Pte 58659 Joseph Elliott

• Age: 26
• From: Bolton, Lancs
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 9th April 1917
• Commemorated at: Henin Crucifix Cem
  Panel Ref: Sp.Mem.8

Joseph Elliott was born in 1891 in Bolton, and was the son of  Joseph Elliott and Margaret (nee Murray) Elliott who were married on the 8th Sept 1877 at St Peter, Bolton. His father was born in 1857 at 3 Chancery Court, Bolton, his mother also in Bolton in 1856, and in 1891 were living at 28 Defence St.

The 1901 Census finds the family living at 20 Maybank Street, Bolton.

His father, also Joseph, born in Bolton in 1858 is described as a widower and employed as a labourer at a foundry. Joseph junior is listed as 9 years of age, he has 8 siblings listed, all born in Bolton; Esther b.1881 a cotton weaver, Florence b.1882 and also a cotton weaver,  John b.1888 a cotton spinners piercer, Walter b.1887 a cotton piercer, Annie b.1889 a cotton reacher, Wallace b.1893 and George b.1895.

By 1911 the family have moved to 15 Burnaby Street, Bolton. Joseph is now 19 years of age and is employed as a cotton piecer. His father aged 53 is still recorded as a widower and is now employed as an iron driller. Florrie is now shown as a niece whereas she was shown as a daughter on the earlier census, she is now 29 years of age and a weaver. Also present in the household are siblings; Maggie aged 27, John aged 25 cotton piecer, Annie aged 22 cotton weaver, Wallace aged 18 cotton piecer and George aged 16 a warehouse wrapper.  [The youngest children in the textile factories were usually employed as scavengers and piecers.]

Joseph enlisted in Bolton and was serving in the 20^th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private No 58659 when he was killed in action by a shell on the 9^th April 1917 aged 26 during the Battle of Arras. 

17^th,  19^th & 20th  Battalion at the  Battle of Arras 09^th April 1917

Everard Wyrall records the events of the day  in Volume 2 of his History of the King's Regiment (Liverpool).

The 89^th Brigade formed up for the attack with the 19^th King's on the right and the 20^th King’s on the left. The 17^th King’s supplied the “mopping up" parties and he 2nd Bedfords were in close support.

It was just after 3pm when the advance began “According to scheduled time the waves advanced in good style and with determination; everyone was cheerful and in the best of spirits”

That advance is described by others as magnificent. From the OP’s the observing officers saw a wonderful sight – long lines of men advancing steadily up a long and gradual slope towards the enemy’ front line. Then suddenly they disappeared. The observers quite pardonably, imagined that the German front line had fallen into the hands of the assaulting troops and that the latter were on the way to the enemy’s support line. Alas something very different had happened. When the advancing troops had reached the summit of the long slope up which they advanced the ground suddenly dipped before the German front line , and when the observing officers thought they  were already in the Bosche lines they had not, as a matter of fact, even reached the wire. What the observers took to be the front line was really the support line; the front line could not be seen  - it lay just behind the crest of that slight rise in the ground.

The attacking waves of the 19^th King’s got within 100 yards of the German wire but were then held up. They were faced by three belts of entanglements, practically untouched by our artillery, and nothing could be done but to dig in or else take shelter in the many shell- shell-with which “No Man’s Land" was pitted. By this time the battalion’s losses were very heavy, and when darkness fell “A" and “B" Companies (about 140 in all) lay in shell-holes, two or three hundred yards north east of St. Martin, but just south of the Cojeul River, and “C" and “D" Companies (140 all ranks) were along the river bank, but on the northern side about 150 yards north east of St. Martin.

The first waves of the 20^th King’ advanced at 3.7pm. At 4pm Lieut Beaumont, commanding “A" Company, reported that he had had some forty casualties in passing through the enemy’s barrage. The next message, timed 4.40pm, stated that the position of the battalion at that period was on a crest in front of the enemy’s wire and about 100 yards from it. On the right the 21^st Division was observed to have penetrated the enemy’s front line, but in the left the right Battalion of the 21^st Brigade (the Wilts) was on the St. Martin- Neuville Vitasse road; the left flank of the 20^th King's was, therefore, “ in the air”.

Urgent messages were sent up from Battalion Headquarters to “push on, keeping in touch with right” But little else could be accomplished until those formidable belts of wire had been cut sufficiently to allow the rapid passage of the attacking troops, headed by their bombers.

At 9:30 that night 89^th Brigade Headquarters ordered both the 19^th and 20^th Battalions to withdraw, the former to the two sunken roads running south east from St. Martin, the latter to north west of St. Martin; the guns had been ordered to cut the enemy’s wire during the night in preparation for another attack during the 10^th April.

Of the 17^th King’s  - the “moppers up" – there is little to relate. There was nothing to “mop up" so that they did not function. Yet they had shared all the perils of the advance, and when  after they had fallen back and at midnight held the following positions, “B", “C", and “D" Companies in and around the sunken road north of Boiry-Becquerelle and “A" Company in trenches west of Henin, they lost 2 officers and 16 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 48 other ranks wounded. 

He now rests at Henin Crucifix Cemetery, France with a headstone which contains the inscription at the top "Known to be buried in this Cemetery" and contains an epitaph which  reads:

“THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT”

The epitaph comes from Ecclesiasticus 44 verse 13 and was chosen by Rudyard Kipling. These headstones commemorate casualties whose graves in a cemetery were destroyed or who were known to buried in the cemetery but the exact whereabouts within the cemetery were not recorded. 

Henin-sur-Cojeul was captured on 02nd April 1917, lost in March 1918 after an obstinate resistance by the 40th Division, and retaken on 24 August 1918 by the 52nd (Lowland) Division.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery is named from a calvary standing on the opposite side of the road. It was made by units of the 30th Division after the capture of the village in 1917.

Henin Crucifix Cemetery contains 61 burials and commemorations of the First World War. Two of the burials are unidentified and eight graves, destroyed in later fighting, are now represented by special memorials.

The cemetery was designed by G H Goldsmith.

Joseph's death was reported in the Bolton Journal on 11th May 1917

Pte.J.Elliott, King's Liverpool Regt.,was killed in action by shell fire on April 9th. He was 26 years of age,and his parents live at 4,Bowness-rd., Bolton. Prior to enlisting he was a spinner at Messrs. Crosses and Winkworth's Pike Mill. 

Father died aged 73 in 1932.

We currently have no further information on Joseph Elliott, If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.