ARMY PRIVATE JOSEPH G. ROSE KILLED IN WW1

.............................. REMEMBER THE FALLEN
...............................JOSEPH G. ROSE WW1
...............................By Bob Lessard Historian
...............................Post 64 American Legion
...............................Middleboro Gazette 6-15-2017

.......(Periodically, the Gazette will publish biographical sketches of Middleboro’s war casualties. This is intended to remember the sacrifices of all veterans and those who gave their lives in service to our country. ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL)

.......Middleboro residents learned of the death of United States Army Private Joseph G. Rose, 27, of 201 Sachem Street, through a one column wide article published in the November 15, 1918 Gazette, which was headline “Killed in Action.” His military records show he had enlisted on April 25, 1918.

.......The article revealed that Antone Rose, uncle of Joseph, “received a telegram from the war department at Washington, which stated that his nephew had been killed in action on September 21, while going over the top.”

.......Editor’s Note: “Going over the top” meant that a soldier, during World War 1, had climbed out of the trenches to confront the enemy.)

.......Private Rose, who shipped out on July 6, 1918 and was serving with the 1st Battalion, Intelligence Department, 167th Infantry, 42nd Division, when he was killed in action near St. Benoit, France on September 21, 1918.

.......He was sent to Camp Devens with other drafted Middleboro men to that Massachusetts base. While at Devens, he “was assigned to the Depot Brigade and he left for overseas as a member of Company D, 301st Infantry. The last news his relatives heard from him was on September1, when he wrote that he was assigned to the 167th Infantry.”

.......Joseph G. Rose was born in Middleboro on May 20, 1890 to Manual G. and Egnos M. (Legros) Rose, both born in the Western Islands. He was survived by a brother Manuel G. of Vallejo, California and brother Antone G. of Middleboro, who was then in the Army at Camp Devens.

......Other survivors were Mrs. Antone Silveira Furtado of Castello Bronco, Fayal, Azores. His father, it was reported, had lived in Middleboro for a number of years but had returned to Portugal. An uncle, Joseph G. Rose resided on Cross Street.

......Private Rose, while living in Middleboro, was working as shoe cutter at the Leonard, Shaw & Dean’s factory in town. When he left for the service, his friends at the factory presented him with going away gifts of a wrist watch and a trench mirror.

......While researching Private Rose’s life, we were unable to locate a photograph of him for this article. He is remembered in Middleboro with his name engraved on the Central Casualty Stone, WW1 section of the Middleboro Veterans Memorial Park.

......Also, on the WW1 Memorial boards in the Town Hall first floor lobby, which were installed in December 1918 one month after the Armistice.