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KEYSOR,
Lance-Corporal Leonard
1st Australian Infantry Battalion, AIF

7-8 August 1915, at Lone Pine Trenches, Gallipoli Peninsular

CITATION: For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty at Lone Pine Trenches, in the Gallipoli Peninsular. On 7 August, 1915, he was in a trench which was being heavily bombed by the enemy. He picked up two live bombs and threw them back at the enemy at great risk to his own life, and continued throwing bombs, although himself wounded, thereby saving a portion of the trench which it was most important to hold. On 8th August, at the same place, Private (Lance-Corporal) Keysor successfully bombed the enemy out of a position from which a temporary mastery over his own trench had been obtained, and was again wounded. Although marked for hospital, he declined to leave and volunteered to throw bombs for another company, which had lost its bomb-throwers. He continued to bomb the enemy till the situation was relieved.

(London Gazette 15 October 1915.)

KEYSOR, LEONARD MAURICE (1885-1951), soldier and businessman, was born on 3 November 1885 at Maida Vale, London, son of Benjamin Keysor, a Jewish clock importer. The name was sometimes spelt Keyzor. After education at Tonnleigh Castle, Ramsgate, Keysor spent ten years in Canada. He migrated to Sydney, where he found employment as a clerk, about three months before the outbreak of World War I. On 18 August 1914 he enlisted in the 1st Battalion, Australian Imperial Force, and embarked for Egypt on 18 October.

Keysor landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and was promoted lance corporal on 20 June. His deeds during the second (and last) great effort to take the peninsula are among the most spectacular individual feats of the war.

At 5.30 p.m. on 6 August the 1st Australian Infantry Bridge launched a diversionary attack at Lone Pine and by nightfall had seized the Turkish; but bitter fighting with bayonets and bombs continued for three days and nights as the Turks retaliated. Keysor, a master of bomb throwing, scorned danger. As Turkish bombs lobbed into his trench he would leap forward and smother the explosions with sandbags or coat. If time allowed he would throw the bomb back; he caught several in flight and smartly returned them as though playing cricket. Twice wounded, he nevertheless maintained his efforts for fifty hours. His bravery saved his trench and removed the enemy from a temporarily commanding position. C. E. W, Bean [q.v.7] recorded that 'the battalions of 1st Brigade lost so heavily that few witnesses of its efforts remained. Consequently of the seven Victorian Crosses awarded after this fight, four went to a reinforcing battalion’. Of the other three, one was awarded to Keysor.

After Lone Pine Keysor went to England suffering from enteric fever. Rejoining his battalion in France in March 1916, he took part in the fighting at Pozieres. On 17 November he was transferred to the 42nd Battalion and promoted sergeant on 1 December. Commissioned second lieutenant on 13 January 1917, he was promoted lieutenant in July. He was wounded on 28 March 1918 while fighting on the defensive Mericourt ­Sailly-Le-Sec line and evacuated. Back with his unit, he was again wounded on 26 May in a gas bombardment near Villers­ Bretonneux.

In October 1918 Keysor, an uncompromising advocate of conscription, returned to Australia with other veterans and assisted in the recruiting campaign. Discharged from the army as medically unfit on 12 December, he resumed clerical work but in 1920 he entered business in London. There, on 8 July at the Hill Street Synagogue, he married Gladys Benjamin.

Keysor was persuaded to re-enact his bomb-throwing exploits in a film, For Valour, in 1927, but he was essentially a shy man who shunned publicity. White-haired and deaf when interviewed in the 1940s, he described himself as 'a common-or-garden clock importer' and remarked that 'the war was the only adventure I ever had'. Keysor was rejected for military service in 1939 on medical grounds. He died in London of cancer on 12 October 1951, survived by his wife and daughter, and was cremated after a memorial service at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St John's Wood. His Victoria Cross is held at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

L. Wigmore, They dared mightily (Canb, 1963); C. E. W. Bean, The story of Anzac, 2 (Syd, 1924); Sydney Mail, 16 Oct 1918; The Times, 13 Oct 1951; Sun (Syd), 29 July 1977; War diary, 42nd Battalion, AIF 1916-18 (AWM).

Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography - Online Edition, Keysor, Leonard Maurice