Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Leslie Hough was 28 when he enlisted. He worked in menswear in Sydney CBD at The Hive a department store. He was unmarried and living with his recently widowed mother Harriet and brothers Alfred and Cecil. Les was sent a white feather and it influenced his decision to enlist but he did so as a stretcher bearer as he refused to bear arms.

He was sent to the Western Front assisting those wounded in the vicious fighting at Fromelles. He never talked of his experiences but I have postcards to his mother which he sent from France in which one can read between the lines of reassurance how life at the front must have been for the men of the 30th battalion.

He was a gentle man and a loving grandfather having married my grandmother after the war and raising three children. His grandchildren called him Pompy and I've wondered where the name originated. Was it from a grandchild's first attempt at Poppa or did it come from respect for Pompey Elliott the respected brigadier at the Western Front.

Thankfully a quiet life followed after the great turmoil of WWI, interrupted by the Great Depression when he had to rent out the family home, his wife and children moving into his mother's while he left to seek work in Melbourne. 
Leslie loved his garden, body surfing at Bronte beach, lawn bowls and an annual family holiday by train to the Blue Mountains where his mother Harriet had a cottage. After the war and the Depression he worked at Gowings and Grace Bros Bondi Junction catching a bus as he never owned or drove a car. In WWII he joined the Army reserve and his son and son in law enlisted in the RAAF and RAN.

He died in the Concord Repatriation Hospital with heart failure.

Lest We Forget