Serjeant Frederick Smith - A Casualty of War Newly Commemorated
1542 Serjeant Frederick Smith,
D Company, 8th, 1/8th and 2/8th Leeds Rifles
On the declaration of war in
August 1914, the Territorial Force, much of which was away on annual summer
camp, was mobilised for war service. The role of the Territorial Force, in
basic terms, was to perform garrison and home service duties within the United
Kingdom, thus relieving Regular Army units to deploy overseas as an
Expeditionary Force.
Once the units of the Territorial
Force had declared themselves fully mobilised and ready for service, they
marched off to their war stations, leaving only a skeleton rear party at their
respective headquarters which would be expected to recruit and kit out new
volunteers.
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| Carlton Barracks in Leeds [© Copyright Betty Longbottom @ geograph.org.uk] |
The Leeds Rifles had, in
peacetime, maintained an unofficial ‘standard’ for the recruits the battalions
would accept. Educated men, men employed in positions of authority or
responsibility, such as policemen and postmen, and men who worked for the
companies the officers in the battalions were associated with were favoured
above others. Many men were accepted as recruits only after being recommended
by other men who were already serving. While this self-imposed exclusivity had worked well for the battalions in peacetime, fostering a closeness between the
soldiers, and an open, honest, and trusting relationship between the soldiers
and their officers, from the outside it was seen as unnecessary snobbery, and
off-putting to some. When the Leeds Rifles opened its doors to new recruits on
the declaration of war, it found that many men who would have been perfectly
good recruits had already tried their luck with the Artillery, Army Service Corps and Medical
territorial units in Leeds, who were only too happy to have them sign on and
would employ them in roles where their education would stand them in good
stead. As a result, the Leeds Rifles struggled when it came to recruiting men for
the ‘Reserve’ battalions, especially when they were unable to promise the men
even the prospect of overseas service. In Late October 1914, when territorial battalions
in nearby towns and cities were reporting themselves ‘full’, and other units in
Leeds were doing the same, the Leeds Rifles Second Line battalions still had
space for more than a thousand men between them.
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| Leeds Mercury 19th October 1914 - A Call for Recruits to the Reserve Battalions of the Leeds Rifles |
There was much co-operation between the two battalions which saw an on-going exchange of men, with men in the 1/8th Battalion who were not immediately suitable for overseas service being transferred to the 2/8th Battalion, which was still, for the time being known as the ‘Reserve’ Battalion, and those men coming from the 1/8th Battalion were replaced by men transferred from the 2/8th Battalion.
In some battalions, volunteers
were sought to transfer to the reserve battalions to help to train the new
recruits. For some men, this created a genuine dilemma. It was not yet certain
that the reserve battalions would be called on to serve overseas, and many men
thought that, by agreeing to transfer, they would be giving up their chance of
service at the front. It was clear that there was a rank structure that needed
to be established, and many men who were at the senior end of their current rank might
reasonably expect to be promoted to the next if they agreed to be moved.
Frederick Smith had joined the 8th
Leeds Rifles on 19th May 1913 and had completed his recruit training
at Carlton Barracks in time for him to be considered ready to attend the
battalion’s annual summer camp in Aberystwyth with the rest of the West Riding
Division. When the battalion mobilised, he was still a relatively junior
Rifleman with a little over a year of service under his belt. His value to the
army would have been as a part of his current section and platoon as he didn’t
yet have the experience to train or mentor other men. For the immediate future,
Rifleman Smith would remain with the 1/8th Leeds Rifles.
In all likelihood, Frederick
Smith would have embarked for France with 1/8th Leeds Rifles, had
he not fallen ill with a rash that turned septic and forced him into the Mount Hospital
in York for almost three weeks in February 1915. The battalion was only about
six weeks away from being ordered abroad and was on the verge of moving from
Strensall to Gainsborough. The men were undergoing their final phases of
pre-embarkation training and were being assessed as to their fitness to embark.
The stay in hospital, the missed training, and possibly a less than 100%
recovery from his skin condition appears to have worked against Frederick
Smith, and he was transferred to the 2/8th Leeds Rifles on 9th
April 1915, less than a week before his original battalion sailed from
Folkestone to Boulogne.
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| The Mount School in York in 1897. From 1914 the school was used as a VAD Hospital. [The Mount School] |
To leave the battalion when it
was so close to proceeding to France must have been a wrench for Frederick
Smith, not least because he would be separated from his younger brother,
George, who had joined the battalion a week after Frederick. Because of the way
the 7th and 8th Battalions had organised their men, the
brothers were almost certainly in the same company, and may have been able to
share billets.
George Smith was wounded at
Glimpse Cottage in the Boezinge sector on 7th October 1915. He was
taken off the battlefield, but died the next day, and is buried at the well-known
Essex Farm Cemetery across the canal. The news of George Smith’s death reached
Leeds a week later. Meanwhile, Frederick Smith was progressing well in 2/8th
Battalion and had been appointed a Lance Corporal.
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| The grave of Rfn George Smith, the younger brother of Sjt Frederick Smith at Essex Farm Cemetery |
Frederick Smith would be promoted
a further three times before his battalion left for France, including a spell
as a Lance Serjeant. At the time, Lance Serjeant was an appointment, in the
same way as was a Lance Corporal. Full Corporals may be appointed as a Lance
Serjeant by their Commanding Officer if the man was expected to carry out some
duties which would normally be fulfilled by a full Serjeant. The temporary
nature of the appointment meant that the man may also be reverted to Corporal
by his Commanding Officer without reference to any higher authority, whereas,
to reduce a full Serjeant to Corporal the man would have to be convicted of a
crime at court martial, presided over by an officer of at least Brigadier
General rank. On 9th April 1916, Frederick Smith was promoted to
acting Serjeant, and was confirmed in the rank on 10th January 1917,
the day before his battalion embarked to go to France from Southampton to Le
Havre.
The battalion moved to Bonnières,
south of Frévent, and went into billets on 13th January. The next
day was spent with the officers inspecting kit, ammunition, and the rifles of the
men, before a voluntary church service, followed by an inspection of the
billets by the brigade commander. The men spent nine days in Bonnières engaged
in route marching and preparing for a move further forward, which came on 22nd
January when the battalion marched to Sarton, near Marieux. On 24th
January the battalion moved to Coigneux where it stayed until moving to
Famechon on 28th January, returning to Coigneux on 31st
January when it took billets in Rossignol Farm.
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| Rossignol Farm, Coigneux [Ferme du Rossignol] |
Since the earliest days of the
war, it had become the practice for newly arrived units to send men into the
trenches under the guidance of a more experienced unit. Although some of the
officers and senior NCOs had been up to the trenches in small groups a few days
earlier, the morning of 31st January would be the first time that
two of the battalion’s companies would go into the line. The arrival of B
Company was not a good start to their period of trench instruction. The company
should have reported to Battalion headquarters of 7th Battalion,
South Lancashire Regiment (56th Infantry Brigade – 19th
(Western) Division) in the evening of 29th January but did not
arrive until the morning of 30th January. The Officer Commanding B Company,
Major Norman Darnton Lupton, a member of the well-known Lupton Family of Leeds (and a relative of the current HRH The Princess of Wales), had no definite
orders to hand over to the Lancashire battalion. The unsatisfactory arrival of
the Major Lupton’s company prompted the host battalion to make a report to
Brigade Headquarters. When D Company, with Serjeant Smith in it, under the
command of Captain George Geoffrey Kinder reported for its period of
instruction the next day, aside from being late, which was unavoidable, the
mistakes of B Company were not repeated.
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| A ruined street looking down from the church at Hebuterne, 2 July 1917. [© IWM Q 61268] |
The northern Somme battlefield, at
the end of January 1917, was in the grip of a severe winter, with the mornings
beginning with a hard frost that barely thawed during the short hours of
daylight. The weather was of such concern that the Assistant Director of
Medical Services (ADMS) for 19th Division issued special orders to
units in the division designed to protect men from suffering cold injuries in
response to increasing numbers of soldiers suffering from trench foot and
frostbite. The men of D Company were being taken to trenches to the northeast
of the village of Hébuterne and approaching them through communication trenches,
probably Wurzel Street, in the village when, at 2:30pm a German barrage of
5.9-inch shells began to fall around them. Six men of D Company were wounded.
3677 L/Cpl Lee, 1422 Rfn Walton, 5151 Rfn Sherman, and 7109 Rfn Wilson all
later died and are buried in Couin New British Cemetery, one of two cemeteries
created by the Field Ambulance units which had used Couin as their base. Rifleman
Thomas Baker and Serjeant Smith were wounded but survived. In time, Rfn Barker
recovered and was able to soldier on, eventually transferring to the Royal
Engineers.
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| Map detail from 57d.NE3 showing Hebuterne with the location of Wurzel Street marked [Base image - McMaster University] |
Serjeant Smith was not so
fortunate. He had suffered horrific injuries to his head and body. More than
forty shrapnel wounds were counted in his body, but the wound that put him in
the most danger was a severe wound in his forehead which had shattered his
skull. Many divisional ADMSs had issued orders that resources should not be
used to evacuate men who were clearly dying, to any medical unit further back
from the line than where they were already so, despite the severity of his head
wound, and those wounds to his body, it appears that Serjeant Smith was not
thought to be in imminent danger of death.
His transit through the
evacuation chain would have been as rapid as possible. It would have been clear
that Frederick Smith urgently needed the specialist attention that could only
be found at the base hospitals, most of which were on the French coast. The
whole of the bone behind his forehead had been shattered and fragments of bone
had damaged his brain. He was held in France until March 1917, when he was
finally in a good enough condition to risk the sea journey back to England.
It seems that the authorities had
not done a good job of keeping Frederick Smith’s parents informed of his
condition after they had been notified that he had been wounded, and this
prompted Mrs Smith to write to the War Office to ask for further information. Given that
she had already lost one son eighteen months previously, her anxiety is
understandable.
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| Mrs Smith's Letter to the War Office asking for news of her Son. [WO 363] |
It was only after he had been admitted
to 4th London General Hospital in Camberwell, which had a specialist
neurological section, on 16th April 1917 that an operation was
performed to remove the shattered bone to prevent the loose fragments further
damaging his brain. It was recorded in his medical notes that Frederick Smith
had suffered a complete mental blank since March, a month after he was wounded,
so it appears that further brain damage occurred to cause that. After removing
the fragments of bone, an abscess was discovered in the wound, and that would
have prevented a full closure of the wound until the abscess had cleared. A
further operation to insert a cranial plate was then carried out.
Following his operation,
Frederick Smith was left with an overall weakness, and there was some loss of
mental capacity, although that was thought to be temporary. He could not be
expected to continue as a soldier, in any capacity, and arrangements were made
to discharge him.
Frederick Smith left the army on
29th June 1917 to an immediate pension of 32/6 per week. Because his
condition was expected to improve, this rate was only set for six months,
whereupon, he would be reassessed, and a new pensionable rate would be set. In
the meantime, he would attend outpatients’ appointments at the East Leeds
Hospital (the present-day Thackeray Museum building on the St James’s Hospital
estate), which was only a ten-minute walk from the family’s new address in
Middleton Avenue. Unfortunately, after his six-month review, Frederick Smith’s
condition had not improved, indeed, he needed to be admitted to hospital to
have adjustments made to the plate in his head. Admitted on 12th
December 1917, he would spend Christmas and the New Year in hospital. Despite
the cranial plate, there was a noticeable void to the front of Frederick
Smith’s head.
%20to%20the%20East%20Leeds%20War%20Hospital%20%5BNational%20Library%20of%20Scotland%5D.JPG) |
| Map showing proximity of Middleton Avenue (Bottom Centre) to the East Leeds War Hospital [National Library of Scotland] |
After the stay in hospital at the
end of 1917, Frederick Smith’s pension was maintained at 32/6 per week until it
was raised to 39/- in June 1918, fixed until January 1919 when he would be assessed
again in November 1918.
At that review, despite being
judged to have an 80% disability, Frederick Smith’s pension was reduced to 26/-
per week, and he was informed that he would not be reviewed again for another twelve months.
By this time, Frederick Smith was
twenty-four years old, unable to work, and severely restricted in what he could
do with his life. His prospects for the future were not good, but on 22nd
February 1919, he married the nineteen-year-old Emily Alice Taylor who was the
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania born daughter of Sam and Annie Taylor, who ran a
fish and chip shop at 2 Lloyd Street, off Kirkstall Road, and lived next door
at number 4. Following the marriage, at St Simon’s Church, a stone’s throw away
from Lloyd Street, Frederick Smith went to live with the Taylors.
Sam and Annie Taylor had
emigrated to the USA in 1895 with the help of some members of Annie’s family
who had already moved to Philadelphia. Sam went to America before his wife and
son, William, and began working as a woodturner. Once he was established, and
living in Lafayette Street, in the Falls of Schuylkill area of the city,
Annie’s sister went to England to collect her and William. Emily Taylor was
born there in October 1899. It isn’t clear when the family returned to Leeds,
but they appear on the 1911 England Census.
Frederick Smith’s condition
continued to worsen, and with the addition of a ventral hernia to his list of ailments,
at what would prove to be the final review of his pension payments, his
entitlement was raised to 37/4 per week from 29th October 1919. The
award was made for a period of 78 weeks, which would have taken him up to April
1921, but in January 1920, he died.
On Tuesday 13th January 1920 Emily Smith sent for a doctor to attend to her husband who was in agony with a recurrence of the cerebral abscess and was suffering convulsions. It is likely that the doctor Mrs Smith sent for was not familiar with her husband, and in the report made to the coroner who examined the circumstances of the death, he appears shocked to have counted more than forty shrapnel wounds on his patient. The doctor could do nothing for Frederick Smith except from trying to make him comfortable. He administered morphine as sedation and pain relief, but in his exhausted and weakened state, Frederick Smith slipped, firstly, into unconsciousness, and then into a coma, from which he never recovered. He died on 15th January.
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| Nos 2 & 4 Lloyd Street (nearest the camera) where the Taylor family lived, and where Frederick Smith died, as it appeared in 1959 [Leeds Library and Information Service] |
Four days after his death,
Frederick Smith was buried in an inscription grave, often also known as
Subscription or Guinea Graves, in a plot shared with sixteen other people.
Given the circumstances of his
death, it is beyond doubt that Frederick Smith should be considered a fatal
casualty of the Great War. He is not, however, currently recognised as such by
the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, probably due to an administrative error
made at the time of his death. To qualify for recognition by the Commission,
Frederick Smith’s death must meet certain criteria in that he must have died
between 4th August 1914 to 31st August 1921, and his
death must have been caused by his wartime service. Frederick Smith’s death
passes both tests, however, in practice, for personnel who had been discharged
from the services before their death, the cause of death must be the same as
the reason for the person’s discharge. The evidence currently available
supports the granting of war graves status to Frederick Smith, but it will
ultimately depend on what the official Death Certificate gives as the cause of
death. The Death Certificate has been ordered, and if it confirms that
Frederick Smith died due to his head wound, I will submit a case to the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission for him to be recognised as a casualty of
war.
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| Frederick Smith's death reported by the Yorkshire Evening Post, 19th January 1920 [© The British Library Board] |
One other anomaly, presumably also caused by an administrative error, is that in addition to the British War Medal and Victory Medal that were awarded in respect of Frederick Smith’s war service, he should also have received the Territorial Force War Medal, but his name does not appear on the roll.
To be eligible for this medal,
soldiers of the Territorial Force must have been serving on the day war was
declared, he must have signified his willingness to serve overseas on or before
30th September 1914, and he must have served overseas during the
war, but not qualified for either the 1914, or 1914-15 Star.
We know, from his service record,
that Frederick Smith was actively serving with the Territorial Force on 4th
August 1914. We also know, from the same source, that he did serve overseas
during the war, from 11th January 1917, which also shows that he was
not eligible for either of the Stars. The document he would have signed to show
his willingness to serve overseas has not survived, however, his presence in
the first line battalion until the week before it left for France confirms that
he had signed the document. Men who had not signed were weeded out of the
battalion and replaced much earlier than the week before it left for France.
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| The 'Guinea Grave' of Frederick Smith, and others, Leeds (Beckett Street) Cemetery. |
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| The Death Certificate issued following the death, and inquest into it, of former Sjt Frederick Smith |
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