Iain Macleod
Macleod met Evelyn Hester Mason, "née" Blois, (1915–1999) in September 1939 whilst he was waiting to be called up for army service and she interviewed him for a job as an ambulance driver. After her first husband was killed in the war, they married on 25 January 1941. The Macleods had a son and a daughter, Torquil and Diana, who were born in 1942 and 1944 respectively. They had a somewhat stormy marriage in which they retained a strong bond despite Macleod conducting a number of what his biographer describes as "romances" with other women (he quotes love letters written by Macleod but does not specifically say they went as far as sexual affairs). As was common for MPs' wives of the era, Eve looked after constituency matters whilst her husband concentrated on his career at Westminster.
Iain Macleod
In September 1939, upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Macleod enlisted in the British Army as a private in the Royal Fusiliers. On 20 April 1940 he was commissioned as an officer with the rank of second lieutenant in the Duke of Wellington's Regiment (DWR). He was given the service number of 129352. He was posted to the 2/7th Battalion, DWR, which was then serving as part of the 137th Infantry Brigade of the 46th Infantry Division, a second line Territorial Army (TA) formation, then commanded by Major-General Henry Curtis. Macleod's battalion was sent overseas to France in time to see action in the Battle of France in May, where he was injured in the leg by a flying log when a German armoured car burst through a road block which his men had just erected. He was treated in hospital in Exeter and left with a lifelong slight limp. In later life, besides his limp he suffered pain and reduced mobility from a spinal condition (ankylosing spondylitis).