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211113 13th Battery, 17th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
Leonard Byham was born in Sudbury around 1894, the eldest of two sons of Edward and Louisa Byham. The family lived at The Cottage, Wood Hall Farm where his father was a stockman. By 1911 the family had moved to Wood Hall View Cottages in Melford Road.
Before the war Leonard helped his father on the farm and from a young age along with his father was a member of the Salvation Army where he went on to play the euphonium in the band. Leonard married Winifred Wiffen in 1916 and they lived at 20 School Street. His father Edward applied to a Tribunal in Sudbury on 16 November 1916 for Leonard to be exempted from military service. He stated ‘I cannot milk 18 cows a day, one of my men and a son has gone’. It was left for the military to find a substitute for Leonard.
It is not known when a substitute was found or when Leonard enlisted with his regiment but a report in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press on 10 October 1917 states ‘he was killed by a splinter from a bomb dropped from an enemy aeroplane. He died almost immediately.’ ‘A piece of the bomb went right through his head.’ His sergeant wrote: ‘We are sorry to lose him, for a more respectable and reserved man I don’t think I have met’.
Leonard was killed in action aged 23 on 25 September 1917 and lies buried in Canada Farm Cemetery, Ypres, Belgium. He was awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal.
A Cross of Remembrance was laid by his grave in October 2014.
On 24 September 1919 Leonard’s wife placed the following In Memoriam in the Suffolk and Essex Free Press:
Not now, but in the coming years
It may be in the better land.
We’ll read the meaning of our tears
And sometimes we’ll understand.
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