Leonard Charles Aitken attended school in Reno until 1914, when he went to Sacramento, California. After a short stay there, he returned to Reno and entered the employ of the Palace Dry Goods Company. In the meantime, however, while in Sacramento, he had joined the California National Guard. When trouble arose with Mexico in June 1916, he reported for duty and served on the border with the Hospital Corps of the 1 60th Infantry.

On April 7th, 1917, he left Washoe County to again offer his services to the nation. Soon afterward he was sent to the Officers’ Training Camp at San Diego, California, where he received the rank of Second Lieutenant. He landed in France in August 1918, with the 158th Infantry, 39th Division.

On October 20th he was transferred to the 372d Infantry Regiment, 186th Infantry Brigade, which was a part of the partially formed 93d Division. The 371st and 372d Regiments had been holding a part of the Alsace front east of Epinal since October 14th.

Lieutenant Aitken was temporarily attached to a company occupying an important position just south of Hill 607. On the night of November 7th, he was out all night with a patrol and captured several German prisoners. Upon returning, the detail ran into a machine-gun nest, and all but two enlisted men were either killed or captured. Undaunted in the face of this danger, Lieutenant Aitken charged the enemy until he fell with two machine-gun bullets above the heart. He died instantly, (November 8th, 1918). After his death it was learned he had been buried by German officers, with full military honors, in a churchyard at La Paive, a village on the French-Alsace border, forty miles east of Epinal, Vosges, France.

Captain Hugh W. Roundtree, his commanding officer, has said of Lieutenant Aitken, “In his loss, our country lost a most excellent officer and a very sincere friend. He died, I am sure, the way he would have preferred.”

Lieutenant Aitken was but twenty-one years of age at the time he fell. He left surviving, him his mother, Mrs. Clara Aitken Dickey, 40 Park Street, Reno, Nevada, and a brother, Ralph F. Aitken, U. S. S. Northern Pacific, New York.