Leslie Moss Harris

Writer, H.M.S. Dunedin
Service number: D/MX 88063
Died 26 Nov 1941
Commemorated on Plymouth Naval Memorial & Willesden Jewish Cemetery, United Kingdom
Age 39


Leslie was born on 13 March 1902 in London to Henry who was born in Russia and Rita nee Fligelstone who was born in Cardiff, Wales. After his birth the family travelled to Salisbury, Rhodesia where his younger sister Natalie was born. Their father Henry died in Salisbury in 1908 from heart failure and Rita’s brothers travelled to Salisbury to find her a new husband. Rita was very wealthy, and the brothers found Joseph Rollnick who made his fortune as a dealer in the Congo. Rita and Joseph married in London in 1910 and their daughter Zelda was born the following year in Cardiff, Wales. Joseph and Rita did not have a happy marriage and were going through a divorce when Joseph died in 1925 at a hotel in Belgium.

In 1911, both Leslie and his sister Natalie were attending Cranford College in Maidenhead as boarders. In 1921, aged nineteen, Leslie was living with his mother and stepsister at 8 Arkwright Mansions in Hampstead, London and he is listed as working as an apprentice in the motor car industry. The following year he travelled to Africa to meet up with his stepfather and after this he tried to emigrate to Canada where his uncle was living but returned and went to Bloemfontein in South Africa. It was here that he enlisted into the Navy as a writer. He was onboard HMS Dunedin in the South Atlantic just east of the St. Paul’s Rocks, northeast of Recife, Brazil, when on 24 November 1941, at 1526 hours, two torpedoes from the German submarine U-124 sank her. Only four officers and 63 men survived out of Dunedin’s crew of 486 officers and men.

Photo by Wilfred Stein
1921 Census
Travel to Africa
Leslie is commemorated on his mothers grave at Willesden Jewish Cemetery. Photo courtesy of Les Cazin