CHARLES ALAN YOUNG
25th November 1892 – 14th October 1918
Charles Alan Young, known as Alan, was born in Cardiff in 1892, the only son of Charles Alfred
Young (born in South Shields in early 1863) and Maria Burrell Putt, known as May (born in
Brixham, Devon in 1866). His parents married in Portsea in 1888 and had two children, Charles and
his sister Margaret Ursula, born in St Andrews, Dinas Powys in 1898.
In the 1891 census it shows Alan’s parents boarding at 222 Newport Road, Cardiff, he was a ship
store merchant or shipbroker. Sadly, Alan’s father died aged 38 in 1900. By the time of the 1901
census Alan’s widowed mother May (34) was living on her own means at 16 Cwrt-y-vil Road,
Penarth with her two children and a servant. She was in the same house in 1911 and Alan was now
age 18 and a fitter’s apprentice and Margaret age 12 was at school. They no longer had a servant. It
must have been in Penarth that Alan’s mother met her second husband, Herbert Field, born in
Wallingfield in 1855/6. At the time of the 1911 census Herbert was living in Penarth with his two
children, Esther Mary and Charles, as well as his Oxfordshire born niece, who kept house for them.
He married Alan’s mother at the beginning of 1912.
Alan served as a Second Lieutenant in the “D” Battery of the 256th Brigade of the Royal Field
Artillery. The Royal Field Artillery provided military support for the British Army. It came into
being when the Royal Artillery was divided on 1st July 1899. It was re-amalgamated back into the
Royal Artillery in 1924. The Royal Field Artillery was the largest arm of the artillery. It was
responsible for the medium calibre guns, and howitzers, deployed close to the front line and was
reasonably mobile. It was organised into brigades, attached to divisions or higher formations.
During WW1 a whole new form of artillery was developed to meet the unusual conditions on the
Western Front: the trench mortar. The lighter weapons being manned by the infantry, the Royal
Field Artillery provided the manpower for the heavier mortars.