PRIVATE 35946 JOSEPH JAGGER, 12th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY.


PRIVATE 35946 JOSEPH JAGGER, 12th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY. KILLED IN ACTION 15th OCTOBER 1917 AGED 24


On the 10th October 1916 Joe Jagger married Frances Short at the Methodist Chapel on Wells Road in Ilkley. It would be a short marriage for within just 12 months Joe would be dead, killed during the battle of Passchendaele.


Joe was born in the village of Clifford near York in 1893, the son of David and Harriet. His father was a farmer who brought his family to Lee Farm at Priesthorpe near Calverley and Joe followed in his fathers footsteps, working as an agricultural labourer. In early 1916 whilst working in Beverley, Joe, enlisted into the 12th Battalion the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, but before he was posted overseas married Frances Short whom he had probably met whilst she was working as a domestic servant in a large house in Calverley.

The 12th Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry were a pioneer battalion who were regarded as the workhorse of the army. Often engaged in digging trenches they were also expected to be able to operate as infantry when needed. Usually they were recruited from mining areas and most pioneer battalions would come from Yorkshire and the North East. On 15th October 1917 Joe's battalion were near to Wieltje near to Ypres digging new communications trenches near to the front line. It seems that a sudden German artillery barrage caught a number of men in the open killing 3 of them and wounding 4 others. Sadly, Joe was one of those who was killed. Following the death of her husband, Frances Jagger was forced to return to domestic service, working in a house on Westville Road. She would not remarry and would die in 1935 aged just 45 years.

Today Private Joseph Jagger lies in White-House British Military Cemetery and is remembered with pride on our war memorial in Ilkley.




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