Walton, John Francis

Hull Pals Memorial Post. SERGEANT JOHN FRANCIS WALTON 11/1015. Born in 1881 in Cairo, Egypt John’s early life is a mystery due to him being absent from Census records until 1911. At some stage he settled in Hull for he married Clara Knaggs there in 1908 and the couple resided at 3 Princess Terrace, Alexander Street where they raised two sons, Frank and Arthur. An Ironmoulder before the war, John enlisted at City Hall joining the 11th Battalion East Yorkshire Regiment, ‘The Tradesmen’, 2nd Hull Pals. John was killed in action on 13th November 1916 during the last action of the bloody Somme campaign that had taken the lives of so many of the 1914-15 volunteers. He is buried at Euston Road Cemetery; a 35 year old father of two young sons. That night saw a regular occurrence after a major attack. Both the British and Germans went out into No Man’s Land to recover their wounded and dead within sight of one another and yet no shots were fired; an instinctive detente between ordinary men who felt more in common with one another than with those whose orders they followed.