Medal sparks hunt for hero’s family
AN appeal has been launched to locate the living relatives of a Rochdale soldier killed in the First World War - after one of his medals was found over 4000 miles away in Canada.
Private Joseph Wild served in the Second Batallion of the Lancashire Fusiliers and was 39 when he was killed in Belgium, near the town of Ypres, on June 10 1915.
He had also served with the regiment in the Boer War in South Africa from 1899 to 1902, receiving a slew of medals for his role in both conflicts.
However, one of them has now resurfaced in Canada - over 4000 miles away from Rochdale - and the owner wants to see the medal returned to Joseph’s living relatives.
Bob Johnson is a retired electrician living in Edmonton, Alberta, and found the medal when he was looking through the coin collection he inherited from his parents Mary and Arthur.
Bob, 65, said: “How it got into our family collection is unknown to me. 105 years is long enough and I think it is time to be put back to where it belongs and into the hands of the family he came from.
“The collection has sat in our safe for over five years. We decided to sell the coin collection and that’s when I found this medal.”
The collection also contained medals awarded to Bob’s grandfather Chester, who also served in the war - but he was surprised to find another soldier’s decoration alongside it.
Bob said: “Were they friends, I do not know.
“It has no value to us so I decided to start a search.”
The medal in question is a British War Medal, depicting King George V and St George, and is engraved with Joseph’s name and service number - 18230.
Around 6.5 million of this medal were produced in silver and awarded to British and imperial forces who served in the First World War, including to 427,993 servicemen of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, some of whom were present in Belgium in 1915 during the Battle of Ypres.
Bob’s grandfather Chester was one of the Canadian servicemen also awarded the medal.
Most of the coins in his collection are silver items from Canada and the US, collected by Bob’s mother Mary who worked in Edmonton as a cashier.
Although he has no idea how Joseph’s medal ended up in his family collection or if he and Chester knew each other, Bob hopes that locating Joseph’s descendants might help solve the mystery.
Joseph was born in Wardleworth in 1876. He and his wife Elizabeth got married in St Chad’s Church on 13th February 1897.
By the time war broke out in 1914, the family had set up home on 66 Great George Street in central Rochdale, and had two sons and three daughters.
After re-enlisting with the Fusiliers, he is thought to have disembarked in France in April 1915.
Barely two months later, he was killed in a shell attack.
The Fusiliers’ war diary from June 10 1915 reads: “Shelled at intervals during the day, one man killed and two wounded.”
After an initial burial on the battlefield, Joseph’s body was exhumed in 1919 and reburied with full honours at the military Bard Cottage Cemetery at Boezinge, Belgium.
Records from the Imperial War Museum show that the name Joseph (or J.) Wild appears on several war memorials in the borough - including the Buersil and Balderstone memorial on Oldham Road, the WW1 Roll of Honour at St Mary’s Church, Balderstone, and Heywood War Memorial but it is unknown whether any of these relate to the same man.
» If you are a descendant of Joseph’s or have information that might help in the search, please email rochdale observer@menmedia.co.uk or message the Rochdale Observer Facebook page.