BORN HULL 1890. SON OF JOHN HENRY DOBBS, OF 60 LEONARD STREET, HULL (HDM ADDRESS 22/01/1917). JOINED THE HULL PAL’S. AND KILLED IN ACTION, ON 13/11/1916, AGED 26. HIS BROTHER’S JOHN, ARTHUR & ALFRED DOBBS, ALSO SERVED IN THE WAR.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE FREDERICK HAROLD DOBBS 12/161. Born in August 1890, Frederick was the fifth of seven children to John Henry and Annie Dobbs of 6 Brunswick Avenue, Grosvenor Street, Hull. A Printer’s Compositor by trade, he queued outside City Hall on 14th September 1914 to take the King’s Shilling joining the 12th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Sportsmen’, 3rd Hull Pals. Frederick was one of the Originals and so served in Egypt, from December 1915 to February 29th 1916, when they left Port Said, bound for Marseilles and the train north to the trenches of the Western Front. Arriving in Armentieres in mid-March the Pals took up positions on the Somme, soon to become the killing fields, which bore witness to the slaughter of an entire generation of young men. Frederick was killed in action on 13th November 1916, in the last act of that awful campaign, wading through freezing mud, up to his waist, to attack German positions in heaps of bricks once known as the French town of Serre. He is buried in Euston Road Cemetery, a young man of 26.
