241282 Pte. Leonard Hudson British Army 4th Btn. Seaforth Highlanders from:Bradford, Yorkshire My grandfather, Leonard Hudson, was born in Bradford, Yorkshire in 1889 and worked in one of the city's many mills when he was a young man. In May 1915 the Seaforth Highlanders visited Yorkshire on a recruiting campaign, and he decided to enlist. He crossed to France in November 1915, and four months later his wife Gladys was informed that he had been wounded and admitted to Le Tréport hospital with gunshot wounds. On 20th March 1916 he was invalided to England and taken to the military hospital at Abbot's Barton in Canterbury.
He was wounded again in 1917 (once) and 1918 (three times), and I have five official notifications that were sent to his family in Bradford. My grandmother appears to have kept all the documentation she had relating to his military service, and I have since inherited various forms and letters.
I knew him when I was growing up in Bradford in the 1950s, and I remember him as a mild-mannered man who loved to reminisce about Fort George in the Scottish Highlands, where he had been stationed. In 1956 he achieved his ambition of going back for 'one last look' when he and his wife Gladys went on an eight-day coach tour of Scotland and stayed at nearby Nairn. The brochure is among the documents that I have inherited, and they paid eighteen and a half guineas each.
In the 1950s he worked in the time-office of a printers and box makers in Lidget Green, Bradford and this was followed by a spell as a school crossing 'lollipop man' outside my primary school in Lidget Green.
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