Name
Eric Barnes Yardley
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
20/07/1917
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Lieutenant
King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
Not Yet Researched
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
BRIGHTON CITY (BEAR ROAD) CEMETERY
ZHN. 11.
United Kingdom
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Not on the Hoddesdon memorials
Pre War
Born Hoddesdon on 3rd July 1894, the eldest son of Vincent Yardley of 33 Warren Roadm Chingford and Ada Diana (dughter of Rev William Barnes). His father was the Chief Assistant to the Engineer of the Great Eastern Railway.
Eric was educated at Dalston Lane and the Merchant Taylors School as a classical scholar and then King's College.
In 1911 he went to Grosse Isle, Manitoba, Canada and worked on a farm. He returned o the outbreak of war.
Wartime Service
He volunteered for overseas service, joining the Honourable Artillery Company in September 1914. He was commissioned and gazetted Second Lieutenant in the 5th Battalion of The King's Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry) on 14th October 1915, serving in France and Flanders from September 1916 and attached to the 10th Battalion.
He was wounded at St Martin-sur-Cojeul and repatriated, but died from wounds received in the Kitchener Hospital, Brighton on 20th July 1917. At the time he was wounded he was acting as second in command to his Company.
His Commanding Officer wrote that he was quite sure no officer in the battalion was so personally lover as he was, and added: "No doubt you know the depth of regard which existed between us, a thing clean apart from military life. he was the whitest man I have met in France, and this accounts for my love for him. You lost a son, and I a friend, a man of the truest British manhood."
His former head master, Dr Arbuthnot Nairn of Merchants Taylor's School, wrote "We had a high opinion of his character and work, and considered that he would have an active and useful career; that hope, als, will not be realized, but he has had a gallant end in a good cause."
Acknowledgments
Jonty Wild
