SKELTON - IN - CLEVELAND
IN HISTORY

"WE WILL REMEMBER THEM"


Private JOHN ROBERT LECKENBY.

33400 1st/4th Bn, York and Lancaster Regiment.

who died on the 9th of October 1917.

Of 22 Trouthall Lane, Skelton Green, N Yorkshire.



The Tyne Cot Memorial,

Family of John R Leckenby not yet traced.


The 1/4th Bn (Hallamshire) York and Lancaster Regiment was formed in Sheffield in August 1914.
It was attached to the 148th Brigade of the 49th Division.
At the time of John's death the Division was fighting in the Battle of Poelcapelle, the sixth phase of the Third Battle of Ypres.
An offensive was mounted by Commonwealth forces to divert German attention from a weakened French front further south.
The initial attempt in June to dislodge the Germans from the Messines Ridge was a complete success, but the main assault north-eastward, which began at the end of July, quickly became a dogged struggle against determined opposition and the rapidly deteriorating weather.
The campaign finally came to a close in November with the capture of Passchendaele.
John's body was never recovered and he is remembered on the Tyne Cot Memorial.
This lists 35,000 men who have no known grave and stands at the furthest point of the Western advance in Flanders before the armistice was signed.
All around the graves of the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the World.