PRIVATE ANDREW NOEL YOUNG
CANADIAN INFANTRY
8TH AUGUST 1918 AGE 20
BURIED: CAIX BRITISH CEMETERY, SOMME, FRANCE
When Jesus was asked, "Which is the first commandment of all?" he answered:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
St Luke 10:27
According to St Mark 12:30-1, “there is none other commandment greater than these”, and to St Matthew, “on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets”. This being the case, the 1914-18 war shows that mankind has spectacularly disregarded God’s law, something Mrs Lucy Young was keen to highlight in the inscription she chose for her son.
Andrew Noel Young was born in Glasgow on the 10 December 1897. He attested in Victoria, Canada, on 1 November 1917 giving his address as a hotel in Los Angeles, his name as Andrew Macdonald, and his father’s name as James Macdonald. At some point this has been corrected on the form. Young’s father was called Andrew Young and in 1917 he and his wife lived New Jersey, USA. However, despite the fact that the United States entered the war on the side of the allies on 6 April 1917, Young preferred to enlist in the Canadian rather than the US army – nascent loyalty for the land of his birth, or to escape parental disapproval?
He served with the 7th Battalion Canadian Infantry and was killed on the opening day of the Battle of Amiens when the battalion crossed the River Luce and took the village of Cayeux, “with very slight loss having met with no organised enemy resistance during the advance” [Battalion War Diary]. Young was one of the two soldiers killed that day.