CAPTAIN LEONARD DOBBIE CANE, 20th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (3rd PUBLIC SCHOOLS).

CAPTAIN LEONARD DOBBIE CANE, 20^th BATTALION  ROYAL FUSILIERS (3^rd PUBLIC SCHOOLS). KILLED IN ACTION, 24^th JANUARY 1916, AGED 32.

Born on 13^th May 1883 in Ballarat in the Australian state of Victoria, Leonard was the youngest son of Henry Drake Cane and his second wife Margaret. Henry was a maltster who owned a large processing plant in Ballarat which traded under the name Cane and White. In 1894 Henry sold his share of the business to his partner and brought his family to live in Britain, settling in Cambridge.  Leonard was sent as a boarder to Magdalene College School in Oxford where he excelled at classics and maths and was also a chorister in the chapel. He went on to Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge University and graduated in 1904 with a first in the classical Tripos and later studied at the University of Rennes.

Leonard initially took a teaching post at a public school but later became a schools inspector in Bradford and Manchester. In 1910 he married Kathleen Haslam in Hampshire and together they would have two children a son, Sidney in 1911 and a daughter, Kathleen, born in 1915.

On 15^th September 1914 Leonard enlisted as a private in the 20^th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, which was only open to men who had attended one of the recognised public schools. It seems that he had previously served as an officer in the Territorial Army and within a month was promoted to lieutenant. The following year he became captain and battalion adjutant, making him effectively its second in command.

The battalion landed in France in November 1915 and moved into the Loos sector of the Western Front. At 9.30am on 24^th January 1916 Leonard was in the front line with his battalion when he was shot in the head by a sniper and killed.

The Brigadier General in overall charge of Leonard’s brigade wrote to his wife “Your gallant husband’s death is a loss which will be greatly felt in the battalion, but his excellent good work and example will long be prized.” A fellow officer also wrote, “There is no one in the battalion but mourns the loss of as fine an officer as it was any battalions fortune to have”. The Chief Inspector of the Board of Education said in a letter to Kathleen, “I am sure I speak for all my colleagues when I say that the loss of your husband will be felt severely by all his colleagues and the State”.

Today Captain Leonard Dobbie Cane lies in the British Military Cemetery at Cambrin Churchyard and remembered with pride at St Margaret’s Church, Ilkley.