Captain Michael Valentine Paul Fleming

Notes:

He died on 1 October 1940 at age 27, from wounds received in action while a POW. He fought in the Second World War and gained the rank of Captain in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

Died:
Killed in Action

Michael married Letitia Blanche Borthwick on 28 Jul 1934 in Henley On Thames, Oxfordshire. Letitia (daughter of Malcolm Algernon Borthwick and Blanche Buckland Gorrie) was born on 10 Apr 1913; died in Feb 2003 in Hitchin and Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Valentine Patrick Fleming was born on 1 Aug 1935; died on 21 Jul 2015.
2. David Fleming was born on 24 Nov 1928; died in Nov 1975; was buried on 8 Nov 1975.

Notes:

Major Valentine Fleming DSO (17 February 1882 – 20 May 1917) was a British Conservative Member of Parliament who was killed in World War I. He was the father of authors Peter Fleming and Ian Fleming who created the James Bond character.

Early years
Born in Newport-on-Tay, Fife, Fleming was the son of Sarah (née Hindmarsh) and Robert Fleming, a wealthy Scottish banker and founder of the merchant bank, Robert Fleming & Co. Fleming was educated at Eton College and Magdalen College, Oxford. He married Evelyn Beatrice Sainte Croix Rose in London on 15 February 1906. Together they had four sons; adventurer and travel writer Peter (father of actress Lucy Fleming), novelist Ian (author of the James Bond novels), Richard (whose son is billionaire Adam Fleming), and Michael.

From 1906 to 1911, the family lived at Braziers Park in Ipsden, Oxfordshire. On his election to parliament, they moved to Pitt House on Hampstead Heath in 1910. He was a Member of Parliament for Henley from 1910 to 1917. In 1914 they built a house at Arnisdale, near Kyle of Lochalsh in the Scottish Highlands.

Military service
At the outbreak of World War I Valentine was a Captain in 'C' Squadron, Queen's Own Oxfordshire Hussars, a yeomanry regiment, having received his commission on 30 June 1908. After a month of training the regiment was sent to France on 22 September 1914.

He wrote a "brisk and breezy account" to a fellow officer in England in 1914 about the start of the war. Initially the regiment had little more than "a tour of the principal French watering places" followed by a fortnight hanging about Dunkirk and Saint-Omer ("Very dull"), but then on 30 October were told by General de Lisle to:

occupy a line of trenches on the right of Messines. This was disagreeable as projectiles of every variety were exploding with a disquieting regularity all over the ground of our advance. .... Off we went, over some very holding ground, three squadrons in a succession of rushes in extended lines, the regularity of which was still disturbed by the wire! (Never move without nippers on the Sam Browne belt!). Luckliy we had no man hit – I can’t think why – which put some heart into the men .... we began to wonder how to fix the bloody bayonets with which we had been issued two days previously. .... About 4.30 am they were relieved and marched back about two miles to get breakfast, v. hungry and sleepy . (But then De Lisle told them that the line had been broken, so) with empty bellies we become plodding up the usual wire-enclosed ploughed fields on the left of Messines, being pooped at by very high and wild rifle fire .... It was a very trying day for the men, they were d—-d hungry. (The line held, just; but Messines and its Ridge were taken, see Battle of Messines and First Battle of Ypres).
He also wrote to a close friend Winston Churchill in 1914 (the following is an excerpt):

Imagine a broad belt [of land], ten miles or so in width, stretching from the Channel to the German frontier near Basle, which is positively littered with the bodies of men…in which farms, villages, and cottages are shapeless heaps of blackened masonry; in which fields, roads and trees are pitted and torn and twisted by [artillery] shells...
Fleming was promoted to Major on 2 November 1914 and became the commanding officer of 'C' Squadron. He was appointed the second-in-command of the regiment in January 1916.

Fleming was killed by German shellfire at Gillemont Farm, near Épehy, Somme, France on 20 May 1917. For his service, Valentine was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Order on 4 June 1917, having been previously twice mentioned in dispatches.

Fleming is buried at Templeux-le-Guérard British Cemetery, near the village of Templeux-le-Guérard. Fleming is commemorated on Panel 8 of the Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall, one of 22 MPs that died during World War I to be named on that memorial. Fleming is one of 19 MPs who fell in the war who are commemorated by heraldic shields in the Commons Chamber. A further act of commemoration came with the unveiling in 1932 of a manuscript-style illuminated book of remembrance for the House of Commons, which includes a short biographical account of the life and death of Fleming.

Fleming's obituary in The Times was written by Churchill.

Legacy
In 1914, shortly before leaving England to fight in France, Valentine signed a will that left Pitt House and his effects to his wife Evelyn, most of his estate was left in trust to benefit their four sons and their future families. His wife Evelyn would have a generous income from the trust unless she remarried, in which case she would receive a reduced amount of £3000 per annum. Evelyn never remarried and felt it was a "bad will".

Valentine married Evelyn Beatrice Sainte Croix Rose on 15 Feb 1906 in St George Hanover Square, London. Evelyn (daughter of Captain George Alfred Sainte Croise Rose, J.P. and Beatrice Quain) was born on 10 Jan 1885 in St Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, London; died on 27 Jul 1964 in The Hotel Metropole, Kings Road, Brighton, Sussex. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

George married Beatrice Quain on 8 Apr 1880 in St Andrew, St Marylebone, London. Beatrice was born on 2 Dec 1856 in Marylebone, London; died on 4 Jan 1911 in Kensington, London. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]