Roy Yorke of Champ Street, Coburg

 

2920 Signaller Roy Yorke, 6th Infantry Battalion, 9^th Reinfs.

Roy, the second youngest of ten surviving children, and his eldest brother Robert (19 years older) both served in the 1st AIF. The family came to Brunswick from New Zealand in the late 1880s before moving to Coburg where Robert Yorke senior worked as an overseer at Pentridge Stockade.

Roy was born in Brunswick in 1897 and was just under 19 years old when he enlisted on 28 June 1915. Roy was an apprentice engineer with A.T. Richardson in Elizabeth Street (Melbourne) when he enlisted and his parents had to give permission for him to join up.

Not many non-prisoners could give their address as The Stockade, Coburg, but this was where Robert and Minnie Yorke were living when they wrote their permission letter for Roy to join up.

He served on Gallipoli then in France, was hospitalised for a few weeks with flu in July 1918 then returned to his unit where he was suffered a severe gunshot wound to his right foot and knee and was transferred to the 3rd Southern General Hospital in Oxford.

He returned to Australia in January 1919 and died at Heidelberg in 1971 aged 73.