Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment on 21 October 1914. From then on, Roland was only able to see Vera fleetingly during his brief periods of leave. He was promoted a lieutenant with the Worcestershire Regiment on 26 March 1915. Leighton served with the Worcestershire Regiment in France, and was engaged in the fighting around Ypres in Belgium. Vera Brittain became his fiancée in August 1915. An analysis of his letters reveals that he quickly became unhappy and disillusioned by his experiences at the front describing it as "a mere trade". He converted to Roman Catholicism from Church of England while at the Front in late 1915. This event, which took place in the summer of 1915, according to his fiancée, was unknown to anyone of his family or to her. His funeral took place according to Catholic rites. In December 1915, he was shot by a sniper while inspecting the wire, in bright moonlight, in front of a trench at Hébuterne, France. He sustained a catastrophic abdominal and spinal injury. While still on the battlefield, he said simply, "They got me in the stomach and it's bad," before he was rendered semi-conscious by morphine. Leighton underwent emergency abdominal surgery at Louvencourt. However, he survived only a short time, dying of his wounds on 23 December 1915 at the age of 20 (his gravestone incorrectly states that he was 19). His burial service was held at Louvencourt church. He is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery at Louvencourt, near Doullens. Brittain's biographer Mark Bostridge has reported that Leighton's grave is often covered by violets in tribute to a poem he wrote for his fiancée: Roland's final poem, which was found in his clothes after his death was "Hedauville". Brittain found the poem unsettling and difficult to fully understand. It seemed as if perhaps Roland was predicting his own death in "Hedauville", and foresaw a different life for Vera, with a new love. Vera Brittain wrote several poems commemorating Leighton's life which were published in her 1918 work, Verses of a V.A.D., and her later volume Because You Died. She later immortalised him and her brother Edward in her famous memoir Testament of Youth. Many of Leighton's letters are included in Letters from a Lost Generation, a compilation of her wartime letters, edited by Alan Bishop and Mark Bostridge, and published in 1998. Brittain's Chronicle of Youth, which contains her