Your monthly Jerrems News
WILLIAM SMITH ARTICLE
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Jerrems Journal Subscribers
Ray has another story from our past ancestry. As explained in the first paragraph, he connected with a distant relative in the UK thanks to a DNA linkage report.
Ray and I have separately submitted genetic samples to different companies for testing. Genetic testing, also known as DNA testing, allows the determination of bloodlines. We are working on a couple of stories that will prove interesting.
Stay tuned for more.
Donald Jerrems
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Above is an evocative photo of an inscription on a grave at Wimereux Cemetery which I will explain later.
But first I would like to tell you about the starting point of this article, dating back to my applying for a DNA report with ancestry.com. That report listed an unnamed person who had a DNA indicating that the person was my third cousin. I gambled that the person came from the United Kingdom, so I wrote via ancestry.com to say that I had a lot of relatives who originated from the UK and had come to Australia.
Expecting to have a spate of emails trying to narrow down our connection I was amazed when I received a quick reply that the only people known to the recipient who fitted into this description were two brothers named Smith who came to Australia. These brothers were obviously my grandfather Edward and his brother Alfred, so our connection was established immediately!
It transpired that Bruce Carron and I had a common ancestor in Joseph Smith and that Bruce’s grandmother Mildred and my grandfather Edward were siblings. One of their brothers was William Healy Smith, whose story I will now take up.
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Here is a photo of William in (amazingly) his early twenties.
In choosing who to write about in my first full article about the “Smith” family I had the choice of Edward, Alfred and William. I have chosen William, mainly because Bruce has done a lot of original research about William.
William was born in 1891 in Leyton, Essex, his parents being Joseph Owen Smith (1857-1943), a bootmaker, and Louisa Anna Reynolds (1856-?). Joseph listed his addresses as Leyton, Essex up to 1901 and Redhill, Surrey in 1911. William had seven siblings, Edward (b1884), Amy (b1884), Alfred (b 1895), Mildred (b1896), Louise (b1887), Nellie (b1889) and Joseph (b1892).
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We do not have much information about William. Perhaps his strong face, very similar to the face of my grandfather, could denote a similar strong personality to that of my grandfather.
After finishing school William became an auctioneer’s clerk, however the most significant aspect of his childhood was that he was brought up in the strict Plymouth Brethren religious sect. This had a profound effect on the children and later caused a rift in the family which was to endure for a long time. I will expand on this in a later article.
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William meets Lillian Hilda Woods
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William met Lillian (his future wife) at some time before 1911, when according to the 1911 Census we find him visiting her home at 15 Mill Street, Redhill, Surry. She was aged 17 and he was 20. Her father was James Frederick Woods aged 55, Bricklayer’s Labourer, and her mother was Mary Ann Woods aged 56, Laundress. Interestingly her brother Herbert aged 24 was a Corn Chandler’s Assistant.
William’s father Joseph lived in Ladbroke Road Redhill when William, an Auctioneer’s Clerk was visiting the Woods household. Presumably William, aged 20, lived with his parents in Ladbroke Road, a mile away.
Romantics might surmise that William was visiting Lillian (aged 17) at her parent’s house at her invitation in 1911, but it could be more likely that William and Lillian’s brother Herbert worked near each other in nearby Reigate and were friends.
William marries Lillian
William and Lillian, after duly considering matrimony for three years, were married in October 1914 at Reigate. In the previous photograph he is very smartly, and warmly, dressed. Perhaps he is wearing the clothes he wore at his wedding.
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[Within a year of Great Britain declaring war on Germany in August 1914, it had become obvious that it was not possible to continue fighting by relying on voluntary recruits.
Lord Kitchener’s campaign – promoted by his famous “Your Country Needs You” poster shown above – had encouraged over one million men to enlist by January 1915. But this was not enough to keep pace with mounting casualties.
This was the stage when William’s brothers Edward and Alfred migrated to Australia.
The British Government saw no alternative but to increase numbers by conscription – compulsory active service.
In January 1916 the Military Service Act was passed. This imposed conscription on all single men aged between 18 and 41, but exempted the medically unfit, clergymen, teachers and certain classes of industrial worker. Men who objected to fighting on moral grounds were also exempted, and were in most cases given civilian jobs or non-fighting roles at the front.
A second Act passed in May 1916 extended conscription to married men. It is possible that William enlisted at this stage.
William signs up
William enlisted with the 11th Battalion of the famous Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment, however the Regiment’s records were later destroyed by fire, so we can only surmise as to when William enlisted.
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The Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment
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Here is a photo of the cap emblem of the Regiment.
The Regiment, the first raised in England, was created in 1661 as The Earl of Peterborough’s Regiment of Foot specifically to garrison the new English acquisition of Tangier. It then had a number of name changes. Finally (for our purposes) in 1881 it became the county regiment of West Surrey, named The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey Regiment).
Prior to the First World War the regiment served with distinction in virtually all theatres of war involving England.
As evidence of its high status, it was classified as the second most senior regiment of the British Army, behind only the Royal Scots.
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Something that I had not realised until recently was that Ypres, in Belgium, was a very important location for the British and Australian troops in the First World War.
Ypres was one of the martyred cities of the First World War. In 1914 the German westerly advance was halted near Ypres, in the First Battle of Ypres. As shown in the above map, the trenches were situated from north to south in a big curve (forming what is known as a salient) around the town.
The Second Battle of Ypres (April – May 1915) saw the Germans moving closer to the city, commanding the high ground (including the Messines Ridge) where they could see everything that happened in the Salient.
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The trench lines remain comparatively static
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In the following two years the trench lines scarcely moved. In particular the Germans reinforced their lines with arrays of reinforced concrete pillboxes and concrete bunkers to resist attacks and provide “fallback” defences. To the left is a photo of a pillbox in the Passchendaele area.
Also behind both the Allied and German lines were vast networks of railways which shuttled men and thousands of tons of supplies to the forward lines.
Rather confusingly, the 1917 battles in the Ypres region (for instance the Battles of Messines, Menin Road, Polygon Wood where William’s brother Alfred was wounded, Broodseinde and Passchendaele) have been given the generic description of “Third Battle of Ypres”.
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The Messines Ridge, shown in pink on the attached map, provided a major vantage point for the Germans to observe the Allies’movements. For over a year the Allies tunnelled under it, setting up a series of mines containing 500 tonnes of ammonal. This was the centre of the largest man-made explosion in history, at 3-10 am on 7th June 1917. Generated by 19 mines synchronised to explode at the same time, it could be clearly heard in England, and people in London and southern England reported feeling the shock. It would no doubt have jolted William and his compatriots (stationed near Ypres) out of their beds. It would also have given William’s brother Alfred (who was coincidentally stationed nearby also), a huge shock.
It is interesting to surmise as to whether the brothers had a reunion in the Ypres area, however there were over 100,000 troops there so it is very unlikely.
William’s battalion goes into action
A month after the massive Messines explosion William took part in a fruitless feint (which included other Divisions as well) designed to put the enemy off guard about the proposed major “Third Ypres Offensive” which was planned to commence a month later. The Allies’ intention was that one of the Allies’ armies (including William’s battalion) would give the enemy the impression that the long range objective of the Allies was an attack starting from the southern part of the Salient about 8km south east of Ypres in a south easterly direction towards the major town of Lille, to disguise the fact that the actual objective of the Offensive would be to attack from the Salient further north. This did not mislead the Germans, as intended, the result being that William died needlessly.
The diaries for William’s Battalion show that the attack started to the east of St Elois (shown on the map) at midnight of 5th/6thJuly 1917 and proceeded south west past Eikhof Farm to a cutting named the Damm Strasse, where it dug trenches. They encountered enfilading machine gun fire (gun fire which ran down the trenchlines) on 7th June coming from nearby German concrete emplacements.
Meanwhile on the 7th supporting troops and tanks had leapfrogged past William’s Battalion, which had completed its objectives, and had taken over the attack.
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However there was obviously more action than specified in the diaries because by the end of the 7th July William’s Commanding Officer (Major Wardle) had been seriously wounded in the head and four other officers and 29 other ranks had been killed (a comparatively low figure), but five officers and 157 other ranks had been wounded. The original complement of the Battalion was 17 officers and 550 other ranks, so one third of the battalion were casualties.
The diary entries for subsequent days do not refer to any fighting or any additional list of casualties, indicating that the leapfrogging troops had taken up the brunt of the attack.
The Battalion was relieved on 12th June.
William is wounded and dies
Lance Corporals like William were expected to lead their platoons in attack and were accordingly very vulnerable. Unfortunately for William it is likely that he was wounded by gunfire when it was most prevalent on 6th or 7th June, and he later died on 10th June in a Field Hospital at Wimereux on the west coast of France. Initially he would have been evacuated quickly to a Casualty Clearing Station close behind the lines and when his wounds were assessed as being serious he would have been transferred to Wimereux where there were at least 14 military hospitals.
The Wimereux medical units used Wimereux Communal Cemetery for burials, the Cemetery containing 2,847 Commonwealth burials (including William) from the First World War.
William’s brothers Edward and Alfred, who had also been wounded, were fortunate because they survived, albeit with injuries they carried for the rest of their lives.
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William is joined by Aubrey Fitz-Patrick
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By coincidence William was joined later by South African Aubrey, a great uncle of reader Alan Fitzpatrick and a great grandson of Big Bill. Aubrey was severely wounded by gunshot wounds in the chest, face and right arm on the Somme and succumbed to his wounds on 31st March 1918 at Wimereux, and is buried in the same cemetery.
Interestingly, the gravestones in the cemetery have not fallen over, they have been laid flat because the soil is sandy and will not support upright gravestones.
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Poem “In Flanders Fields”
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Poem “In Flanders Fields”
The graves of William and Aubrey are not far from the famous grave of Lt Colonel John McCrae, the Canadian who composed “In Flanders Fields”, the poem most associated with the First World War. Perhaps this poignant poem is a fitting epitaph for William and Aubrey and their fallen comrades:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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We do not have much information about Lillian. It is probable that she remarried about six years later and died in 1966.
Rest in Peace William
The following excerpt from the Soldier’s Ode also seems apt: “They do not grow old as we grow old”.
It is over 100 years since William died defending his country, his only epitaph being a lonely gravestone at Wimereux. The people who mourned his passing are also merely memories themselves now. I hope this article does justice to his sacrifice, remembering also his 750,000 countrymen who did not return home to their families. Also, I trust that my grandfather Edward and Bruce’s grandmother Mildred would approve of the article.
Before you close this article have a last look at the photo at the beginning.
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