T/170811. Driver. Leonard Peacock.
‘D’ Transport Platoon, 250 th (Airborne) Light Composite Company, R.A.S.C.
Leonard Pecacock was born on the 8 December 1919. He was a Light Lorry Driver before the War, and husband of Violet Maud, of Putney, London.
He enlisted in the Royal Army Service Corps on the 4 th April 1940. He was posted to the 1st Air Landing Brigade Group Company, Royal Army Service Corps on the 22 April 1942. The unit title would go through several changes over the next two years, before becoming the 250th (Airborne) Light Composite Company, R.A.S.C.
He would have sailed with the Company to North Africa in May 1943, where the unit joined up with the rest of the 1st Airborne Division for operations in Sicily and Italy.
The Company were split up into several Detachments during the period of September 1943, with one of them remaining in Italy until 1944. It is not known which part Leonard was in, but by 1944 he was back in England and billeted at the Moorlands Hotel, just off the Newark Road (A46), to the Southwest of Lincoln.
By July 1944 he was a member of ‘D’ (Transport) Platoon, and in August they moved to Harwell Transit Camp in preparation for the planned airborne operations, most of which ended up cancelled.
In September they moved to Blakehill Farm Transit Camp.
On Monday, 18 September 1944, he flew to L.Z. ‘X’, near Renkum in Holland as part of the 2nd Lift of Operation ‘Market-Garden’. Landing safely he made his way to the R.V. Point at Wolfheze Railway station, and then to the Divisional Maintenance area being set up opposite the Hartenstein Hotel.
Leonard was reported as killed in action on Thursday, 21 September. He was initially buried in a mass grave 180 yard west of the Hartenstein Hotel. Leonard now lies at rest in the Arnhem/Oosterbeek War Cemetery: 1. A. 10
Written and researched by Bob Hilton
Service History
- Date not known 250 (Airborne) Light Composite Company RASC (Driver)