BORN HULL 1898. ELDEST SON OF WILLIAM & ANN MARY YOUNG, OF, 1, DERWENT AVENUE, ALFONSO STREET, HULL (WAR PENSION ADDRESS). SON OF A DOCK FIREMAN. HE HAD TWO SISTERS, DARCY AND ELSIE MAY, AND ONE BROTHER, CYRIL ARTHUR YOUNG (1901-1930).
HE WAS EMPLOYED AS A CLERK FOR THOMAS WILSON & SONS. HE WAS ALSO A MEMBER OF QUEENS HALL CHURCH, HULL.
HE ENLISTED IN THE ‘HULL COMMERCIALS’, AGED 17. SERVING WITH THE 10TH EAST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT, IN EGYPT AND FRANCE. HE HAD SERVED FOR ONE YEAR AND TEN MONTHS AND SURVIVED THE BATTLES AT SERRE AND OPPY WOOD. HE WAS DUE A WEEKS HOME LEAVE, WHEN HE WAS KILLED ON 25/06/1917, AGED 19.
HIS NAME IS LISTED ON THE WILSON LINE CRICKET & ATHLETIC CLUB’S ROLL OF HONOUR AND ON ST MATTHEWS CHURCH MEMORIAL, BOULEVARD, HULL. HIS DEATH WAS REPORTED IN THE HULL DAILY MAIL, ON THE 4TH JULY 1917, WITH HIS PHOTOGRAPH. *
Hull Pals Memorial Post. PRIVATE LEONARD YOUNG 10/350. Born 1898, the second of four children and eldest son of William and Ann Young. The family resided at 1 Derwent Avenue, Alphonse Street, Boulevard, Hull and William worked as a Dock Foreman to keep them fed and clothed. Leonard would doubtless have followed his father on to the docks, but war came and he enlisted for the fledgling battalion on 2nd September 1914, fighting in first Egypt and then the Somme and Oppy Wood. He died of wounds on 25th June 1917, and here’s where the story takes on a whole new tragedy. Most men listed DOW have a recorded resting place, usually in the cemetery closest the Casualty Clearing Station they had been evacuated to. Leonard has no grave. His name is commemorated on the Arras Memorial to the missing. Somehow his body was either lost, or buried anonymously in an unmarked grave. He was 19 years old.
