PRIVATE 38806 JOSEPH PATTINSON BRUNSKILL, 1st BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 17th SEPTEMBER 1918 AGED 39 YEARS.


PRIVATE 38806 JOSEPH PATTINSON BRUNSKILL, 1st BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 17th SEPTEMBER 1918 AGED 39 YEARS.









Born in the small village of Longtown in Cumberland, Joseph Brunskill was the son of Richard Brunskill, a gamekeeper, and his wife Agnes. In time Joseph followed in his father’s footsteps and also became a gamekeeper and moved to Yorkshire to work on the Denton Estate near Ilkley. For some years he lodged at Heathershaw Farm until 1913 when he married Annie Mallory in the parish church of St Helens and together they would have two children.

Joseph appears to have enlisted into the 21st battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment in 1916 and over the next couple of years served with the 2/6th Battalion of the West Yorkshires and also with the 3rd Entrenching Battalion. This may indicate that he had been wounded and upon his return to the front was assigned to a new battalion. By September 1918 Joseph was serving in the 1st Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment near to the town of St Quintin in France. On the 17th of the month, at 5.30 in the morning, the battalion attacked the German held village of Holnon which they successfully took. However, The West Yorkshires lost 16 men killed including Joseph.

Private Joseph Brunskill has no known grave and is commemorated on the Vis en Artois Memorial to the Missing and remembered with pride on our war memorial in Ilkley.

As a tragic postscript to this story, it was reported by the Ilkley Gazette in November 1918 that his 2 year old son had drowned in a water trough in Denton Village.

https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/lifestory/571052

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