Roll of Honour 2023

P AGE 124

W ORLD W AR O NE (1914 - 1918) INCLUDING THOSE WHO DIED LATER AS A RESULT OF THIS WAR

S T . E DWARD ’ S S CHOOL , O XFORD R OLL OF H ONOUR

MASTER

Name LEONARD FRANCIS CASS (Capt)

Set / House -

Arrive SES 1910

Lef SES 1915

Roll Number - Died 12:12:1915

Where FLANDERS, FRANCE Serving with 7TH, ROYAL SUSSEX REGIMENT

Age 37

Buried Brown’s Road Military Cemetery, Festubert, France Remembered Emmanuel College, Cambridge War Memorial the St. Edward’s Cloisters Stone Memorial

Born 1878 Burford, Oxon the son of a clergyman. He was a teacher, Set Tutor at SES between 1909-15. He was also much involved in the School’s early OTC in combination with John Bussell (OSE and teacher) who also lost his life in The Great War. He attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge taking Honours in Science. After arriving at SES he took over Set B as the Set Tutor in his second term and stayed in the job until he left for the war. He was described as ‘a master who was well qualified both academically and by experience and was capable of stimulating others’ (Hill, School’s first History). He was especially interested in the School’s OTC and improving the shooting skill of the cadets and was appointed the Adjutant at Tidworth Camp in 1914, when war was announced. He was a large man physically, a good cricketer and a scientist. ‘He had an uncertain humour, with a wholesale contempt for anything in the nature of cant or hypocrisy’ (Common Room Colleague). When his great friend and mentor John Bussell left for France in 1915, Cass took over the command of the School OTC from him and as soon as he heard that Bussell had been killed later that year, Cass immediately enlisted in Bussell’s exact Battalion and regiment, his last words at the School being “I want to be with Bussell, he’s the best man I know’ (Hill). Sadly Cass was killed in the following December, like Bussell, to a sniper’s bullet, in exactly the same area where his friend had been lost. They were buried side by side at Festubert, Belgium.