In 1907, Harold Younger’s name was circulated in the police gazette. His crime was to have deserted from the HMS Pioneer, one of four men to have disappeared while the ship was docked in Sydney. The notification stated he was a native of Lithgow, which was true but not current. Younger had been born in Lithgow in 1886, the youngest of three boys, but his father Charles died the same year. A year later his mother Jean (nee Jones) married James Gilson.
The family eventually moved to Dinmore in Queensland where Gilson opened a pottery with James Rumble, a member of a longstanding Ipswich soccer family. Younger worked for his stepfather until 1904, when he enlisted to the Australian Navy on a five-year agreement.
In 1906 crew from the training ship HMSS Torch travelled to Dinmore to play soccer against the Bush Rats, with the Queensland Times noting former local lad Younger was among the visitors’ cheer squad. A year later Younger deserted and returned to his family, who by this time were living in Kleinton near Toowoomba.
His stepfather had been employed by the Kleinton pottery owned by the Brazier family, heavily involved in Dinmore Bush Rats back in Ipswich. Younger would join the firm on his return to his family. He also played soccer with his stepbrothers Frances and James, firstly for Kleinton, a club run by his stepfather and the Braziers, and later for the City Club. The Gilson family would leave a legacy with Toowoomba Football, with the Gilson Cup periodically played from 1912 until the 1970s.
The Gilsons moved to Goodna shortly before the war where Younger worked in his stepfather’s new pottery and brickworks. He also played for Goodna in the Ipswich and West Moreton soccer competition.
Younger’s contribution to the war is slightly obscure. His name appeared alongside those of Frances and James Gilson on the Toowoomba British Association honour board in 1918, but unlike his stepbrothers he did not enlist in the AIF. Younger had instead returned to the navy. Sports Referee of 6 July 1929 sheds light on his wartime navy career in a short biography which incorrectly names him Harold Young. Younger was allocated to the HMAS Psyche, a recommissioned ship which had been transferred from the locally based British Navy squadron to the Australian Navy at the start of the war. Younger soon joined the ship’s soccer team. The Sport’s Record reported:
When his section of the fleet was doing duty near China he was selected to represent the Navy against the Chinese side in Hongkong. The naval team were beaten by the local team, which Harold reckons was much superior to any that has come to Australia from China.
The recollections of another of Psyche‘s crew, Dudley Ricketts, appeared in the June 1978 edition of the Naval Historical Review. Ricketts gives an insight on life of the ship during the war. She had been sent to Singapore and then onto the Burmese and Indian coasts on suspicion of Germans activity in the area. Ricketts talked of a ship beholden to tropical disease, with outbreaks of Cholera with numerous casualties among the various ships. At its worst, 77 of the 200-odd of the Psyche’s crew were in hospital, while another 41 were sick on the ship.
Their duty took them from Chennai to the Andaman Islands, and back to Singapore where they took on board two Chinese spies working for the Germans, though one managed to escape overboard. The Psyche eventually reached Hong Kong for a refit after bottoming out and damaging a propeller near Saigon. While the ship was being repaired Younger played for a local soccer team. Eventually, after two-and-a-half years away the Psyche was spelled by American and British ships allowing them to return to Australia.
On his return to Australia, Younger’s periodic visits home to Goodna were reported in the Queensland Times. On one such visit in 1917 he married Muriel Jones. He remained a brickmaker after the war. Returning to Ipswich around 1926, he was soon elected president of St Helens soccer club as reported by the Telegraph on 14 February 1927. It is this fact which shows the biography in the Sport’s Referee in 1929 was of Younger and not a similarly named sailor.
Younger was living at East Ipswich when he died in 1968.