We mark the recent passing of Richard Leake, a long-time and generous supporter of the museum, and the inspiration behind the establishment of the Bell’s Redoubt memorial at Contalmaison on the Somme. The memorial sits in the vicinity of Horseshoe Trench where the then Second Lieutenant Donald Simpson Bell, the former Bradford Park Avenue footballer, won the British Empire’s highest military decoration awarded for valour “in the face of the enemy”, the Victoria Cross, five days before his death during the Battle of the Somme. Richard also published A Breed Apart, the story of Donald Bell and another VC winner from the Yorkshire Regiment, Captain Archie White.
RIP
Then Lieutenant Leake, far left in glasses, at Annual Camp in 1959.