Leighton, H

Lieutenant Harold Leighton

Born on March 30^th 1893, Harold was the youngest of five sons amongst seven children born to bookbinder Thomas Leighton and his wife, Edith. In April 1906 he joined the College from the Prep, a path that had been taken by his next-oldest brother, Archibald, just over a year earlier, and before that by two more of his older brothers, Robert and Douglas, although they had both left Dulwich by this point. Harold’s time at the College came to an end in the spring of 1909, shortly after his sixteenth birthday, at which point he was a member of the Modern Upper Fourth. He went on to work for T.& H. Wicks, his uncles’ leather merchants firm, based in Bermondsey.

Within days of the declaration of war in August 1914 Harold had enrolled in Queen’s Westminster Rifles, and went over to France for the first time with his new unit that November. He saw action during the Second Battle of Ypres before, in August 1915, returning to England, having been granted a commission in the Royal West Surreys. The following March, however, he transferred to the Machine Gun Corps, and that August went back to France, attached to the 88^th Company. In October 1916, whilst posted on the Somme, he was awarded the M.C. for conspicuous gallantry and skill in operating his guns during the successful capture of an enemy trench. He was involved in heavy fighting in the Arras sector in late April 1917 and was still serving there a month later when, on May 26^th 1917 he was mortally wounded after being caught in a shell blast. His elder brother, Archibald, a fellow OA, would also be killed in the war, at Moislaine the following year.