Leonard Hilton was born in Oldham, Lancashire to Annice Hilton, sister of Charley Hilton, my grandmother's father. After a difficult start in life, he and his mother emigrated to Queensland, Australia to make new life for themselves. There, she was first housekeeper and then wife of George Wilkins, but was left a widow after only a few years, now with a little girl as well as Leonard. She had to take up a job as housekeeper in a hotel in Mackay and Leonard became a cattle-hand.

When his opportunity to join the Australian Infantry came up, he wrote to his aunt & uncle Hilton to say how excited he was and sent photos showing how proud he was to do his duty.

After my mother died, I was going through her papers and found his photo, with his message to his aunt and uncle on the back - I knew my grandmother had a cousin who died, but didn't know who it was. Further down the pile of old papers I came across a Memorial Card with a picture of his mother on the front looking at a photo frame with his and her husband's pictures in it and a patriotic poem on the inside commemmorating Leonard. After the initial shock at this discovery, I was horrified and angered by the - to my eyes at the time - meaningless jingoistic words of the poem.

I am from the generation of schoolchildren who learnt all about the futility and brutality of war via the poems of Wilfred Owen and his contemporaries. I had not understood the reasons behind so many young men going to war voluntarily. It took me a while to realise that I couldn't possibly look at it through Leonard's eyes in 1916. It took me even longer to realise that I wasn't respecting and honouring his sacrifice in the way I should do. He made a decision to do his duty willingly and to the best of his ability and wanted to make his family proud of him.

We don't know any details of how he died - he was just one of many thousands of ordinary soldiers from Britain and the Commonwealth who died at the same time - but he was and is still a hero to his family 

Now, he is fittingly commemmorated at Tyne Cot, lying at peace with his comrades and certainly not forgotten. My husband and I and members of his wider family have visited his grave and have been comforted by the fact he's shown such respect and honour. We don't know whether his mother was ever able to visit his grave but we think probably not, so our visits are at least in part on her behalf. We know she was proud of him in spite of her grief and we're proud of him too. 

Diana Holland