Tyne Cot Memorial
Tyne Cot Memorial: Pauline Priano
Pauline Priano has submitted the following:-
Leonard Potts was born at Pallion a suburb of Sunderland in 1894, one of 4 surviving children, 3 sons and a daughter, one child deceased gender unknown. Leonard Potts Snr was born in 1863 at Blagdon near Durham and married Margaret Ann Hutchinson, native of Felling, born 1866, in the district of South Shields in 1888. Working as a railway signalman firstly at Pallion he had moved his family to 18, Salisbury Street, Heworth by 1901. Eldest son John (20) was also employed as a railway signalman, Leonard (17) was an apprentice upholsterer employed by the Cooperative Wholesale Store, Pelaw in 1911. Leonard Potts Snr died at Gateshead in 1913 aged only 50 years.
Leonard enlisted at Felling in 1914 assigned as Private 13447 to the 11th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, one of Kitchener’s Second New Army attached to the 60th Brigade, 20th (Light) Infantry. His service record no longer exists one of the 70% destroyed during WW2 therefore it is impossible to know the exact date that he was transferred as Private 40066 to the 2nd Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’s Own) a battalion of the Regular Army. He departed to France in 1916 joining the regiment on the Western Front where they had been since 1915. July 1st 1916 the 2nd West Yorkshire Regiment attached to the 23rd Brigade, 8th Division advanced from the north of Albert Road at La Boisselle to attack the German positions suffering heavy losses. It was probably at this point that Private Potts was transferred for the final time to the 1/5th Battalion, a Territorial Force and saw action after the Battles of the Somme during the amphibious landings on the Flander’s coast, Operation Hush 1917 to begin the main offensive at Ypres participating in the Third Battle of Ypres, July 31st-November 10th 1917, Battle of the Lys and the Final Advance to Picardy.
Private 40066 Leonard Potts West Yorkshire Regiment is presumed to have died April 25th 1918 on the Ypres salient. His sacrifice is recorded panel 42-47, Tyne Cot Memorial, commemorating almost 35,000 names of officers and men whose graves are not known. The memorial forms the boundary to Tyne Cot Cemetery, West Vlaanderen, near Ypres, Belgium. Leonard was 24 years old and single.
His mother as his sole beneficiary received all monies due to him along with his awards of the British War Medal and Victory Medal.
Margaret Ann Potts nee Hutchinson died in the district of Gateshead, aged 60 years in 1926.
In God’s safe keeping. Rest In Peace.
Leonard Potts is remembered at Heworth on H92.03
