Rugby reporter remembers the quiet sergeant who almost died fighting to stop his sister's nightmares coming true

Today we remember the ordinary people who mustered extraordinary courage to give us all a future
One of the wire soldiers stands guard at the Whitehall Rec memorial gates.One of the wire soldiers stands guard at the Whitehall Rec memorial gates.
One of the wire soldiers stands guard at the Whitehall Rec memorial gates.

In the late nineties cancer did to my great-uncle Staff what the Nazi war machine almost did in the closing days of the war.

My grandma, Sylvia, said that during the war, when she would have been a very young child, she sometimes had bad dreams where Nazi troops would burst into her family home.

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Her older brother, Sergeant Stafford Leighton of the Welsh Guards, was, like many others across the world, risking his life to make sure those nightmares never came true.

In heavy fighting at Nijmegen, possibly against the fanatical Waffen SS, Staff was badly injured in a grenade blast that killed his friend.

He returned to Britain and used his injury money to buy my grandma a toy. Then he was back into combat.

He was a kind, gentle-mannered and quietly-spoken man who in later life was a university lecturer, also doing extensive charity work.

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Staff's mother, Katie ‘Kitty’ Leighton knew a thing or two about bravery. While her husband Eric was away fighting she had been in the Land Army during the first war.

She won a medal for diving in the way of a charging horse to save a little boy. Thankfully, they both survived.

In the early days of the second war, where a Nazi invasion seemed a very realistic prospect, Kitty and the family refused to be intimidated.

"She was very sensible and wasn't one to panic," my grandma once told me.

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"If the Germans had invaded she'd have just got on with it."

Today, November 11, I'm sure we'll all be thinking about our loved ones.

Some who made it and others who didn't - like my step-father's grandad who was killed before he could meet his child.

In this job I've had the privilege to speak with many veterans of the Second World War.

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I've heard stories of incomprehensible bravery, of men in the twentieth century forced to resort to using machetes to protect their friends.

Many of us have family stories like that to tell.

They risked everything to give us all a future, and in their selflessness they lit the way for the rest of us - and their bravery sends a warning through history to all would-be tyrants.

No amount of hatred that was spewed or bombs that were dropped would have stopped people like Sergeant Staff from making sure his little sister's nightmares didn't come true.

We will remember them.