Major Harold Smithers
170TH SIEGE BATTERY, ROYAL GARRISON ARTILLERY
BORN IN BROOKLYN, NY, THE eldest son of a wealthy accountant and educated at Weymouth College, 35-year-old Harold Smithers had been gazetted as a second lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery in May 1902. He had served in Burma, India and Aden before the war, until finally being attached to a depot in Plymouth. Here he settled with a wife and daughter, to whom he wrote letters from the front sending, ‘all my love and kisses to you and mummy, my two precious ones’. From there, Harold was destined to serve with the British Expeditionary Force from October 1914, when he was sent to Antwerp as part of the failed attempt to relieve the Belgian Capital. Returning to England in August 1915, with his wealth of experience, Harold was employed to train new recruits as the ranks of the artillery swelled. A further spell in France followed, before he returned home in August 1916 to take command of his own battery. His unit, the 170th Siege Battery, was ready to proceed to the Western Front the following month and by the end of October was situated at the northern end of the battlefield on the Somme. From there he wrote home to his daughter, Daphne, who was now 2, ‘I hope you are being a good little girl and are taking care of mummy whilst daddy is away. It will be very nice when we can be together again.’
Major Harold Smithers. (Private collection)
Targets for 170th Siege Battery as November approached revolved around the Redan Ridge between Serre and Beaumont Hamel. The wire in front of the enemy’s main trenches up on the high ground received 126 rounds from Harold’s men on one day, 133 on another. These targets became familiar to them, as in heavy rain the battery continued to bludgeon barbed wire to pave the way for the infantry. They even tried a new type of shell, although one of Harold’s officers reported that when they went forward to evaluate its performance, ‘the bursts did not appear at all extraordinary’.
The German response to Harold’s battery’s shelling had been desultory. As November dawned, their heavy artillery battered enemy trenches and wire entanglements. On the 4th, Harold left their gun positions with an orderly and went up towards Fricourt to observe their fire in the distance. At 3:15pm both were killed as they watched their own shells fall on the enemy. ‘He was always most gallant,’ wrote a general who knew Harold well. He recalled an incident from early in the war when they were in a field being shelled by some German heavy artillery. ‘He heard there was an old man in a farm close to where many of the shells were falling. He at once ran up alone and got the old man out and into a dugout.’ His subordinate in the battery penned a letter to Harold’s family. ‘The Major had only been with us a short time, but he had endeared himself to us all in a way it is given unto few men to achieve. Kindly, just, and always cheery, he made an ideal commanding officer.’ Harold left behind his wife Nora and his little girl. On her 80th birthday in 1994, Daphne was at her father’s graveside in France. Harold Smithers was laid to rest at Bertrancourt Military Cemetery, plot I.J.8. His orderly, 32-year-old William Tasker, was buried alongside him.
Harold Smithers on the beach at Plymouth with his daughter Daphne. (Private collection)