First World War Service
Leckie learned to fly in Toronto and joined the Royal Naval Air Service in 1915. During the First World War he flew anti-submarine patrols over the North Sea. Flying a Curtiss H12 flying boat on reconnaissance, Leckie downed the German zeppelin L22 near Terschelling on 14 May 1917. Fifteen months later, during a nighttime raid on 6 August 1918, a German zeppelin formation under the command of Führer der Luftschiffe (FdL.) (Admiral, 2nd class) Peter Strasser attacked Boston, Norwich, and the Humber estuary. Flying in a DH.4 biplane, Major Egbert Cadbury (pilot) and Leckie (gunner) took part in the interception engagement and were credited with downing Zeppelin L70 just north of Wells-next-the-Sea on the Norfolk coast. FdL. Strasser, head of the Imperial German Navy's zeppelin forces, was on board L70 and did not survive. By the end of the war, Leckie was a Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force (RAF).
Read more about this topic: Robert Leckie (RCAF Officer)
Famous quotes containing the words world, war and/or service:
“Man is made of the same atoms the world is, he shares the same impressions, predispositions, and destiny. When his mind is illuminated, when his heart is kind, he throws himself joyfully into the sublime order, and does, with knowledge, what the stones do by structure.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
—Bible: Hebrew Isaiah, 2:4.
The words reappear in Micah 4:3, and the reverse injunction is made in Joel 3:10 (”Beat your plowshares into swords ...”)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)