William Young

Who was William Young?

William Alexander Smillie Young, also known as Sandy Young, was, at age 107, one of the last surviving British veterans of the First World War. He later emigrated to Australia, and was the last known veteran of the Royal Flying Corps, in which he served as a radio operator.

Young was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, the eldest of the six children of Robert Craig Young. His family moved to Hayes in Middlesex when he was 13, when his father became the manager of a Scots Jams factory, and he was educated at the county school in Southall.

Young joined a scheme set up by Lord Derby, Secretary of State for War, under which people of less than 18 could sign up to show their readiness to join the army or the air force when they turned 18. He was not keen to join the infantry, as the casualty rate was so high; instead, on his 18th birthday in 1918, Young signed up for the RDFC at its recruiting centre in Shepherds Bush. He was assigned to the wireless section, and trained in Farnborough.

As a corporal radio operator, Young was assigned to the 14th Brigade Royal Horse Artillery, near Baupaume in France. His job was to take the messages sent via morse code from observation planes and pass the location of the target to a forward observation officer, who could then call down a bombardment from the brigade's 25-pounder field guns. He continued to serve in this role through the British offensive later that year, until the Armistice. Young caught the Spanish flu that winter. After he recovered, he was assigned to a unit of the Army of Occupation near Cologne.