Greenwood, LM

Major Leonard Montague Greenwood

‘Lenny’ was born on June 12th 1893, the youngest of six children, of whom five were sons, born to Baptist minister Thomas Greenwood and his wife, Harriet. He joined Dulwich in the summer of 1906, mere months after his elder brother, John, had also done so, and was to be a pupil for the next four and a half years. In his final year he was a prominent sportsman, being a member of the rugby 1st XV as well as the cricket 2nd XI. After leaving the College at the end of 1910 he took a job in the city with Deloitte, although he was for a time in early 1911 in the Caribbean, during which he was twelfth man for British Guiana against the M.C.C. – in those days effectively the England touring side.
When war was declared in 1914 Lenny enlisted for service at once, joining up at first as a member of the Universities and Public Schools Brigade, but that December he was granted a commission in the Durham Light Infantry. He went over to France for the first time in August 1915, being promoted to Lieutenant the following year and Captain in February 1917, an eighteen month period during which he had barely been away from the front. A month after being made Captain he was awarded the M.C. for “consistent and keen devotion to duty for a period of 19 months in France without a break”; later in the year he was awarded a bar to his M.C., in particular recognition of his efforts during fighting near Ypres between the 20th and 22nd of September. During the early part of 1918 he finally left France for the first time in nearly three years; however it was merely to go Italy, where he fought in the battle of the Asiago Plateau. Around this time he was also promoted once more, to the rank of Major. After leaving Italy, where he had left a universally positive impression on those with whom he had served, he returned once more to the Western Front, where he was placed in charge of a battalion. On October 10th that year, near Le Cateau, Lenny was leading an assault when his men came under gas attack, despite which he refused to leave his post until the operation was completed. His bravery in this was ultimately to be rewarded with the D.S.O., but it would have to be awarded posthumously; just a week after the action, on October 17th, he passed away in hospital at Rouen as a result of a serious bout of broncho-pneumonia, almost certainly exacerbated by the effects of having been gassed.