Lance Corporal Alfred Johnston
Alfred Johnston was born on 24 April 1896 at Ballykeel Artifinny, near Hillsborough, County Down, the ninth of ten children of farmer Walter Bishop Johnston and his wife Eliza Ann (née Green). By the time of the 1911 Census he was living at Ballykeel Artifinney with his parents and three of his eight surviving siblings.
Johnston enlisted in the North Irish Horse on 8 October 1915 (No.1742 – later Corps of Hussars No.71533). He trained at the regiment's Antrim reserve camp before embarking for France sometime between 1916 and 1918, where he was posted to one of the squadrons of the 1st North Irish Horse Regiment. This regiment served as corps cavalry to VII, XIX, then V Corps from its establishment in May 1916 until February-March 1918, when it was dismounted and converted to a cyclist unit, serving as corps cyclists to V Corps until the end of the war.
Johnston was wounded in September or October 1918 during the Advance to Victory offensive.
On 17 April 1919 he was discharged, being 'no longer physically fit for war service' (paragraph 392 (xvi), King's Regulations). He was granted a pension due to 'empyema', an illness aggravated by his military service, his level of disability assessed at 30 per cent in April 1920.