Every Friday I send out an email that features photos from the Rupert Leach Collection, snaps taken from the personal View-Master reels of View-Master’s Director of Photography in the 1940s and 50s. These never-before-published images show alternative shots of some commercial View-Master reels and sometimes personal photos of Leach, his wife Poppy, and others.
This week’s reel takes us to England (as so many of these reels will). The envelope simply says “Sir Leslie Williams — England” and the photos are of Sir Leslie Williams’ family and his children in particular.
Obviously, I turned to Google to figure this one out. I figured the “Sir” was a title and not a pleasantry since Rupert and Poppy Leach were Brits. And my Googling brought me to this article and this man:
And it turns out Leslie Williams was a fascinating man. I’m not sure how Rupert Leach knew him or how this photoshoot came to be. It could have been for a proposed reel that was never created? Or was this a personal visit?
Regardless, I learned from the article I linked above that Williams was a key person in the planning of D-Day! From the Telegraph:
As head of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), [Williams] was in charge of operations on D-Day and implementing a plan to shift 380,000 tonnes of ammunition and 190,000 vehicles in the two months following.
…
[Williams’] extraordinary contribution to the war effort was uncovered in 2014 by his son, Philip Hamlyn Williams, a 67-year-old retired accountant turned military author, rummaging through old photo albums in the attic long after both parents had passed away.
Also from the Telegraph:
Williams was accompanied throughout the war by his personal assistant Betty Perks, who he later married, and she kept detailed records and photographs of his work. “I knew he had been a soldier because he would put on his uniforms to go out for dinners, and on Remembrance Sunday we would go to the RAOC headquarters at Deepcut where he would take the salute as Colonel Commandant,” Hamlyn Williams recalls.
Unlike the vast majority of British Army officers of his time, Major General Williams came from humble stock. He grew up in what Hamlyn Williams calls “a little terraced house in the poor end of Dulwich” and was taken out of school aged 15, following the death of his father, to work as an office boy in the city.
A restless spirit meant he soon left to pursue a stint abroad, trading textiles in Mozambique and rubber in the Far East. When the First World War broke out in August 1914 he was among the first wave of volunteers. Williams signed up to the Suffolk Regiment as a machine gun officer but the following year transferred to the Army Ordnance Corps, bringing supplies up the lines. “As ordnance officer you were under barrage from heavy guns most of the time,” his son says. “Artillery was always pounding you and that must have been hell.”
Williams never spoke about his time on the Western Front, though he suffered nightmares that plagued him for the rest of his life. Years later in his public speeches he would reflect on something he described as ‘the waste of war’ – of supplies, munitions and, of course, a seemingly endless roster of young lives.
Philip Hamlyn Williams is a historian and author! You can purchase the book he wrote about his father Leslie Williams here.
If you made it this far you should smash that ❤️ button so I know you’re out there and following along. Thanks for reading, friends!
Quite an amazing piece of history you have there in that reel. Wow.