According to Soldiers Died in The Great War, 746 British Army officers and men lost their lives on this day, 1st November, in 1914. The 1st Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment suffered particularly heavy losses on this day, taking part in a counter-attack on Wystschaete and coming under "murderous fire". The battalion war diary records that seven officers and 293 other ranks were killed, wounded or reported missing.
5875 Pte Josiah Hall was one of the men killed. He was born in Eastville, Boston in 1882 and was living in Pudsey, Leeds when he enlisted (although his place of enlistment is recorded as Louth). His regimental number dates to 1901 which suggests that he was probably a Section D Reservist when Britain went to war in August 1914. His medal index card indicates that he did not sail with the Battalion in August but arrived in France on the 13th September.
Both Soldiers Died in the Great War and The Commonwealth War Graves Commission record this man as Joshua Hall. However, his medal index card, birth index entry and census returns record his name as Josiah Hall. He appears on the 1891 census as an eight-year-old living with his parents and three siblings at 17 Priory Road, Louth (pictured above). His father was George Hall, a 41 year old labourer, married to Eliza Hall (aged 47). Josiah was the eldest of four children, followed by Sarah (aged seven), Harry (aged five), and Arthur (aged three). On the 1911 census he is probably the same Josiah Hall (aged 27) recorded with the 1st Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment in Aden. He has the trade of "carpenter" entered against his name.
Josiah has no known grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate memorial in Ypres.
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, WE WILL REMEMBER THEM.
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