Joseph Richard Moorman

Memorial: Chipping Sodbury Town Cross - Broad Street

Regiment: Gloucestershire Regiment

Medals: British War Medal, Next of Kin Memorial Plaque 1914 - 1921, Victory Medal

Rank and number: Private 30890

Marital status: Married

Home address: Brook Street, Chipping Sodbury, Bristol

Date of birth: 1886

Place of birth: Hawkesbury Upton, Glos

Date of death: 30/04/1917

Buried/Commemorated at: Chapelle British Cemetery, Holnon, Aisne, France (Plot 1V, B 19)

Age: 31

Further information:

14th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment

At home in Brook Street, Chipping Sodbury, Edith Annie Moorman had been married to Joseph since the summer of 1911. By the time he died some six years later, she was the young mother of their two children, a daughter Florence (known as ‘Nance’) born before the war, and their new son Leonard James. Edith had been born into the Vizard family and in such a small, close-knit town as Chipping Sodbury, this young Moorman family were to grow up next door to where the Vizards lived when young George did not return from the Somme the previous year

Arras was the first big battle since the Battle of the Somme in the previous summer. It was just beginning in April 1917, and Joseph Moorman was one of its early casualties. It was also one of the first battles the British fought since knowing their American allies had now safely arrived in support of the home forces

Chapelle British Cemetery is only a few miles down the road to the west from St Quentin in Picardy, on the way to Amiens. It is named from a wayside shrine or mini-chapel. As a cemetery, it was made after the Armistice by the concentration of graves of 1917-18, from the battlefields west of St Quentin, from Holnon Communal Cemetery and French Military Cemeteries. There are now over 600 First War casualties commemorated on this site, over 250 of them remaining unidentified

Joseph Richard Moorman is remembered on the Chipping Sodbury and District War Memorial Cottage Hospital board, now at Yate and District Heritage Centre under Chipping Sodbury

By kind permission, this information is based on the following source(s):

Alison Benton (2014)Remembered with Honour. Sprint Print, Yate. Forces War Records