Current Information:

Age-29

35, Tennyson Road, Kilburn

Lancashire Cottage Cemetery, Belgium

For most of the winter of 1914-15, the 1st East Lancashire battalion of 11 Brigade, 4th Division were holding trenches at Le Gheer, between Messines and Armentières. It was a very wet period, their trenches were often flooded and in danger of collapse and they had to contend with not only this but enemy shelling and sniping as well. Frederick Leathers was killed here on 15th January but the battalion diary is very sparse with details of casualties. The attrition rate among British soldiers on the Western Front was on average 300 each day and 60% of these were as a result of shellfire. When not involved in an actual battle it was either shell fire or a sniper’s bullet that caused most deaths and injuries.