Joe Wilson was killed when his battalion’s positions were fired on by enemy trench mortars at Treslon, near Reims. So ferocious was the attack, that the battalion was forced to retire to a position north of Bouleuse, roughly three-quarters of a mile away. This period of two days cost the battalion dear, with twenty-three officers becoming casualties, either killed, wounded or missing, and 538 other ranks, including 514 of which were missing. Some of these men may have made it back to British lines, but some will have remained on the battlefield, alive but wounded to be picked up by the Germans, and inevitably some will have died. Of the dead, when they were eventually recovered, some will have been identified and some will not. The unidentified men are now commemorated with Joe Wilson on the panels of the Soissons Memorial.
The entire division suffered casualties of this scale, making it necessary to bring the 19^th Infantry Division into the line to relieve the battered 8^th Divison, of which 2^nd West Yorkshire Regiment was a part. The remains of the 8^th Division collected at Nanteuil where it reformed into a composite battalion. It should be noted that an infantry division at this stage in the war was made up of nine battalions of roughly 1,000 men, divided into three brigades. Therefore, if the remnants of the division could be re-mustered into a single composite battalion, the casualties suffered in the previous couple of days’ fighting must have been utterly dreadful.

Notification of Joe Wilson being missing appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Post on 23^rd July 1918.