He earned the medal while serving as a stretcher bearer during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, when he and another soldier, Charles D. Barger, entered no man's land despite heavy fire and rescued two wounded officers.
He saw action in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel and, by October 31, 1918, was a private first class serving as a stretcher bearer in the 354th Regiment's Company L.
On 2 September 1918 in the Dury-Arras Sector, France, when his company had suffered heavy casualties, Private Young, a stretcher-bearer, went forward to dress the wounded in open ground swept by machine-gun and rifle fire.
Richard Alexander Henderson, First World War stretcher-bearer at Gallipoli and the Somme