1st Lt. John L. Leslie (December 12, 1915 – August 16, 1944)
324th Bomb Squadron, 91st Bombardment Group
by Matthew Schooley and Cole Taylor
Early Life
John Latta Leslie was born on December 12, 1915, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Americans Lee Charles Leslie Sr. (1893) and Lucile Leslie (1899).1 Shortly after his birth, his parents left Brazil for Upper Darby Township, PA, with their two small children, John and his older brother Lee Jr. (1914).2 While in Pennsylvania, Lee Charles Leslie worked as a repair salesman for Westinghouse Electric Company, a direct competitor of Thomas Edison.3 Once in Pennsylvania, Lee and Lucile had two more children: Alexander (1918) and Lucille (1920). By 1930, the family had moved to Washington Township, OH, near Toledo, where John’s father worked as a branch manager for Lee Machinery while his mother kept the home.4
The Great Depression devastated Ohio in the 1930s. Two years after the start of the decade, half of all industrial workers in Cleveland and nearly all industrial workers in Toledo faced unemployment.5 It is likely that amidst the Great Depression, Lee Charles Leslie lost his job at Lee Machinery. In search of work, the Leslie family moved back to Pennsylvania, settling in Narberth sometime before 1940 where Lee found work as a staff manager for an insulation company.6 Despite the Leslie family’s hardships during the Great Depression, John attended college, possibly studying civil engineering.7
After college in the late 1930s, John may have moved to Texas where he worked as a civil engineer for Wyatt C. Hedrick, a famed architect from Fort Worth, TX. While in Fort Worth, John may have lived in or above the office of architect Hubert Hammond Crane in the late 1930s.8 It appears that in early 1940, John moved to Escambia county, FL, where he may have continued work for Hedrick.9 In 1942, at the age of twenty-seven, he married Elvira Anne Laine, who had done quite a bit of traveling as an airline hostess.10 They lived in Pensacola, FL on Barrancas Avenue West, and John worked as an architect.11
Military Career
The same year he married, John Leslie enlisted in the US Army Air Corps at Fort Barrancas in Pensacola, FL.12
While John served, Elvira continued to work for American Airlines, prompting the Montgomery Advertiser and The Sunday News to write about her impressive career– in which she traveled more than one and half million recorded miles.13 Because of time in the air, The Sunday News, seen here, joked that Elvira qualified as a suitable “back-seat driver to her pilot-husband.”14
After John’s initial training, he joined the 324th Bomb Squadron, 91st Bombardment Group as a pilot. After more training at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL, the 91st—known as the “Ragged Irregulars”—trained to perform air raids with the B-17 flying fortress in Bassingbourn, England.15 Overall, the 91st Bombardment Group conducted 340 bombing missions throughout the duration of the war.16 In comparison to other heavy bombardment groups, the 91st suffered the greatest number of losses of any heavy bomb group in World War II.17
Prior to and following D-Day the 91st Bombardment Group conducted raids primarily targeting the infrastructure of the German military-industrial complex such as factories and oil facilities bombing industrial sectors.18 These air raids played an essential role in the Allied war in Europe—by flying over enemy lines, the Allies pinpointed key military manufacturing sites, logistical or command centers, and large cities. They disrupted the German military infrastructure and hoped to crush civilian morale, in conjunction with other psychological means.19
John flew as a pilot with the 324th for twenty-three missions between July and August 1944.20 The ten man crew of the B-17 consisted of Co-pilot John Savage, navigator Stanley Koss, bombardier Early Donley, turret gunners Joseph H. Godfrey, Ivan Doyle, Louis Kos, Douglas Burtin, and James Middleton. On August 16, 1944, the day after the Allies launched Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France along the Mediterranean Sea, and two months after the initial D-Day landings, John Leslie joined a nine-man crew on a mission to target a munitions factory in Halle, Germany. As their B-17 bomber entered the area, German fighter jets arrived to intercept them. In the ensuing dogfight, the enemy planes struck the B-17’s bomb bay, which subsequently caught fire. Before the plane’s intercom went down, Leslie delivered a message to the rest of the crew: “Get ready to jump.”
Leslie refused to bail from the plane; instead, he kept the plane steady and made sure that as many crew members as possible escaped. Leslie’s crewmate, Joseph Godfrey, recounted their pilot’s actions, as shown here, in the Missing Air Crew Report. Godfrey reported that Leslie “gave his life in order for every man to bail.” Staff Sergeant Douglas Buntin did not bail from the plane and died when it crashed. The German military took the survivors, Technical Sergeant Joseph Godfrey, Staff Sergeant Ivan Doyle, 1st Lieutenant Earl Donley, Technical Sergeant James Middleton as prisoners of war, but they survived thanks to Leslie’s sacrifice.21
Legacy
John Leslie’s father lived for another five years, dying on January 24, 1949, in St. Louis.22 Lucille Leslie, John’s mother, survived her husband and lived until 1963 23 They are both interred at the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, PA.24 Like his pilot brother, Lee Charles Leslie Jr. also served in World War II in the US Army as a Fourth Grade Technician.25 Lee Charles Leslie Jr. never married; he passed away in 1980 and is buried in the Indiantown Gap National Cemetery in Pennsylvania.26 Alexander Leslie, John’s youngest brother, married Helen Elizabeth Stack in 1949.27 Alexander passed away in 1978.28 John’s sister, Lucille Leslie, married John Herbert Gaul, and moved to Maryland where she had two more sons: Alexander Gaul and John Gaul. John may have been named for his father, but Lucille may have also wanted to name her children after her brothers.29 After John’s death, his wife, Elvira, moved to North Carolina where she married Arthur Augustus James in 1946.30 Elvira passed away on February 23, 1980.31
With the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, the US began to shift many of its military divisions from combat to intelligence.32 Despite this redesignation, numerous monuments and memorials commemorate the 91st across the globe, with one at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL.33
Of the more than 10,000 servicemen buried in the Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial in St. Avold, France, one white cross marks the final resting place of 1st Lt. John L. Leslie.34 Throughout his military career, John Leslie completed a total of twenty-three missions, in which he received an Air medal with four oak leaf clusters, one for every five missions.35 While a headstone only conveys so much, John Leslie has a deeper story that reminds us of how much these men sacrificed.
1 “1920 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed October 22, 2022), entry for Lee C. Leslie, Delaware County, Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania.
2 “1920 U.S. Census.”
3 “Edison vs. Westinghouse: A Shocking Rivalry,” Smithsonian Magazine, accessed February 22, 2023, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/edison-vs-westinghouse-a-shocking-rivalry-102146036/.
4 “1930 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed October 22, 2022), entry for Lee C. Leslie, Lucas County, Washington Township, Ohio.
5 “Great Depression,” Great Depression – Ohio History Central, accessed December 5, 2022, https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Great_Depression.
6 “1940 U.S. Census,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed January 18, 2023), entry for Lee C. Leslie, Narberth, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
7 “U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946,” National Archives & Records Administration (www.archives.gov: accessed March 22, 2023), entry for John L. Leslie. We have not found sources to identify where John Leslie went to College. His US Army enlistment record indicates he completed “4 years of college.” He may have studied civil engineering.
8 We have not located John Leslie in the city directories of Fort Worth, TX from 1936 to 1940. John Leslie lists two addresses on his 1940 draft card, one in Pensacola, FL and one in Fort Worth, TX as his own address. The address he listed for Fort Worth is likely the office of architect Hubert Hammond Crane, as Crane appears in the 1937 and 1940 Fort Worth city directory at the address John Leslie listed. “U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed March 23, 2022), entry for Hubert H. Crane, Fort Worth, Texas, 1937 and 1940.
9 “U.S. World War II Draft Cards, 1940-1947,” database, Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com: accessed March 23, 2023), entry for John Latta Leslie.
10 “This Wife Qualifies As Backseat Driver,” The Sunday News (Lancaster, PA), May 30, 1943, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com: accessed January 18, 2023).
11 “U.S., City Directories,” entry for John L. Leslie, Pensacola, FL, 1942.
12 “World War II Army Enlistment Records.”
13 “Wife 1,500,000 Miles Ahead of Flying Cadet,” The Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, AL), April 9, 1943, Newspapers.com (www.newspapers.com: accessed January 18, 2023); “This Wife Qualifies as a Back Seat Driver,” The Sunday News.
14 “This Wife Qualifies as a Back Seat Driver,” The Sunday News.
15 “John L. Leslie,” American Air Museum, accessed December 5,2022. https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/person/john-l-leslie.
16 “91st Bomb Group The Ragged Irregulars,” The American Air Museum in Britain, accessed January 23, 2023, https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/unit/91st-bomb-group-ragged-irregulars.
17 “91st Bomb Group,” American Air Museum.
18 Randall Hansen, Fire and Fury: Allied Bombing of German, 1942-1945 (New York: New American Library, 2008), 195-202.
19 Donald L. Miller, The Story of World War II (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 255-279.
20 “Dailies of the 324th,” 91st Bomb Group Memorial Association (BGMA), accessed March 28, 2023. http://www.91stbombgroup.com/Dailies/324th1944.html. John Leslie is first mentioned in these transcribed daily reports in July.
21 “Missing Air Crew Report,” database, Fold3.com (www.fold3.com: accessed March 28, 2023), entry for aircraft 44-6126. The co-pilot and navigator, 2nd Lieutenant John Savage and 2nd Lieutenant Stanley Koss, died the same day of the crash, August 16, and are currently buried in the Golden Gate National Cemetery of San Bruno, CA and the Mount Lebanon Cemetery in Queens, NY respectively. “Savage, John E.,” National Cemetery Administration, accessed April 23, 2023, https://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/ngl/; “2LT Stanely Koss,” FindAGrave.com, accessed April 23, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/98954595/stanley-koss.
22 ”Obituary For Lee C. Leslie,” The St. Louis Star and Times (St. Louis, MO), January 25, 1949, Newspapers.com.
23 “Obituary 1 — No Title,” The New York Times, January 11, 1964, accessed November 3rd. 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/1964/01/11/archives/obituary-1-no-title.html.
24 ”Laurel Hill Cemetery,” database, Remembermyjourney.com (www.remembermyjourney.com: accessed November 3, 2022), entry for Lucille Leslie. We have not found information in publicly available records regarding John Leslie’s wife or siblings after the war.
25 “Lee Charles Leslie,” FindAGrave.com, accessed February 22, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/68344324/lee-charles-leslie.
26 “Lee Charles Leslie,” FindAGrave.com; “Lee Leslie,” The Daily News (Lebanon, Pennsylvania), March 26, 1980.
27 “Michigan Marriage Records,” database, Ancestry.com (www.Ancestry.com: accessed February 22, 2023), entry for Alexander Leslie and Helen Elizabeth Stack.
28 “Alexander Leslie,” FindAGrave.com, accessed February 22, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/216365128/alexander-leslie
29 “Obituary for Lucile Gaul,” The Baltimore Sun, January 19, 1972, Newspapers.com.
30 “Leslie-James Wedding is Solemnized At Little Church Around the Corner,” The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC), June 13, 1946, Newspapers.com. Alexander Leslie is listed as attending this wedding.
31 “Elvira Laine,” FindAGrave.com, accessed March 28, 2023, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/168013422/elvira-laine-james.
32 “Brief History of the 91st Bomb Group,” 91st Bomb Group Memorial Association, accessed November 3, 2022, http://www.91stbombgroup.com/91st_info/91stbg_history.html. On July 1, 1947, military leadership redesignated it to 91st Reconnaissance Group, focusing on using its aircraft to take long-distance surveillance photographs. The 91st Reconnaissance Group suffered issues with having too few men and too little equipment. In addition, some units, such as John Leslie’s 324th Squadron, focused entirely on training rather than reconnaissance. These overarching issues led to the inactivation and dissolution of the 91st in May of 1952.
33 “Memorials Around the World,” (BGMA), accessed March 28, 2023, http://www.91stbombgroup.com/memorials/memorials.html.
34 “John L. Leslie Headstone Inscription and Internment Record,” database, Ancestry.com (accessed January 18, 2023).
35 “Missing Air Crew Reports.”; Barry L Spink, “Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal Criteria in the Army Air Forces in World War II,” Air Force Historical Research Agency, accessed October 8, 2022, https://www.afhra.af.mil/Portals/16/documents/Timelines/World%20War%20II/
WWIIDFCandAirMedalCriteriaChronological.pdf?ver=2016-09-16-111147-907.