BORN RUSSIA 1895. SON OF ABARAHAM BLACK, OF 35, PORTER STREET, HULL (WAR PENSION ADDRESS). COBBLER FAMILY. ORIGINAL HULL PAL. KILLED AT SERRE, 13/11/1916, AGED 21. COMMEMORATED ON FAMILY GRAVE IN HEBREW CEMETERY, MARFLEET.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE MYER BLACK 11/831. Born in Russia in 1895, Myer was one of ten children, five brothers and five sisters, to Abraham Black of 35 Porter Street, Hull. The family had left Russia for a new life in the West and set up home in Hull, a city that was then a thriving port and fishing town. There is no mention of his mother on the one Census record available. A Tailor by trade, he enlisted to fight for his adopted country on 10th September 1914 and joined the fledgling 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. Myer fought in Egypt and on the Somme and it was the latter where he died, killed in action on 13th November 1916 as the Pals huddled in front line trenches waiting for the orders to join in the attack on German positions around the ruins of Serre. Zero Hour was 5.45am. It was a misty morning and visibility next to nothing, so the attacking battalions, the 12th and 13th, had gone over the top already and were crouched in No Man’s Land waiting for their artillery to stop fire and the attack to be signalled. When it did of course the Germans responded in kind and pounded the British front line, the place they expected the attack was being launched from, with high explosive shells completely demolishing parts of the earthwork. It was here Myer lay in wait with his comrades for orders to follow. The order never came, and Myer Black would have known nothing of it anyway. He is buried at Euston Road Cemetery; he was 21 years old. Myer’s name is also commemorated on the family grave in the Hebrew Cemetery in Marfleet, Hull.
