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James Leonard
British Army
from:St. George in the East, London
James Leonard, my grandfather, fought in WWI. His older brother by 5 years, Edward, a Quarter Master with the final rank of Warrant Officer, 2nd Class, would die in the war in France less that a month before it ended. James trained at St. Aubans as noted on his marriage certificate when he married his girlfriend, Wilhelmina Degerlund, new mother of their daughter, just before going overseas in 1914. (Unfortunately, she would die at age 30 of TB in 1926 acquired as a result of working with the poor as a social worker for her church.) During WWI James Leonard was bitten on the neck by a horse but otherwise survived the war. He did not return from fighting in Europe until 1919, fathering a second daughter, Pat, with his wife in 1920.
Pat Leonard felt it was her duty to join the WAAF in April 1940 as the family did not have any sons to fight in WWII. She became a plotter at RAF Biggin Hill during the worst of 1940 during the Battle of Britain, and survived a direct bomb hit on the Ops Building. Later trained as a cipher officer. She was posted to No.1 AOL at RAF Wigtown in Scotland where she met her future Canadian husband, an officer and pilot in the RAF named John McKinley Carswell. They married in 1942. By the time she got pregnant she was senior WAAF officer at the station as a Section Officer (lieutenant). She resigned her commission in late 1942 to join her husband in Harrogate where she gave birth to two sons before moving to Canada as a war bride in March 1945 with her two sons to join him there as he had been transferred home by the RCAF in June 1944 on compassionate leave to visit her dying mother and was grounded permanently by his eye test so would not be able to return to the UK during the war. Of the two sons, one went to military college in Canada and served 3 years in the 1960s as a captain in the Canadian Army Signal Corps at Kingston, where his father had served in 1939 before going overseas in January 1940. John McKinley Carswell later transferred to the RAF and RCAF in Britain. His other son born in WWII became an air cadet but losing a kidney prevented him from joining the military as he wanted to do. In total three generations of military service through two World Wars.
