REALEY, Leslie Charles
Credit: Gary NewmanLance Corporal
1st Battalion
Hampshire Regiment
Leslie was born 1924 in Newport to Ernest & Lily (nee WYATT) REALEY of 48 New Street, Newport.
Leslie, aged 19, was listed as Killed in Action on the 3rd of August 1944 & was originally buried close to where he fell near Perigny. His body was exhumed & finally laid to rest on the 20th of February 1945. Most of the burials in Hottot-les-Bagues War Cemetery were brought in from the surrounding district, where there was much heavy fighting through June & July 1944 as Commonwealth forces tried to press on from Bayeux in an encircling movement to the south of Caen.
The cemetery contains 1,005 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War, 56 of them unidentified, & 132 German graves.
Leslie is buried in the Hottot Les Bagues War Cemetery in France beneath a Commission Headstone, bearing the Family Inscription: “"SACRED THY BODY EVEN AS THY SOUL" CALLED TO HIGHER SERVICE” alongside & 1,004 of his comrades from WWII.
Leslie is also remembered on the Newport Borough War Memorial.
