Pte. JOSEPH CLITHEROE
Killed in Action 29 September 1915
Joseph Clitheroe was born in Chiswick in 1878, so he was already 36 at the outbreak of war in 1914. He married Annie Smith at St Michael’s on 5th August 1906. They had two children, Joseph and George and at the time of the census in 1911, they were living with Annie’s parents at 7 Bond Street, 8 people in four rooms. The children were aged 3 and 2. He was out of work, having been a shipyard labourer, and ten years previously a labourer in a distillery. Perhaps that situation encouraged him to volunteer, and he joined the Territorial force in the 3rd. Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, which was part of the 85th Brigade, 28th Division. They moved to France on 2 June 1915.
At Loos on 28 September 1915, the 85th Brigade of 28th Division, supported by 83rd Brigade, attacked at the Dump and Fosse 8. Many casualties were suffered by both sides in desperate fighting in the confined trenches around the Hohenzollern Redoubt. Desperate fighting continues in the Hohenzollern Redoubt.
More than 61,000 British casualties were sustained in the Battle of Loos. 50,000 of them were in the main fighting area between Loos and Givenchy and the remainder in the subsidiary attacks. Of these, 7,766 men died. Many New Army units, rushed into a battle area for the first time only a matter of days after landing in France, were devastated.
Joseph has no known grave. He is commemorated at the Loos Memorial. His medals including the 1915 Star, and his effects were returned to his wife after the war, when she was then living at 37 Chiswick Common Road.