Alan Arnett MacLeod was born in 1899 in Stonewall,
Manitoba. He had a simple childhood typical of the
early 1900's. He was a shy and unassuming child, slight of build and
quiet. His father was the medical doctor in Stonewall, and later
Winnipeg. Being the area doctor he owned an early Ford, and Alan enjoyed
driving it down the back country roads. Early on he developed an
affinity for the military. He enrolled in The 34th Fort Garry Horse in
1913, at age 14. He was 4 years under age, but the officers looked the
other way. It was peace time and there was little doing. Mostly he
groomed horses, shoveled manure and the like. But he was thrilled, they
even let him wear a uniform.
When the "Great Adventure" started in 1914, Alan was sent
home, with a riding crop as a souvenir, the officers were not so callous
as to take a 14 year-old boy to France. He tried several times to enlist
in the army in Winnipeg, but he was rebuffed each time and sent back to
home and school. He tried to enroll in the cadet wing of the Royal
Flying Corps then taking enlistment in Toronto. They insisted on a birth
certificate, when they saw he was 17 he was rejected, but they promised
to process his application when he turned 18. As soon as he turned 18 he
quit school and headed to Winnipeg to start his enrollment in the RFC.
His imagination had been captured by stories of flying and fighting in
the air. He was signed up as a pilot-in-training and sent to Long Branch
just outside of Toronto for pilot training. He turned out to be a
natural at it, throwing his AVRO 504 around the sky with abandon. An
18-year old's ignorance of mortality probably played a big role in his
abandon. He soloed on his fifth day of in-flight instruction with only 3
hours of experience in aircraft. He proceeded on to Camp Borden for
"intermediate" training and graduated with fewer than 50 hours
of flying experience. On August 20, 1917 he was shipped off to France in
the Matagama as a new 2nd Lieutenant in the RFC.
Flying his AK8 2-seater bomber, his fateful day with honour came on
March 27, 1918 at the ripe old age of 19 years.
Here is the description of his valour from his citation:
"His Majesty the King has been graciously pleased to
award the Victoria Cross to the undermentioned officer of the
Royal Air Force, for services displaying outstanding bravery:
2nd Lieutenant Alan Arnett McLeod, Royal Air Force.
While flying with his observer, Lieutenant A. W. Hammond,
M.C., attacking hostile formations by bombs and machine gun
fire, he was assailed at a height of 5,000 feet by eight enemy
triplanes which dived at him from all directions, firing from
their front guns. By skilful manoeuvring he enabled his
observer to fire bursts at each machine in turn, shooting
three of them down out of control. By this time Lieutenant
McLeod had received five wounds, and while continuing the
engagement a bullet penetrated his petrol tank and set the
machine on fire.
He then climbed out on to the left bottom plane,
controlling his machine from the side of the fusilage, and by
sideslipping steeply kept the flames to one side, thus
enabling the observer to continue firing until the ground was
reached.
The observer had been wounded six times when the machine
crashed in "No Man's Land" and 2nd Lieutenant
McLeod, notwithstanding his own wounds, dragged him away from
the burning wreckage at great personal risk from heavy
machine-gun fire from the enemy's lines. This very gallant
pilot was again wounded by a bomb whilst engaged in this act
of rescue, but he persevered until he had placed Lieutenant
Hammond in comparative safety, before falling himself from
exhaustion and loss of blood."
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