He may have been stranger from the other side of the world, but when Joseph Jenkins died alone and in agony in the Spring of 1917, the Deputy Mayor of a small town in northern France rallied local residents to his graveside.

Private Jenkins died of an untreated illness as a prisoner of war in a German military hospital in Maubeuge on June 18, 1917. The town had been under German occupation since its capture in September 1914.