6th December 2015 John Leslie George John was born on 9 May 1895 – he was the son of John and his wife Lizzie Anne. The family lived in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, where John Leslie and his five sisters were born. His father was a railway clerk, then a goods manager and his final promotion to station-master of Stamford East brought the family to Station House, Water Street, Stamford. John Leslie was at school in 1911, then working as a clerk in a commercial office at the outbreak of WW I. He enlisted immediately in the 4th Lincolns and was mobilised in 1914 as Private 2636. Sent to the Western Front, he posted a piece of a burnt-out German bomber wing to his parents as a souvenir. He was transferred to the 9th Essex Regiment at 20 years old as a Lance-Corporal and sustained a head wound at the Battle of Loos in 1915. Sent back to England to be treated in Leeds Hospital, Yorkshire, he saw no more fighting. Having survived the war, he went to work for a railway company and is recorded as dying in Worthing, Sussex in December 1975.