Joseph Purkiss
Joseph was born on 24 March 1895 in Hatton. His parents were Charles and Julia and they had seven children. In 1901, they were living in a cottage at Bob’s Bridge, Moore, by the Ship Canal, but had moved to Moore Lane by 1911. The census records that Joseph was a milk lad.
Joseph served with the Army Service Corps, regimental number TI 2743. He was a driver and spent most of the war in Egypt.
The website, ‘The Long, Long Trail’, tells us that –
‘The officers and men of the ASC were the unsung heroes of the British Army in the Great War. Soldiers cannot fight without food, equipment and ammunition. They cannot move without horses or vehicles. It was the ASC’s job to provide them. In the Great War, the vast majority of the supply, maintaining a vast army on many fronts, was supplied from Britain. Using horsed and motor vehicles, railways and waterways, the ASC performed prodigious feats of logistics and were one of the great strengths of organisation by which the war was won.’
After the war, Joseph returned home and married Mary Bodell in 1921. The 1939 register records they were living in ‘Conway’ on Runcorn Road and Joseph was a wharf labourer (heavy worker). He died in 1980, aged 85 years.