Lieutenant Charles Leeke
PERSONAL INFORMATION
MILITARY INFORMATION
- Lieutenant (British Army).
- Private, 31st Battalion, Infantry (Army).
RESEARCH INFORMATION
From: Harrow memorials of the Great War: Vol 3 - September 13th, 1915, to July 3rd, 1916 (1919)
Second son of Colonel Ralph Leeke, late Grenadier Guards, of Longford Hall, Shropshire, and of the Hon. Mary T. Leeke, second daughter of the 2nd Lord Manners. Trinity College, Cambridge. For two years tea and rubber planting in Ceylon and Travancore, then went to British Columbia and took land in Saskatchewan for fruit-farming.
Lieutenant Leeke, in the autumn of 1913, was on a hunting trip in the Cassiar Mountains, B.C., and remained there trapping and mining till the outbreak of the War, when he immediately enlisted in the 31st Canadian Infantry at Edmonton, remaining with them till he got his Commission in the Grenadier Guards in May, 1915. He joined the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards in France in August, 1915, and was posted to the Machine Gun Company of the 3rd Guards Brigade at the end of the following month, and served with them until his death. He was wounded near Ypres on April 7th, 1916, and died in hospital at Le Touquet on April 11th, 1916.
A brother-officer wrote :
" Charles was one of the bravest fellows who ever stepped. This is no mere complimentary platitude, but all of us in the Machine Gun Company realized it. Personally I admired and envied him more than I can say. . . .I have often said, and we all agreed, that he would rather live in a leaky dug-out under shell fire than not. I am not exaggerating when I say that, ever since he joined me in the 1st Battalion Machine Gun Section, he was an example and the greatest possible help to me. All through he has been just the same, always the cheeriest possible, whether in the trenches or the Mess, the greatest possible asset to any of us who, like myself, were fed up with the War and hated shell fire."
The O.C. 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards wrote :
"... But I would like to tell you how well he was thought of by the Officers, N.C.O.s and men, not only of this Battalion, but also of the 3rd Guards Machine Company. I personally feel his loss keenly."