TRANTER, Joseph

Joseph Tranter was married to Eliza (later Detheridge) and lived in Cradley. He had been a pre-war soldier in the South Wales Borderers and was probably recalled to the colours and the 1st Battalion on the outbreak of war. They were in the 1st Division of the British Expeditionary Force and crossed to France on the 12th August. They travelled and marched as far as Mons and fired the first British shots of the war but were then forced into the gruelling ten day retreat to the Marne. They were able to return as far as the Aisne which they reached on the 14th September. The struggle for the Aisne Heights was ten days of continuous fighting in the woods on the hillside above the river and culminated on the 26th with what one of the SWB officers described in the battalion War Diary as 'the most ghastly day in my life, and one of the proudest'. The German army had been halted but at a heavy cost. Those killed in action amounted to 86 and one of these was Private Joseph Tranter. He is commemorated on La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, Cradley and Halesowen Memorials.