BORN HULL 10/04/1891. SON OF GEORGE AND MARY JANE JOHNSON, OF 36, ALBEMARLE STREET, HULL (WAR PENSION ADDRESS) AND 9, LOLA CRESCENT, ALBEMARLE STREET, HULL (WAR PENSION & CWGC ADDRESS). BROTHER OF GEORGE, ARTHUR, ERNEST, SYDNEY AND ELSIE.
EDUCATED AT HULL’S HOLY TRINITY SCHOOL. HE ENLISTED IN THE 2ND HULL PALS. SERVED WITH THE 11TH EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT. DIED OF WOUNDS, ON 16/06/1916, AGED 25. HE IS REMEMBERED ON THE ST MATTHEWS CHURCH WW1 MEMORIAL, BOULEVARD. HIS DEATH WAS REPORTED IN THE HULL DAILY MAIL WITH HIS PHOTOGRAPH ON 21ST JUNE 1916. * HE HAD THREE BROTHERS WHO ALSO SERVED IN THE WAR.
HIS BROTHER, PRIVATE, SYDNEY JOHNSON, 4TH YORKSHIRE REGIMENT, DIED A PRISONER OF WAR, ON 26/10/1918, AGED 18. HIS BROTHER ERNEST, SERVED WITH THE NORTHUMBERLAND FUSILIERS AND WAS DISCHARGED WITH WOUNDS AND AWARDED A SILVER WOUND BADGE.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE HAROLD JOHNSON 11/1256. Born in 1891, Harold was the third of six children to George and Mary Jane Johnson of 35 Albemarle Street, Boulevard, Hull. He attested at City Hall and joined the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Trademen’, the second of what would become four Pals battalions from the city. After serving in Egypt over Christmas 1915, the Pals arrived on the Western Front the following March and there the real war began. Harold was injured on the front line as part of the daily tit-for-tat of trench warfare, and evacuated to the hospital centre at Rouen where he died of wounds on 16th June 1916, aged 25. He is buried at St. Sever Cemetery. To put the enormity of the task of those hospitals into perspective, Rouen was one of many such centres, and the graveyard contains 3,082 burials from Commonwealth soldiers alone. His mother was widow and by the end of the war she had lost Harold and two other sons.
