#429642 Lance Corporal Ewart Gladstone Smith
7TH CANADIAN INFANTRY
TAKING PART IN THE BATTLE for Thiepval near the Northumberland Fusiliers was Gough’s Canadian contingent. On 26th September the 5th and 8th Battalions of the Canadian Infantry assaulted in a comparatively small advance on a set of German trenches to the north-west of Courcelette, which had been captured by the Canadians on 15th September. They were almost completely successful. The fact that the crest of the ridge was now almost within reach was considered an adequate day’s work. The Canadian commander, an English Old Etonian called General Byng, was of the opinion that he had plenty of troops available to push on. Still under the fog of war after the opening day of the battle, at 8:45pm Gough’s Reserve Army HQ announced by telegram that all objectives given for the 26th and not yet achieved stood for the following day.
With the 7th Canadian Infantry, a British Columbian outfit, was a Brit by the name of Ewart Gladstone Smith, named after a four-time Liberal prime minister. Ewart’s father was a well-travelled minister and had relocated his family to the United States, where Ewart was born in Ingham County, Michigan, in 1892. Raised in Northampton and East London, at the outbreak of war he was working as a shipping clerk in British Columbia, having emigrated with his brother just before the start of the war. Ewart already belonged to the militia and he volunteered for overseas service in November 1914, arriving back in Europe in June the following year.
Byng was not sure where his forward troops were as 27th September dawned. A heavy bombardment had come down on the Canadian front all night, on both Courcelette and the front line, and continued throughout the morning. In the early hours Ewart’s battalion sent out patrols and pushed forward, encountering neither British nor German troops. However, by the time they returned to occupy the position in force, the enemy had got there first. The Canadians attacked the Germans and drove them both west and north towards Stuff Redoubt. The enemy was not about to give up though. At about noon the Germans returned and a scrap began, lasting until the Canadians put up a trench barricade. All ground was eventually regained, but machine-gun fire from Stuff Redoubt swept the Canadian trenches all day long as the men attempted to consolidate and evacuate the wounded. Ewart was resting in a trench having spent the night out on listening post duty when he was killed by a shell. In a five-day stint in the trenches the battalion had lost five officers and more than 200 men. Twenty-three-year-old Ewart Smith lay on the battlefield until March 1923, when his body was recovered and identified by the style of his uniform and his identity disc. He was laid to rest at Delville Wood Cemetery, plot II.R.6.
View from the Canadian front line at Courcelette. (Authors’ collection)