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Pte. Joseph Gribben
British Army 6th Btn. East Lancashire Regiment
from:Clayton le Moors
Joe Gribben was born in Clayton le Moors, Lancashire on the 14th February 1890 to Peter Gribben and Ellen McNally who were from County Down, Ireland. He married Mary Kneafsey on the 14th November 1911 at Saint Mary's Clayton le Moors. They had a daughter Alice in 1912, she was my maternal grandmother.
Joe signed up for the 6th East Lancashire Regiment in 1914 and fought in Gallipoli from 7th of July 1915 until evacuation on 18th of December 1915. He then fought in Mesopotamia, arriving in Basra on the 6th of March 1916. He would most likely have been involved in the second attempt to relieve Kut and perhaps some of the later battles in Mesopotamia.
Joe transferred to the Liverpool Regiment Garrison Regiment in Egypt around February 1917. This regiment was for men considered permanently unfit for service but fit enough to man a garrison.
After the war Joe was badly shell shocked. He could no longer work in the weaving sheds because of the noise. He retrained as a chicken farmer. He and Mary had a son also called Joseph in 1920. Sadly their son was captured in France in 1942 and taken as a POW to Torun in Poland (Stalag XXa) and was murdered by a guard at a workcamp in Upper Silesia in 1942.
