Smokey and Me
Ernest “Smokey” Smith was the last living Canadian to wear the Victoria Cross (VC). Sixteen Canadians won a VC during World War II. Smokey was the only private soldier. He went through war and life “raising hell.” Smokey did for good order and discipline what Don Cherry does for grammar and diction. He was promoted to corporal nine times and “busted” back to private nine times. It was fortuitous that he was awarded the Victoria Cross. He couldn’t win a good conduct medal if he lived to be 150.
Smokey was built like a fire-plug: short, stocky, barrel-chested, muscular, and powerful. He didn’t go looking for fights, but he never backed away from one. He didn’t look for trouble. Trouble looked for him. He was like Joe Bfstplk in the L’il Abner comic strip. Joe Bfstplk walked about with his own personal black rain cloud over his head.
Smokey got to Europe the hard way, as a Seaforth Highlander hitting a beach in Sicily. He was seriously wounded and not expected to live when fragments from a rifle grenade hit him. He recovered, fought his way up the boot of Italy, and survived Ortona and the Hitler Line battles. The night of October 21/22, 1944, he won his VC “raising hell” against a German mechanized unit.
Smokey and two Highlanders had been sent ahead across the Savio River to establish a beachhead. During a torrential rainstorm, the river level rose 1.8 metres in a few hours. They were cut off. They found themselves facing three Mk V Panther tanks, two self-propelled guns, and 30 German infantry soldiers. At point-blank range, 9 metres from his target, Smokey fired a PIAT (Projector, Infantry, Anti-Tank) rocket and took out a tank. He mowed down advancing German soldiers with a Tommy gun and then destroyed a second tank and both self-propelled guns, all the while shielding a badly wounded comrade. He fired every weapon he could lay his hands on. “I was firing PIATs from the hip,” he later recounted. Smokey told me the Germans thought they were up against at least a platoon. The surviving Germans retreated.
In December 1944, Smokey was told to pack his kit. He was going to Naples. Upon arriving in Naples he was locked in the guardhouse. He would not be allowed on the loose to sample the juices of local vineyards. He was also told he was going to receive the Victoria Cross from King George VI at Buckingham Palace. When he arrived in London, however, he was locked up again until shortly before the ceremony. There would be no English pub crawl.
After the war, the City of New Westminster established an annuity for him and he started up a travel agency. Retired Ottawa travel agent, Ray Sally, met Smokey in the 1960s. They were on a British Airways (BA), all expenses paid, 30-day familiarization junket to Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. Ray recalls that, before departure, BA hosted a farewell cocktail party in a Los Angeles hotel suite.
“I overheard one lady say to another: ‘I’m really looking forward to this trip now that that horrible Mr. Smith won’t be with us.’ I was curious, so I asked who Mr. Smith was and where he was. She told me he was passed out in one of the bedrooms of the suite. So, I woke him up, got him on the plane and we’ve been fast friends ever since.” The pair cut a wide swath on the “fam junket.”
“One night,” Sally further recalled, “BA hosted a dinner/dance and after dinner, the band struck up a conga tune. We all got out on the floor, and the next thing I heard was a lady saying to her husband ‘do you know what that horrible man just did?’ Smokey was in the conga line and maybe his hands slipped down a little from the lady’s waist. The next thing we knew we were on our asses outside. When the German manager of a night club attempted to curb his boisterous conduct, Smokey told him what he had done to 30 Germans in World War II: ‘You’d take me all of 10 seconds,’ he boasted.”
Smokey took delight in wearing the maroon VC ribbon. All ranks, from field marshal down, are required to salute the medal. If Smokey saw a pair of red collar tabs across a parade square, he’d walk hundreds of metres out of his way to intercept the officer. If the officer didn’t salute, Smokey would tap the ribbon with his finger until the officer got the message.
He brought a firestorm down on his head during a royal visit. Queen Elizabeth noticed his miniature VC and paused to speak. Afterwards, he was scrummed by media and asked if he was nervous when the Queen spoke to him.
“Naw,” Smokey replied. “When you’ve met one you’ve met them all.” It became the banner headline in the next day’s newspapers. West Coast monarchists went ape. Broadcaster Jack Webster pulled Smokey’s chestnuts out of the fire on his radio show: “You didn’t say that, did you, Smokey? You must have been misquoted.” Smokey agreed.
He was invited to attend a mess dinner and to sit at a head table with Lieutenant Colonel Cecil Merritt, another
VC recipient. Smokey said, “You have a portrait of Cece Merritt hanging over your bar. Put my picture up alongside his and I’ll come.”
“But, Smith, you’re only a private. This is an officers’ mess.”
“Makes no difference. If you don’t put my picture up I’m not coming.”
The picture went up.
In the early 1970s, Smokey and I linked up for three days in London where he was attending a VC reunion. I had met him through Ray Sally in Ottawa a week earlier when the three of us put a fair dent in a keg of cold draft at Sammy Koffman’s Belle Claire Hotel one Saturday afternoon. I was just off the plane from Canada and checking in at the Kingsley Hotel in Bloomsbury Way when the desk clerk said there was a call for me. It was Smokey. He was on his way over. For the next three days, we terrorized High Holborn, Piccadilly, and Mayfair. The man had the constitution of a canal horse and refused to accept there was such a medical condition as a hangover.
We came back to the Kingsley from a ceremony at St. Martin-in-the-fields Church one noon and repaired to the saloon bar. Smokey was wearing his miniatures. A well dressed Brit approached, excused himself for interrupting, and asked: “Is that the ‘effing’ Victoria Cross?” Smokey allowed that it “effing” well was and, from that moment on, we couldn’t buy another drink. The Dom Perignon flowed until closing time. I have no recollection of being put to bed. The next morning my stomach was returning drop kicks to my head and there was Smokey — tucking into a full-cooked English breakfast.
That evening I went to the Cafe Royale on Piccadilly to help Smokey make an early getaway from a stuffy dinner. Princess Anne was at the head table and Smokey was sitting next to her. Before I could tell him I had a (phony) “urgent message” for him, he turned to the Princess Royal and asked: “Your Highness, have you met Pat MacAdam from Glace Bay?” The Princess looked as if she had been struck between the eyes with an axe handle. She hadn’t the foggiest idea who I was and I am sure she didn’t know what a Glace Bay was.
Smokey left with me and off we went into the night looking for new territories to conquer. Somewhere along the route we linked up with an off duty bobby, a Soho publican, and a retired British Army major whose service in India was guarding a maharajah’s tigers. I was awakened next morning by pounding. I hoped it wasn’t my head. It was my hotel room door. There, booted and spurred in full uniform, was our bobby friend. He was carrying a couple of cold cans of best bitter. There is a Santa Claus.
Smokey never entered a bar; he stormed it. But he was a warm human being, always entertaining and always fun to be with. There was never a dull moment travelling with Smokey Smith.