Latus, Sydney

BORN HULL 1897. SON OF WILLIAM STEPHEN LATUS  & EDITH BUTTLE LATUS, OF 37 JAMES STREET, DRYPOOL AND 52 PELHAM STREET, DRYPOOL, HULL. A FORMER CLERK. HE ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS, ON 01/09/1914. HIS ARMY RECORDS DESCRIBE HIM AS 5 FOOT, 6 INCHES TALL, 128 LBS WEIGHT, 34 INCH CHEST SIZE, BLUE EYES. AUBURN HAIR, WESLEYAN RELIGION. TRAINED IN WITHERNSEA. HE SERVED IN ‘A’ COMPANY, IN THE 13TH EAST YORKSHIRES, IN EGYPT AND FRANCE. WOUNDED IN SHOULDER AND LEFT ARM BY GUN SHOT, ON 04/06/1916 AND INVALIDED TO ENGLAND FOR 186 DAYS. HE WAS RETURNED TO FRANCE, ON THE 12/12/1916. REPORTED MISSING, PRESUMED KILLED ON 13/04/1918, AGED 21. HE HAD SERVED IN THE ARMY FOR 3 YEARS AND 22 DAYS. UNMARRIED. HIS ARMY EFFECTS WERE LEFT TOHIS PARENTS. WHO WROTE TO THE AUTHORITIES MOST ANXIOUS ABOUT HIS WHEREABOUTS.
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE SYDNEY LATUS 10/295. Born 1897, the second of four children, and eldest son, of William and Edith Latus of 52 Pelham Street, Hull. Sydney was a Clerk before the war but pushed aside his fountain pen and ledger and rushed to join in the big adventure the war still seemed in the heady late summer days of 1914. He joined the fledgling 10th Battalion on 1st September and trained in Yorkshire throughout the rest of the year and most of 1915. They eventually shipped for Egypt in December where they helped defend the Suez Canal from the Turks in the searing heat of day and biting cold of the desert nights. He shipped to the trenches of France in March 1916 and was a veteran of costly campaigns on the Somme and at Oppy Wood before being killed in action on 13th April 1918 during the German Spring Offensive. His body was never recovered and his name is commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial. He was 21 years old, a soldier of some experience and somebody’s son; he ended up as a name carved in a piece of stone a long, long way from home.