Victoria Cross
McLeod was an 18 year old Second Lieutenant in No. 2 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps during the First World War when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
On 27 March 1918 over Albert, France, Second Lieutenant McLeod, with his observer Lt. Arthur Hammond, in an Armstrong Whitworth F.K.8 destroyed an enemy triplane and were immediately attacked by eight more, three of which they brought down, but the petrol tank of the bomber was hit. The machine burst into flames and both pilot and observer were badly wounded. McLeod, by side slipping steeply, tried to keep the flames away from his observer, and when the machine finally crashed in No Man's Land, the young pilot, not minding his own injuries, dragged his comrade from the burning wreckage and under heavy fire carried him to comparative safety, before collapsing from exhaustion.
Lt. Hans Kirschstein of Jasta 6, an experienced ace was credited with the victory. McLeod was wounded three times in the side and Hammond was wounded six times. Hammond lost a leg but was awarded a bar for his Military Cross.
McLeod was recommended for a Distinguished Service Order but received the Victoria Cross. He returned to Canada (Stonewall, Manitoba) to recuperate but died from the Spanish Influenza shortly thereafter.
There is a street in Stonewall, Manitoba named after McLeod. His former family home is the McLeod Tea House and Stonewall Collegiate has his likeness as a bust displayed in the highschool library.
Read more about this topic: Alan Arnett McLeod
Famous quotes containing the words victoria and/or cross:
“The men who are grandfathers should be the fathers. Grandpas get to do it right with their grandchildren.”
—Anonymous Grandparent. As quoted in Women and Their Fathers, by Victoria Secunda, ch. 2 (1992)
“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour
high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)