The Whitby High School - Ellesmere Port War Memorial Project

Private Leonard FranceM.M. is the third private down, top right. The panel comes from the rear memorial wall below.

John Leonard France died on Friday 27th September 1918, age 27. His body was never found. His name is engraved on the Vis-En-Artois memorial in France, panel 16. He was a local war hero having been awarded the Military Medal.

Vis-en-Artois and Haucourt are villages on the straight main road from Arras to Cambrai about 10 kilometres south-east of Arras. Within the grounds of Vis-en-Artois British Cemetery, which is west of Haucourt on the north side of the main road, will be found the Vis-en-Artois Memorial. This Memorial bears the names of over 9,000 men who fell in the period from 8 August 1918 to the date of the Armistice in the Advance to Victory in Picardy and Artois, between the Somme and Loos, and who have no known grave. They belonged to the forces of Great Britain and Ireland and South Africa; the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand forces being commemorated on other memorials to the missing. The Memorial consists of a screen wall in three parts. The middle part of the screen wall is concave and carries stone panels on which names are carved. It is 26 feet high flanked by pylons 70 feet high. The Stone of Remembrance stands exactly between the pylons and behind it, in the middle of the screen, is a group in relief representing St George and the Dragon. The flanking parts of the screen wall are also curved and carry stone panels carved with names. Each of them forms the back of a roofed colonnade; and at the far end of each is a small building.

The

Military Medal was instituted by Royal Warrant on the 25th March 1916 to be awarded for "acts of gallantry and devotion to duty performed by non-commissioned officers and men of our army in the field"

Soldiers' Records