Pte Leonard Crane, 7th KOYLI.
Leonard was born at Overton, near Wakefield in October 1880. Educated at St. Saviour's Boys' School, at the turn of the century he was working at Haigh's Pit. He later joined the army and went to South Africa, seeing service in the Boer War, where he was awarded the Queen Victoria Medal and the King Edward Medal. He returned home to find himself out of work due to a strike at the colliery. The Dewsbury Reporter described how he was found employment at Wormald and Walker's mill in Dewsbury by Major P B Walker. Over the next nine years he acted as Major Walker's orderly in the annual Territorial camps. In about 1910 he was awarded the Territorial Force Efficiency Medal in recognition of twelve years' service.
For some reason he left the mill; when the war broke out he was working as a stoker at Ingham's Coke Ovens in Thornhill. As a reservist he was called up in September 1914 and for the first twelve months of the war he served in Officers' Training Schools in Harrogate and Scarborough.
In June 1916 (after recovering from an illness which kept him in hospital in Scarborough from late 1915 to early 1916) he went to France, joining the 7th K.O.Y.L.I. During the battalion's attack on Rainbow and Cloudy Trenches on 7 October 1916 he was killed by a shell.
On Sunday, 16 October, Leonard's wife (who had recently learned that her brother was missing) received a letter from Capt Johnstone informing her of her husband's death; the following day she received another letter, dated 12 October from one of Leonard's comrades expressing sympathy. Besides his wife, Leonard left two children.
Although Leonard has no known grave, and is therefore listed on the Memorial to the Missing at Thiepval, his image lives on. After the Boer War, it was decided to commemorate the part played by local soldiers in that conflict, and a statue was erected in Crow Nest Park, Dewsbury. Leonard Crane was chosen as the model for the statue which was placed on top of a square plinth. The unveiling was made by none other than Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout movement, who played a significant part in the Boer War himself. The statue stands to this day in Crow Nest Park (see below).
7 October 1916
Research by David Tattersfield MA, WFA Development Trustee. Leonard Crane is included in David's book "A Village Goes to War". ISBN 0-9534689-3-3.
