Leslie Coulson

Leslie Coulson (1889–1916) was a London journalist who wrote for the press in Fleet Street and spent his weekends and holidays walking the countryside of southern and western England. He enlisted as a private in the Royal Fusiliers in September 1914 and served in Malta, Egypt and at Gallipoli, where he was slightly wounded, before going to France in 1916.

Promoted sergeant and recommended for a commission, he took part in the Somme advance, and was shot in the chest in a charge near Lesboeufs on 7 October 1916; he died of his wound, and his papers record the date as 8 October. His only book, From an Outpost, and Other Poems, appeared in 1917 with a memoir by the initials F.R.C.