Group captain leonard cheshire biography of mahatma

The book describes all that followed the tumultuous events in Jallianwalla Bagh, a turning point in the history of modern India.

His record of operational bombing missions was unequalled. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in with two bars in and , the Distinguished Flying Cross in , and the Victoria Cross in for sustained bravery throughout the war. He was selected by Winston Churchill as the British observer at the dropping of the atom bomb on Nagasaki in August He was medically discharged from the RAF after the war to a psychiatric hospital, but soon discharged himself.

He struggled to adjust to peacetime and worked as a journalist, sharing his experience of war and calling for people to work towards peace. As a solution, he attempted to set up a community life for ex service men and women like him, first at Gumley Hall in Leicestershire and then at Le Court in Hampshire. This experiment soon failed and collapsed in debt.

People moved away and Leonard was left sorting out the aftermath until May , when a telephone call from the local hospital changed everything. Leonard found others coming to him for help, and so started what was to become the world-wide disability charity Leonard Cheshire. By the summer of Le Court had 24 residents. Referrals came from the new NHS hospitals already struggling to cope with waiting lists.

Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, V.C., , D.F.C..

Leonard remained a trustee, with the position of Founder, up until his death in After many years of turning down honours, his award of the Order of Merit was announced on 5 February He accepted this because it was a personal honour from Her Majesty The Queen, who later became our Patron. On 5 April Leonard Cheshire married Sue Ryder whose own international charity, the Sue Ryder Foundation , was already well established helping those in need of relief from persecution and illness.

Together, they also established the Ryder-Cheshire Foundation to take on projects for which there was a clear need but which lay outside the scope of their separate foundations.