Emotional real life love story of the Woolpack boy who never returned from war

 

Back in 1914, Esholt had a population of just 200 people and the pub, then called The Commercial Inn, was a centre of village life run by Fred and Mary Ann Booth, who had one son, Joshua.

When war broke out, he was 22 years old and worked as a wool sorter in nearby Bradford, pulling pints in the evenings to help his parents.

Local historian Bev Anderson, who researched Joshua’s life, says: “He was very well known in the village. He played football, he was in the cricket team - I think he was quite a catch.”
But Joshua had fallen for his cousin, Winnie, who had stayed at the pub three years earlier.

And when he marched off to war in 1914, with the Duke of Wellington Regiment, the pair vowed to keep in touch.

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In tiny Esholt, 53 men had been called up to serve king and country.

Bev says: “On one street alone in the village, 11 men went to war. So every house was affected either by a member of their own family going or a neighbour.” Before they were sent to the front in France, the men travelled to training camps in Grimsby, Doncaster and the Yorkshire Dales, where they had to practise with sticks instead of rifles because there was a shortage of guns. Hardly the preparation they needed for what lay ahead. As said by Charlotte Bellamy (Emmerdale 1918 documentry) “The more you hear about the First World War and about
how it really affected a community like Esholt, you realise it must have been really strange for them. “That feeling of loss and just not knowing when they were going to return and if they were going to return.”

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Joshua and Winnie did keep in touch and he sent his sweetheart a series of love letters from the trenches.

One of them read: “We are having a good Christmas on the whole, the only thing that spoils it is that you are not here to share it with us. I think about you every day wondering how you are getting on.” He also sent Winnie gifts, including an embroidered handkerchief which he had bought while in France.

 

Joshua and his company were on the French front line at the Battle of the Somme, where 57,000 men were killed or injured in just one day. His battalion was 800 yards from the German front line trenches. Around 35 men from his company were killed or wounded, but Joshua survived to fight on.

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Bev says: “Winnie’s parents decided to emigrate to Canada and she had to go with them. Joshua could only hope that Winnie would make enough money out there to return to Esholt and join him after the war.” Tragically, it was not to be.

Winnie fell in love with someone else and, by 1917, Joshua was writing to her as “Mrs Foster” in Canada.

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Joshua’s battalion suffered many losses in what was one of the bloodiest battles of the campaign. He then went on to fight at Ypres.

On December 11, 1917, his dugout was hit by a stray German shell.

Joshua – who was just 25 – was killed instantly, along with two comrades.

He is buried in the Dochy Farm New British Cemetery in Belgium alongside 1,439 other soldiers, including 44 of his fellow Yorkshiremen.

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Winnie never forgot her first sweetheart either – as Bev discovered....

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Bev, who runs the genealogy firm Folk Finders, had set out to trace the war story of her own great grandfather, who is one of the 53 Esholt men listed on the village’s War Memorial. Richard Williams was one of the 49 who served and returned home. Along with Joshua, Private Walter Ives, 35, Private Philip Keighley, 19, and Second Lieutenant Arthur Max Spencer, 19, were killed in action.

 

Bev says: “We hold a memorial service every year in Esholt and I thought it would be nice to find out more about the men.

“I’d been using an ancestry website and one day I got a message from a lady called Mary Foster, who was living in Prince Edward Island, Canada. “And she asked me why I was researching her grandma’s boyfriend. Because Winnie had kept all her letters and gifts from Joshua and Mary had found them after she died. 

 

“I explained and Mary was thrilled.” This summer Mary Foster visited Esholt, bringing Joshua’s letters and gifts with her.

She donated them to the village and they are now on display at the pub where Joshua’s journey began – now called The Woolpack. The little exhibition also includes some soil from Joshua’s grave in Belgium, which Bev’s husband Phil brought back from a visit.