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‘The Yank: Big Leo’
By Bernard Mc Cormack
Location: Derry, Northern Ireland

To us children he was known as the ‘Yank’, to adults he was simply ‘Big Leo’. He was tall, over six feet, and he was good-looking in a flashy kind of way. It was also said that he was something of a hot-head and good with his fists. He was also a southerner and rumour had it, that he came from a very wealthy family. It turned out that he was the black sheep and cause of much embarrassment to his family, so they decided to boy him out and send him to America.

Eventually after a spell of fighting in The Franco-Spanish war, and just at the outbreak of World War 2, he returned to Ireland. When we saw him he was working for the Americans as a technician and driving a huge recovery truck. The Americans had great trouble finding someone who could handle one of these monsters. But it was no trouble to ‘The Yank’ since he came from a family who were in the trucking business. To be fair Big Leo received several citations from the U.S. Government for his skill in recovering crashed planes in dangerous situations.

Our admiration for ‘The Yank’ knew no limits, how could it be otherwise? He lodged in a house in our street and would usually park his jeep alongside the pavement. It had the famous white painted five-pointed star on the bonnet, his dog, a handsome, tawny Alsatian sat on guard, where Big Leo went-it went. In a holster on one side of the jeep was a riffle, he always wore a short, fleece lined leather jacket as did many Americans and light-coloured gabardine trousers tucked into high clipped leather boots. He was every inch ‘The American’. As you can imagine women found him irresistible.

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