Betts, James Fredrick

BORN HULL 1896. ENLISTED HULL. SON OF JAMES & USULA BETTS.
Pocklington Post 8/11/2012: James Frederick Betts, of Hedon Road, Hull, served with the 1st Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment. He was reported wounded and missing in March 1918 and this prompted his sister Sarah to write to one of his comrades to try and establish his fate. She penned an anxious letter to a Private F Rotherham, asking if he knew James and what had happened to him. A photograph of Private Betts was included with the letter and, although Private Rotherham was able to confirm that James had been wounded, he knew nothing more of his fate.
It is likely that James, who was a stretcher-bearer, was involved in an assault on German lines, named Operation Michael, which began on 21 March 1918. It was launched from the Hindenburg Line in the vicinity of St Quentin, France. It is not known exactly how he died, but James is thought to have been killed on 22 March, lost in the mist that engulfed the line on that fateful day.
He died aged 22 and is now commemorated on the Pozieres Memorial in France, along with 14,000 others who have no known grave. James was posthumously awarded the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.
Having survived the fighting for more than two years, he died with just eight months before the war’s end.