A Collection of Medals to the 42nd Highlanders and 73rd Foot (Black Watch)

A Great War 1917 ‘French theatre’ M.M. awarded to Sergeant G. S. Young, 4/5th Battalion, Royal Highlanders, wounded in action at Ypres, 11 July 1917, and later commissioned Temporary Second Lieutenant, Cameron Highlanders

Military Medal, G.V.R. (202322 Sjt: G. S. Young. 4/5 R. Hdrs - T.F.) good very fine £240-280

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Medals to the 42nd Highlanders and 73rd Foot (Black Watch).

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M.M. London Gazette 2 November 1917.

George Shepherd Young was a native of Craigie, Perth, Scotland. He initially attested for the 6th (Perthshire) Battalion, Royal Highlanders before transferring to the 1/4th (City of Dundee) Battalion. He was serving with the latter when they amalgamated with the 1/5th (Angus and Dundee) Battalion to form the 4/5th Battalion in March 1916. Young served with the 4/5th Battalion in the French theatre of war from November 1916. He was wounded in action, 11 July 1917, during which time the Battalion were holding the line at Ypres. The Regimental History gives the following:

‘May, June and July 1917, were quiet months for the 4/5th, most of the time being spent in ordinary trench warfare in various parts of the Salient.... During this period the Battalion went once into the line, on July 10th, for a few days, at La Brique, where a party consisting of two officers, Second Lieutenants Bell and Robertson, and 10 men encountered some Germans in No Man’s Land, with the result that both the officers and two men were wounded.’

Having advanced to Sergeant, Young was commissioned Temporary Second Lieutenant, Cameron Highlanders, 13 March 1918.