Of Lancaster."*
I am very grateful indeed to Willy de Brouwer (photo left) and to Daphne Vangelheluwe (photo below) for making a special journey to the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in Belgium where Leonard Comer Wall is buried to take these photographs.
I am still trying to find a photograph of Leonard and also if he has any living relatives.
Leonard was born in West Kirby, Wirral, UK and attended Clifton Academy school in Bristol.
In WW1 he joined the First West Lancashire Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery and was commissioned as an officer. Deployed to the Western Front in September 1915, Leonard was killed at Ypres on 9th June 1917.
* Leonard's poem was first published in the Magazine of the 55th West Lancashire Division of the British Army in June 1918.
When Princes fought for England's crown
The house that won the most renown
And struck the sullen Yorkist down,
Was Lancaster.
And blood red emblem stricken sore,
Yet steeped her pallid foe in fore,
Still stands for England evermore,
And Lancaster.
Now England's blood like water flows
Full many a lusty German knows,
We win or die who wear the rose
Of Lancaster.
Leonard Comer Wall.
Sources: www.merseysiderollofhonour.co.uk and www.findmypast.co.uk
