Leslie Walter Alfred BOYLES
Leslie Boyles's gravestone at Botley Cemetery in Oxford.
Leslie Boyles was born in Haslemere in Surrey in August 1918, the son of William and Olive Boyles (née Canning). Olive had been born and brought up in Shottermill near Haslemere, one of the fifteen children of a cab proprietor. William was born and brought up on Osney Island in west Oxford; he was one of the six children of a carter. On leaving school he worked as a printer’s machinist (probably at the Oxford University Press in Jericho) but by his early twenties he had a job with the Post office, where he remained for the rest of his working life.
William and Olive married in Hambledon, Surrey, in the autumn of 1915 and settled there for the first few years of their marriage. William does not appear to have fought in the First World War and it is likely that his job at the Post Office meant that he was in a reserved occupation. Their first two children, William and Leslie, were born in 1916 and 1918 in the Haslemere district. Soon afterwards the young family moved back to William senior’s home parish of St Frideswide in Oxford, and settled on Osney Island, off the Botley Road. William got a job in the Post Office Engineering Department (Post Office Telegraphs); he was described in the 1921 census as a "Skilled Workman Class 2". The family lived on South Street. William and Olive had six more children: Gerald (born 1919); Stella (born 1921, but died aged four); John (born 1923); Joyce (1926); Peter (1928); and Jean (1935).
In the early 1930s, when Leslie was about fourteen, the family moved to 42 Marlborough Road in Grandpont. Leslie’s younger sister Joyce started at St Matthew’s Infants’ School (on Marlborough Road) in October 1932, having come from West Oxford Infants’ School on Osney Island. Her younger brother Peter was admitted to St Matthew's the following March, though both children left only a month later. It is possible that at this point the family moved to live at 194 Botley Road (in a house called Lyndhurst); certainly they were there at the time of the 1939 register, a survey of civilian households taken on 29 September, four after the outbreak of the Second World War.
Leslie (then aged 21) does not appear in the register, which suggests that he had already enlisted in the army. He joined the Royal Army Service Corps (RASC) as a driver, service number T/98466, driving both motorcycles and cars. Meanwhile his younger brother Gerald (aged nineteen) was working at the army ordnance depot, and John (aged sixteen) was employed as an electrical fitter’s mate. Their father William was still working as a Post Office engineer.
Leslie saw service in France and took part in the retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940. He returned to Britain and worked as a motorcycle despatch rider. On 21 August 1940 he was riding his army motorcycle between Swindon and Marlborough, Wiltshire, on his way back from delivering some despatches, when his machine went out of control, struck the grass verge, and threw him off, causing fatal injuries. He was taken to the Swindon Victoria Hospital, but was dead on arrival. His body was brought back to Oxford to be buried in Botley Cemetery five days later. He is commemorated there by a gravestone with the inscription: “In Loving Memory Of / Our Dear Son / Leslie Boyles / Died On Active Service / Aug. 21 1940 / Aged 22. / Late R.A.S.C.” Although, as it says here, Leslie died on active service, he does not have a Commonwealth War Grave, perhaps because his death did not occur whilst facing enemy action.
Leslie is commemorated on the Oxford City WWII Roll of Honour, which is in the Church of St Michael at the Northgate on Cornmarket.
Leslie’s paternal aunt Alice (who died in 1966) and his father William (died 1969) are commemorated on the same gravestone. His mother Olive (died 1973) and brother William junior (died 1992) are buried together in a separate plot nearby.