Lieutenant-Colonel J.D.S. Young
10th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry

Captain Young remained with the Battalion to the end of the fighting and celebrated his twentieth birthday on 27th December 1918 after 4½ years in the front line! He enlisted at the commencement of the War when fifteen years of age, but as he stood 6 feet 4 inches he doubtless had little trouble in hoodwinking the doctors as to his real age.

(Herbert G. Sotheby, The 10th Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, 1914-1919 [1931], 104)

Born in 1899 in Troon, Ayrshire, John Douglas Starforth Young was a highly decorated First World War veteran. Although still underage, he had enlisted in August 1914 and was commissioned with the 10th Battalion, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. While only a lieutenant, in 1918, he earned the Military Cross and the Distinguished Service Order, rare honours for a junior officer.

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