up soon after war broke out at the age of 33
Cheryl wants to know more about Joseph's service and has decided to follow in his
footsteps I find it like pretty amazing that make
mom's grandfather has been completely forgotten and considering he fought in
the First World War you would think there would be tales and
stuff like that passed down nobody seems to know anything a distant relative
Cheryl doesn't know I sent a letter with some more information about Joseph
dear relative I'm also a descendant of Joseph Wilson really he was my
grandfather married to my grandmother Mary Anne
and they had 8 all named children together before she died in 1930 Joseph
was never really discussed in our family other than reference in rather
derogatory terms as old man Ridley it seems after the death of my grandmother
and mrs. Burton was brought in as a housekeeper
to look after the children and then she fell pregnant with the twin beers
that's my great honor
Wow it created quite a scandal in the
community a Ridley trait is that most of us have a quick temper and from what
I've been told granddad Ridley was no exception summon
the family say he was troubled and fight volatile and his temper would often be
fueled by excessive drinking but he also for other Ridley traits undying
generosity and was attained quite fearless when his photograph surfaced I
felt a bit sorry that he seemed to have become silent and forgotten that he was
in a soldier's uniform and he missed a fought World War one wow that actually
explains so much of why he's never talked about so interested and he had in
the end 11 children which is what we mom said any I mean and I must have been a
young housekeeper that
gotten fatherís mr. old man Ridley when Cheryl's great grandmother Edith Annie
Burton had the twins in 1932 Joseph was a widower with a large family and a war
veteran to find out more about her great-grandfather's war experience
Cheryl's meeting military historian dr. Helen McCartney in 1915 Joseph was sent
to the Western Front where the British and their allies were fighting the
Germans by early 1916 Joseph battalion was here near Ypres in Belgium something
I do know is that he joined the regiment in Durham mm-hmm but I have no idea what
he did or or anything else really other than that he joined the 11th battalion
and the 11th battalion is quite interesting it's a different kind of
unit than fit then he's he trained it it's a pioneer unit and this is a badge
he would have worn Wow and what what does that actually mean
this here is a pic yeah this one here there's a gun yeah isn't rifle and that
kind of sums up what the Pioneers did they were mainly and navy unit but they
were also trained as infantry so they were also soldiers and that's what this
represents labor and fate that's right when Joseph arrived on the Western Front
he joined a war that had reached stalemate
the flat bare landscape of northern France and Belgium offered little cover
and both sides were forced to dig down for protection the British Army realized
they needed to build an extensive network of trenches so established
specialists pioneer battalions like Joseph's they were trained to fight but
also to dig Joseph was expected to work throughout the night and in all weathers
often in open ground in sight of enemy snipers if you have a look down here
yeah you can see that they're actually quite narrow
yeah very and they're lined with these corrugated iron boards and this is the
kind of thing Joseph would have been making Wow and then pushing in to shore
up the sides of the trench because it's pretty wet right yeah and it gets very
flooded and so that lots of the trenches would fall in and say that he would have
to keep digging out these trenches that was why that was one of the main things
that they were doing around here it's very small very good considering
their weight there would have been quite big man I would think how many men would
there a free man end up in here working parties were anything between 50 and 150
men all in the cheol in this trench all in the trenches date it's either digging
them or digging them out repairing them so you can see that the trenches are
kinda zigzagged part of the reason for this is if a shell falls in one section
of the line it doesn't reverberate along the rest and say the unfortunate people
in that I guess affected by the shell but not the rest of the line
as well as digging trenches pioneers like Joseph had to build railways roads
and bridges to keep the British Army moving
for their skilled work pioneers were paid an extra two pence a day on top of
their infantry wages
and actually one of the reasons the 11th battalion as a dome light infantry turns
into a pioneer battalion is because it's full of miners and it's estimated right
at the beginning it's about 95% - and that gives them a huge advantage because
they've been used to hard physical labor but Joseph isn't a miner
he's a grocer and I want to show you a diary entry from later in the war which
shows you how some members of the battalion viewed people who who didn't
come from the same background as them have a look at this here okay draft of
52 men arrived only three of these men were suitable for pioneer battalion
gross sales agents musicians etc are not fitted for the hard work of pioneering
so that guys not happy about people that are not mayonnaise or Christmas that's
right Jase is gonna have to work really really really hard to prove himself you
know I always heard about trenches and this and how they were used but I never
really thought about how they were actually made and knowing that Joseph
was part of the labor of that is a big deal I hope when the soldiers survived
in July 1916 Joseph's battalion was ordered south towards the Somme in
France where a major offensive by the Allied army to break through German
lines had already begun the first day of battle had claimed more than 60,000
casualties and by the time the fighting ended months later that number would
rise to over 1 million the battle of the somme would prove to
be one of the most devastating campaigns of the war and Joseph was heading
straight into the middle of it
you