Leslie Pearn

With help from his daughter Christine, Leslie was awarded the Defence Medal later in life having to prove his service to the authorities.

Christine recalled:

My Dad was born in Cornwall and a relative told me that when he was five years old the family moved to Devon. He went to the school there and then went back to Cornwall when he was thirteen to work on a farm which he did for many years. I recollect being told when my Dad was a young man that he was a boxer!

He rarely spoke about his life, he was a very private man. I knew very little about his parents or his own family except that his father and seven brothers were farm workers. He met my Mother who worked as a dairymaid on a farm and eventually they married. At that stage they lived in a cottage at Tregoose, Probus and stayed in Probus for the rest of their lives.

The woods he took me to were close to Trewithen estate and Golden Manor. He told me very little except to say that he went underground in the woods. I did not realise the significance and no one had ever mentioned it. It was much later I found out about the Churchill's Secret Army.

I remember my Dad going out on the odd occasion at night - he was catching rabbits with ferrets to provide food for the family, this was after the war, so yes I can imagine Dad, the way he was as a person, he would have been a good candidate for the Auxiliary service.