Wright, Ernest.

BORN HULL 1900. SON OF GEORGE WILLIAM & ADA WRIGHT, OF 5 LOUISA TERRACE, FINSBURY STREET, HULL AND 5 WEST VIEW, SCULCOATES LANE, HULL.
PRIVATE ERNEST WRIGHT 13022. Born in December 1900, Ernest was the youngest of five children and only son of George and Ada Wright of 5 Louisa’s Terrace, Finsbury Street, Fountain Road, Hull (War pension address). A member of C Company, he was killed in action on 7th September 1918 as the Pals attacked enemy positions around Soyer Farm. He is buried at Pont D’Achelles Military Cemetery; he was 17 years old. As the war machine ground on and on and wiped out more and more men, the Army had to expand its previous age restrictions meaning that by this stage in the war it could conscript ‘men’ as young as 17 and as old as 51. Ernest must have been very green, having only come of age the previous December. He must have spent most of 1918 training, and I would wager this was his first attack. I can picture him nervously awaiting the whistle, seeking strength from older hands around him, but seeing mainly boys not much older than himself and wondering if he had the nerve, if he could climb up that trench ladder, clamber over the parapet and walk into those machine gun bullets and shrapnel shells without showing his fear; without turning and running. He was a boy of 17, the only son of a House Painter from Hull, and dying in a ditch in France.