Carrington, Frederick

Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE, FREDERICK CARRINGTON 11/1128. Born in 1881, Frederick was one of nine children, to James Robinson Carrington (1846-1928) and Mary Ann Beach (1847-1928), of 26, Long Row Ann Street, Hull and  79 Walcott Street, Hessle Road, Hull (War pension addresses). A Boiler Cleaner by trade, he enlisted on 9th December 1914 at Hull City Hall to become part of the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. A veteran of Egypt, the Somme and Oppy Wood Frederick was killed in action in the trenches at Arleux on 8th September 1917. After Oppy Wood, the Pals had spent time first at Vimy Ridge and then at Arleux in what were, by comparison, ‘quiet’ sectors of the line. In truth it could have been much worse as further north the Third Battle of Ypres raged on and hundreds of thousands of men were pushed through a sea of mud toward the remains of the small Belgian village of Passchendaele. At Arleux, beleaguered battalion, still licking its wounds after their losses that May, and rebuilding back to fighting strength, had it comparatively easy; but easy in the trenches and easy anywhere else were two different things, and their were nightly raids into No Man’s Land and the day to day losses inflicted by snipers and sporadic shelling and trench mortar fire. Frederick was almost certainly lost in the melee of a trench raid in the pitch black of night, for his body was never recovered and his name is commemorated on the Arras Memorial; he was 36 years old. His death was reported in the Hull Daily Mail on 13/10/1917 & 15/10/1917.