Lieutenant Roland Aubrey LEIGHTON (Did not matriculate)

1/7th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment
Born 27 March 1895 in Marylebone, London
Died of wounds 23 December 1915, aged 20
Buried at Louvencourt Military Cemetery, near Doullens, Somme, France.

Roland Leighton was the son of Robert Leighton and Marie, née Connor.

He was educated at Uppingham School, where he became House Captain, and won numerous prizes. (On Speech Day 1914 he collected so many prizes that an old boy later recalled him taking them back to his dormitory in a wheelbarrow). He was awarded a Classical Postmastership to come to Merton in January 1914, but volunteered for service before he could matriculate.

At first he was refused because of his poor eyesight, but on 21 October 1914 he was commissioned in the 4th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment, having persuaded a family doctor to issue a medical certificate, which made no mention of his shortsightedness. In March 1915 he transferred to the 7th Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment in order to reach the front faster, and was in the trenches at Armentières the following month.

On leave in August 1915, he became engaged to Vera Brittain, whom he had first met whilst at school, in July 1913; her brother Edward was a close school friend of Leighton’s. Late that year he converted to Roman Catholicism.

He was wounded by a sniper on 22 December whilst maintaining his trench’s barbed wire in a quiet sector of the Somme at Hébuterne, and died at the Hospital Clearing Station at Louvencourt the following day.

In her book, Testament of Youth, written in 1933, Vera Brittain recalled visiting Roland's family home after his death:

I arrived at the cottage that morning to find his mother and sister standing in helpless distress in the midst of his returned kit, which was lying, just opened, all over the floor. The garments sent back included the outfit that he had been wearing when he was hit. I wondered, and I wonder still, why it was thought necessary to return such relics - the tunic torn back and front by the bullet, a khaki vest dark and stiff with blood, and a pair of blood-stained breeches slit open at the top by someone obviously in a violent hurry. Those gruesome rags made me realise, as I had never realised before, all that France really meant.