Leslie Howard, The Early Years - Part Four

It seems that the army didn't really know what to do with a calvary regiment in a war being fought in the trenches, so Leslie's unit continued training for an additional ten months in an idyllic little town in the English countryside. It was here that he met Ruth Evelyn Martin, aged 21.

Leslie was actually engaged at the time to a young woman approved of by his father, Frank. When Leslie would write to "Buzz," as she was called, Ruth made sure to include little notes describing the care she was taking of Leslie. It seems Buzz relayed her concerns about Leslie's "caregiver" to his father and when Leslie failed to show up at home for a scheduled visit with the family, and Buzz, in March, 1916, Frank made a trip to Colchester to find out what was going on. When Frank voiced his disapproval to Leslie and told him to end his relationship with Ruth, Leslie announced that it was too late, Leslie and Ruth had been married that morning at St. Mary at the Walls Church. It seems that Ruth had not consulted her parents either. But there was nothing any of them could do. Leslie and Ruth had chosen their path and it was one they would travel together for the next 27 years, until his death.

[Leslie Howard Steiner,
Second Lieutenant, c. 1915]

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