People Australia

Bill Young, c.1936

from Nettie Palmer et. al., Australians in Spain (1948), pp 15-16

William J.  ('Big Bill') Young (c.1900- 1938) construction worker, volunteer anti-Fascist fighter killed in Spanish Civil War

Birth: about 1900, details unknown. Marriage: details unknown [about 1924 to a Miss Shaw?]. They had at least one son. Death: about September 1938 at Ebro river in Spain. 

• Was a bush worker and worked on constructions jobs in country areas. According to his son he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in World War I but was discharged as under age. Also worked as a cane-cutter.
• Attracted by the militant policy of the Industrial Workers of the World. Joined the Communist Party of Australia in Sydney about 1925. Lived at Redfern, then Ultimo, Sydney, with his son, whose mother had died when the boy was an infant. Worked as a barrowman for Ma and Pa Jepson. Was instrumental in setting up a bookshop in the locality where he was so well known – Ultimo-Pyrmont.
• Stowed away in a coal bunker, and was taken on as a member of the crew. Volunteered to fight in Spanish Civil War. Fellow fighter Jim McNeill wrote that Young was “an expert with rifle and grenade.” His son later described him as being 6 feet 3 inches [190.5 cm] tall “who used to fight in Sharman’s boxing tent” and was a “pretty good fighter".
• Fought in the Battle of Ebro River in Spain in charge of his section where his body was never found. He was one of the first Australians to die in the Spanish Civil War.
• As Palmer and Fox report, “Bill Young’s son, only a lad at the time, grew up to enlist in the A.I.F. After being overseas for a number of years, most of them spent as a prisoner of war under the Japanese, he returned to Australia in 1946.” One of the last surviving Australian POWs, he died of COVID-19 on 19 May 2022.

Sources
Tribune, 13 December 1938 p.1, 8 October 1952; Nettie Palmer and Len Fox, with the help of Jim McNeill and Ron Hurd, Australians in Spain, (Sydney, May, 1948), pp 15-16 [includes a photo]; Amirah Inglis, Australians in the Spanish Civil War (Sydney, 1987).