Frederick Albert Leach was born on Sunday, 26th September 1897 at 3 Charles Place, Deptford, London and baptised two weeks later on Wednesday, 13th October at Christ Church Deptford. He was the first child born to Frederick Albert Leach and Susan (Susanna) Golden, who had a family of eight children together. The children were: Frederick Albert, William Leonard, Albert Edward, Edward John, Edith Catherine Susan, Stanley Charles, Ernest Robert and the youngest Alfred George. Frederick’s brother William died aged eleven months in 1900. His only sister Edith also died young in 1911 when she was only three-years-old. The Leach family moved from London to Hemel Hempstead in 1902 when Frederick senior joined John Dickinson & Co. Limited as a ‘Printer’.

Initially, the family home was at 57 St. John’s Road, Boxmoor and from there young Fredrick started school at Boxmoor JMI. The school admissions log records that Frederick left in September 1904 after recovering from a “bad epidemic of ringworm” and went to Two Waters British School. The cause of his leaving was probably because his family had moved to 36 London Road rather than the ringworm.  He returned to Boxmoor school in April 1909, along with his younger brother Albert, by which time the Leach family lived at 107 Cotterells. He finally left school to start work in December 1910.

Frederick followed his father into John Dickinson in 1911 and started his working life as a ‘Millhand’ in the Engineering Department. Just over a year after the outbreak of war and as soon as he was old enough in November 1915, Frederick enlisted with the Hertfordshire Regiment. He was immediately posted to Bury St. Edmunds to undergo basic training. Whilst Frederick was training his father also enlisted following the Military Service Act in May 1916 and joined the Royal Army Service Corps. He saw action on the Western Front and at one point was wounded, but survived the conflict and was demobilised in 1919.

Young Frederick went to France in late 1916, posted to the 1/1st Battalion Hertfordshire Regiment and arrived just in time to fight in the last phase of the Somme Offensive at the Battle of Ancre. The following year he moved with the Battalion to Belgium and by July was north of Ypres preparing for the next major offensive. The Third Battle of Ypres began on the 31st July at the Battle of Pilckem Ridge and it was during this attack that Frederick fell. In all the 1/1st Hertfordshires suffered 459 casualties Killed, Wounded and missing and Frederick was one of eleven men from the Hemel area who died in the battle.

Posted missing, Frederick was officially confirmed Killed on Tuesday, 31st July 1917.

He was commemorated on the John Dickinson & Co. Limited War Memorial at Apsley.

Frederick is Remembered with Honour in New Irish Farm Cemetery, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium where he is interred in Grave XX. A. 19. The inscription on his headstone, requested by his mother Susan, reads: “HIS TASK FULFILLED HIS DUTY DONE”.

He was only 19 years old when he died.

Frederick was eligible for the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.