A Great War ‘Western Front’ M.C. and Second Award Bar group of three awarded to Captain C. G. Leatham, Royal West Surrey Regiment, late 21st (Yeoman Rifles) Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps and Yorkshire Dragoon Guards

Military Cross, G.V.R., with Second Award Bar, unnamed as issued; British War and Victory Medals (Capt. C. G. Leatham) good very fine and better (3) £1,400-£1,800

M.C. London Gazette 4 June 1917.

M.C. Second Award Bar London Gazette 16 September 1918.

Claude Guy Leatham was born in the small village of Wentbridge on 4 November 1886, the son of Claude Leatham, Deputy Lieutenant for the West Riding of Yorkshire. Educated at Hazelwood School and Charterhouse School in Godalming from 1900 to 1905, he was subsequently admitted to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read mathematics. On 12 June 1911, Leatham passed his final examinations in law at Pontefract and took pre-War employment as a solicitor’s articled clerk in Kensington, London. He later returned home to Yorkshire to work for his father’s firm, Claude Leatham & Co., at offices in Wakefield and Castleford.

Appointed to a commission as Second Lieutenant in the Yorkshire Dragoon Guards (Queen’s Own) Imperial Yeomanry in 1907, Leatham is recorded in the Hazelwood School Roll of Honour as serving from December 1914 as Commandant of the Pontefract Athlete’s Volunteer Training Force. Gazetted Temporary Second Lieutenant in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in the London Gazette of 22 November 1915, he crossed to France with the 21st Battalion per S.S. Marguerite on 4 May 1916. Concentrated between Hazebrouck and Bailleul, the Battalion was soon in action at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette and Battle of Transloy Ridge on the Somme. The following year, the 21st fought at Messines, Pilckem Ridge and along the Menin Road, and were later engaged in extensive operations along the Flanders coast.

Awarded the Military Cross in the King’s Birthday Honours list of 1917, Leatham was present at the disbandment of his Battalion in March 1918; according to the Surrey Regimental Rolls and Recruitment Register, 1908-47, he was posted from the 21st K.R.R.C. to the 10th Battalion, Queen’s Regiment (Royal West Surrey) on 16 March 1918, joining the staff of 124th Infantry Brigade on the same day. Awarded a Second Award Bar to the Military Cross, Leatham was admitted to hospital in September 1918. A medical board convened at the Norfolk War Hospital, Norwich, on 14 October 1918, adds:
‘This officer was on short leave from France and was admitted here on 24.9.18 owing to inflammation of connective tissue in groin and legs, possibly originating from [an] incompletely healed wound. He is recommended for 3 weeks’ leave and is ordered to join the 3rd West Surrey’s at Sittingbourne on 4.11.18. Rail warrant issued.’

Appointed A.D.C. to the staff of Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Morland, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., Commanding Officer of XIII Corps, Leatham witnessed the cessation of hostilities in northern France and was demobilised at Folkestone on 1 March 1919. Returning to the family business in Yorkshire, he devoted his free time to the Badsworth Hunt and served on their committee. A prolific point-to-point winner, his life was cut short after being thrown from a horse in 1933; having been found lying unconscious upon frozen ground, he was beset with illness and never truly recovered. He died at St Thomas’s Nursing Home in London in 1936.

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