James Gustaf Edward Le Mesurier (25 May 1971 – 11 November 2019) was the British co-founder of the White Helmets, a volunteer civil defence organisation in the Syrian Civil War, founded in southern Turkey in 2014. Le Mesurier was a British Army officer and worked as part of the United Nations peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia. He was the director of the non-profit Mayday Rescue Foundation, headquartered in the Netherlands. Le Mesurier died in a fall from the balcony of an Istanbul building where he kept an apartment and an office. Early life Le Mesurier was born on 25 May 1971 at RAF Changi in Singapore. He was the son of an Englishman Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Havilland Churchill Le Mesurier, of the Royal Marines, and his Swedish wife, Ewa. He had an older sister. Actor John Le Mesurier was a relative. He was educated at Northaw prep school, Canford School and attended Ulster University (sponsored by the army), but for security reasons finished the final year of his degree at Aberystwyth University studying International Relations and Strategic Studies. Military and government service In 1990, Le Mesurier was commissioned into the Royal Green Jackets, British Army, as a second lieutenant (University Cadetship); the British Army was sponsoring him through university. Having graduated from university, he was appointed second lieutenant (on probation) on 20 June 1993 upon entering the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. At Sandhurst, he graduated top of class and won the Queens’ Medal award. He was promoted to lieutenant on 11 August 1993, and to captain on 11 August 1996. He served in Northern Ireland, then for two years became an infantry training instructor with the Army Training Regiment in Winchester. He then returned to the Royal Green Jackets as an intelligence officer in Bosnia and Kosovo. In 1999, he worked as a Return and Reconstruction Task Force Officer at the Office of the High Representative in the former Yugoslavia. He retired from the military on 1 June 2000. He was affected by the West's inability to prevent in the atrocities in the Kosovo War. It appears, according to BBC News, that Le Mesurier attempted to join MI6 at about this time; he failed their vetting procedures. Le Mesurier then worked for a year as a United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo Policy Advisor in the former Yugoslavia. He then became the Head of the Jericho Monitoring Mission