Ian Craig Leslie was born in Java,Grip Fast Down Under Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Leslie was born one of twins in Bandung, Indonesia, under Japanese occupation, to his mother Lydia. He had an elder brother, sister and two aunts. At the time, his father William was interned in a POW camp in West central Java and would not see the twins until the Japanese surrender three and a half years later. His father was from Aberdeen, Scotland, and his mother was born in Gnadenfeld, Ukraine. Both migrated from war-torn Europe for a better life in the thriving Dutch-British East Indies. His mother’s family was of white Russian origin and fled their homeland to escape persecution under the Communist Bolshevik tyranny.
