BORN HULL 1894. ONLY SON OF ANNIE NAYLOR, OF 13 BOHEMIA TERRACE, FINSBURY STREET, HULL FOUNTAIN ROAD, HULL (WAR PENSION ADDRESS). HE WORKED FOR MESSRS WRAY & SONS, FRUITERERS, HUMBER STREET. HE ENLISTED IN THE HULL PALS. REPORTED MISSING ON 28/06.1918. HIS DEATH AND PHOTOGRAPH WERE REPORTED IN THE HULL DAILY MAIL ON 30TH SEPTEMBER 1919. *
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE ALBERT BROWN NAYLOR 11/464. Born October 1894, the youngest of four children, to Harry and Annie Naylor, of 22 Cave Street, Hull. Albert was a Fruiterer before the war, but enlisted in the heady late summer of 1914, joining the fledgling 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment. One of the original Pals, he served in Egypt before shipping to the trenches of the Western Front and was a veteran of those horrendous campaigns on the Somme and at Oppy Wood. At some stage I believe he must have been wounded and after recovery reposted to the 10th Battalion, for he was fighting with “The Commercials” alongside his old battalion when he was killed in action on 28th June 1918 during the battle for Le Cornet Perdu. He was most likely the victim of his own artillery. The British 18-pounders, a part of the bombardment supporting the attack, were firing short and exploding amongst the ranks of the 10th Battalion as they advanced through the corn fields to their attack positions. Just like Fred Motherby, Albert had seen the burning sun of the Sinai Desert; the mud, blood and horror of autumn 1916; he’d seen the ranks decimated, and his comrades slaughtered by machine gun in those Oppy trees; and he’d fought the German Spring Offensive to a standstill, only to die at the hands of a miscalculation by an artillery observer. In short, a Greengrocer from West Hull, died because of mathematics in a corn field far from home. Albert was buried at Aval Wood Military Cemetery; he was 23 years old.
