John Robert ("Bob" in his family) Somers-Smith, BA, MC

• Matriculated: 1906

• Born: 15 February 1887

• Died: 1 July 1916

• Regiment: London Regiment (London Rifle Brigade)

• Grave/Memorial: Thiepval Memorial: Pier and Face 9D

Family background

b. 15 February 1887 as the fifth child and younger son of Robert Vernon Somers-Smith, JP (1848–1934), and Mary Gertrude Wellington Somers-Smith (née Radcliffe) (1849–1935) (m. 1875). At the time of the 1881 Census the family (plus four servants) was living at St Michael’s Lodge, Rydens Road, Bentley, Essex; by the time of the 1891 Census it had moved to “Bur Lea”, West Carrs Lane, Hersham, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey (five servants); and at the time of the 1901 and 1911 Censuses it was at the same address with three and five servants respectively.

 

Parents and antecedents

Somers-Smith’s paternal grandfather, Henry Richard Somers(-)Smith (1795–1871) went to Eton College (c.1809–1813), where, like Somers-Smith’s father after him, he was a noted oarsman and athlete. From 1814 to 1818 he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, took his BA in 1818, and was ordained Deacon in 1819 and priest in 1820 in the Diocese of Durham. In 1824 he became the Rector of Little Bentley, near Colchester, Essex, a cure of 458 souls with a stipend of £750 p.a. and a house, where he remained until his death. In 1851, by which time he was a member of the Bench of the Mistley Hundred, he was made the Rural Dean of Ardleigh. At a meeting of the Mistley Bench soon after his death, a fellow magistrate (who was also a clergyman) called him a “much-valued colleague” and said:

I feel that I should relinquish a great privilege, if I did not at the earliest moment within my power publicly express my sincere sorrow at his lamented death, and invite your sympathies in the same direction. When 40 years ago I received the hono[u]r of an introduction into the commission of the peace for this county, I found Mr. Smith acting in this division as an intelligent, zealous, and energetic magistrate. At that time agriculture was in a very depressed condition, and the labo[u]ring poor were suffering greatly from that depression. The new Poor Law was not then enacted, and I believe was scarcely dreamed of. The overseers had then the management, control, and relief of the poor entirely in their hands, and upon all occasions of difficulty, and even of doubt, resorted to the magistrates for their advice and assistance. For these purposes, as well as for the usual other ones, the magistrates assembled every Monday, and these sittings were frequently protracted until a very late hour, as I have known the clock to strike seven before the last applicant for hearing left the court. To the discharge of these duties Mr. Smith brought great discernment, judgment, and compassion, and won for himself the approbation of all who had occasion to require the intervention of the magistrates. Upon the establishment of the Poor Law Unions, the duties of the bench became almost purely legal, of which Mr. Smith showed himself a ready master. Though lately he has not taken part in our proceedings, yet I know we had his encouragement, and had any grave emergency arisen, we should have enjoyed his presence and benefited by his counsel. I am sure that the old inhabitants of the hundred lament his death, and the young ones hope that his successors in these chairs will tread in his footsteps.

Somers-Smith’s father matriculated at Merton College, Oxford, in 1867, where he graduated with a 2^nd in Law and Modern History. His sporting prowess had been famous at Eton and continued at Oxford: he won many distinctions on the track, ran for Oxford against Cambridge in 1868 and 1869, became President of Oxford University Athletic Club and was twice the Amateur Athletic Association half-mile champion. After graduating, he was articled to Messrs Radcliffe, Cator and Hood, and admitted as a solicitor in 1875, the year in which he married the daughter of one of the firm’s partners. He then moved to the Board of Trade and became its Chief Law Clerk. In 1886 he became Clerk to the Grocers’ Company, a post that he held until 1921. In 1892 he was elected to Surrey County Council and served on it for 42 years, 14 as an Alderman. In 1927 he became Chairman of the Kingston Bench and the first Chairman of Walton-on-Thames Urban District Council when it was set up in 1895. He was, successively, the Chairman, Patron and President of the Chertsey Unionist Association.

Somers-Smith’s mother was the oldest of the ten children who were born to John Alexander Radcliffe (1823–91) and Fanny Johnson Radcliffe (née Younge) (1829–1902) (m. 1848). Her father was a well-known and successful London solicitor, who specialized in legal matters relating to railways, which were springing up all over Europe, and both he and his wife were the children of clergymen.

 

Siblings and their families

Brother of:

(1) Helen Frances (1878–1961); later Spens after her marriage in 1910 to Colin Francis Spens (1879–1950), merchant, the son of a Writer to the Signet (solicitor); one son, Richard Vernon (1911–96);

(2) Margaret Teresa (1879–1970); later Forrester after her marriage in 1913 to Hubert Edward Forrester (1876–1965), schoolmaster;

(3) Gladys Evelyn (b. 1881, probably died in infancy);

(4) Richard Wellington (“Tom” in his family) (see below); sometimes given, erroneously, as Willingdon or William (1883–1915).

 

 

At Eton, Richard Wellington was, like his father and grandfather before him, a noted athlete and oarsman: here, “after being second in Lower boy Pulling he went up through Lower boats, being second in the Junior Pulling. This assisted him into Upper Boats, after which he won the School Pairs in 1901.” But it was not until the following year that he gained his place in the Eight as bow and rowed in the Eton VIII at the Henley Regatta. After leaving school in 1902, he attended a crammer and in the following year he was given a place at Merton College, Oxford, “to the surprise alike of College authorities, friends and acquaintances”, as he was not a born student and had failed Responsions twice. So after failing Moderations as well, he was sent down in 1906 without taking a degree. While at Merton, he was a member of the Myrmidons, Merton’s student dining society, and a very exclusive club called the Non-Satis Club whose members were drawn exclusively from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Marlborough and Haileybury. He was best remembered for his sporting prowess and his obituarist in the Oxford Magazine described him as having “that combination of strength, agility, and pluck which makes a great athlete, and [he] soon made his mark in the games of the University”. Another obituarist gives the following account of his achievements:

During his first year [1903–04] he won the freshmen’s mile, rowed in the “Trials”, stroked his [College] torpid up five places, stepped straight from the torpid into the Varsity Eight [1904; it lost that year], where he rowed two, stroked his college eight, and won the University pairs with Graham, of Balliol. The next year [1904–05], he stroked his college into the final of the coxwainless fours, coached the torpid up three, rowed bow in the winning University crew [against Cambridge in March 1905, as a result of which he was listed by Isis, the Oxford student newspaper, as an “Isis Idol” (cf. J.L. Johnston)], rowed seven to Bucknall’s stroke in the college eight, reached the final of the University pairs with Brocklebank, and only lost to a heavier pair by re-rowing after a dead heat with only a short rest, and, as captain, rowed in four events at Henley for his college, besides sweeping the board at the College sports. […] As a man his modesty and personal magnetism won the devotions of his friends, while his pluck was such as to earn for him the description by a famous coach: “The most lion-hearted man that ever sat in a boat!”

He was well-known on the track, too, “the Mile and Half-Mile having fallen to him at Eton, which he followed up by adding the Two, One, and Half Miles in the Freshmen’s Sports of 1903, thus following in the footsteps of his father […], once Amateur Half-Mile Champion”. After leaving Oxford, Richard Wellington seems to have gone to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), probably to work as a tea planter, but when war broke out, he returned to Britain to serve in the Army and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the 7^th Battalion, the King’s Royal Rifle Corps (see B. Pawle, H.N.L. Renton and J.J.B. Jones-Parry). He was killed in action at Hooge on 30 June 1915, aged 31, “while running forward in front of the trench to bring back some men from an exposed position” and is buried in the Bedford House Cemetery, south of Ypres, in Enclosure No. 2 [B], Grave VI.A.27.

 

 

Wife and son

Somers-Smith married Marjorie Duncan (1891–1968) in 1914. She was the only daughter of Oliver Gold Duncan (1863–1906), a London dental surgeon; his best man was C.A. Gold. Marjorie later became Darby after her marriage (1932) to George Aubrey Darby (1890–1977). Somers-Smith and Marjorie lived first of all at “The Barn”, Walton-on-the Hill, Epsom, Surrey, but in Spring 1919 she moved to “The Lodes”, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.

They had one son, Henry Cecil Wellington Somers-Smith (1915–99). He was born at “The Old Cottage”, Hersham, Walton, Surrey, and Gold was his godfather. Henry Cecil married first (1939) Christine Lynette Warren (1911–2003), and then (1955) Lilian Annie Smith (1915–1980).

 

Education and professional life

From c.1894 to 1901 Somers-Smith attended Fonthill Lodge Preparatory School, East Grinstead, Surrey (founded 1808, closed 2011; also known as Mr Radcliffe’s Preparatory School during the last quarter of the nineteenth century because of its proprietor Walter William Radcliffe (1847–1923)) (cf. A.H. Huth, R.H.P. Howard). From 1901 to 1906 Somers-Smith attended Eton College, where he distinguished himself as the Captain of Boats in 1906 and the stroke of the College’s First VIII that “won the School pulling in that year with the late E.G. Williams” (the Olympic oarsman (1908) Edward Gordon Williams, killed in action near Béthune on 12 August 1915, aged 27, serving as a Lieutenant with the 2^nd Battalion, the Grenadier Guards). Somers-Smith’s Eton obituarist describes him as “a strong, sensible boy” who

did his work in a sound and cheerful style, was always good-humoured and modest, and showed as an athlete the keenness and determination which distinguished him in greater struggles afterwards. His inherited capacity for running brought him in twice second and once third for the Steeplechase and third for the Mile.

From 7 May 1905 to 18 October 1906 he served in the Eton College Rifle Volunteers.

 

 

Somers-Smith matriculated at Magdalen as a Commoner on 16 October 1906, having passed Responsions in September 1906, and then took the First Public Examination in the Hilary and Trinity Terms of 1907. He was awarded a 3^rd in Modern History in Trinity Term 1909 and took his BA on 6 November 1909, together with Robert Collier Cudmore (see M.M. Cudmore, A.G. Kirby and his “great friend” Gold, the nephew of the distinguished oarsman Harcourt Gilbey Gold (1876–1952) – see G.S. Maclagan). Somers-Smith was one of a small group of contemporaries at Magdalen whose extraordinary achievements in international rowing and contribution to Magdalen’s “First Golden Era” on the river brought them fame and a wonderful sense of comradeship within their sporting and social circle that would be their principal achievement before joining the Army. In 1906, when Somers-Smith matriculated, Magdalen’s new intake of Freshmen was particularly strong, so it was decided to create a precedent by entering a second IV in the Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC) Fours Challenge Cup. Slight of build, being 5 foot 9½ inches tall and weighing 10 stone 10 pounds, Somers-Smith stroked for this IV while R.P. Stanhope steered, and the Magdalen IV won the cup. He was thus the contemporary of four men of the First IV, L.R.A. Gatehouse, J.L. Johnston his substitute, A.G. Kirby and E.H.L. Southwell, all of whom would be killed in action. The Captain of Boats subsequently noted: “[Somers-Smith] stroked the crew very well indeed, especially in the races. A first rate ‘starter’. Works hard and an ex-waterman of the best Etonian type.”

Then, after rowing in the 1907 Torpid that came Second on the River, Somers-Smith, together with Stanhope, Duncan Mackinnon, Kirby and Southwell, rowed in the Eights in Magdalen’s Second VIII that would lose five of its nine men killed in action, and with Kirby and Southwell in two of the four Magdalen IVs that would each lose three men killed in action. In 1907 at Henley the Magdalen College Boat Club won all three of the four-oar races: Somers-Smith and his exact contemporary Duncan Mackinnon were in the Second IV that won the Wyfold Challenge Cup (open to any international club crew), and then the Visitors’ Challenge Cup (open to all student crews), while the First IV, which included Stanhope, Southwell and Kirby, won the Steward’s Cup (open to all comers). In 1907–08, Magdalen’s First IV began by winning the OUBC races, with Somers-Smith at bow and steering, Kirby at 3, and Southwell as stroke. In the Trial VIIIs in December 1907, Mackinnon was in the winning VIII and Somers-Smith in the losing VIII, and in 1908 Somers-Smith was spare man for the OUBC VIII – so, as Alexandra Churchill puts it, he “had the misfortune to be the spare man for the Oxford VIII in the Boat Race twice”. In summer 1908, Magdalen was able to enter only one IV at Henley, but with two very experienced men behind them (Collier Robert Cudmore and James Angus Gillan, both of whom would survive the war), Mackinnon, with Somers-Smith as stroke, won the Stewards’ Cup and then the Visitors’ Cup in record time. As a result, the Magdalen IV, together with a Leander Club IV, was chosen to represent Britain in the Olympic races that took place that summer at Henley, over the specially extended course. In the Final, the Magdalen IV beat Leander to win an Olympic gold.

The academic year 1908-09 began with Mackinnon and Somers-Smith winning the OUBC Fours, and for the Eights in 1909, Somers-Smith stroked a crew which again included Mackinnon and Kirby and stayed Second on the River. For the Henley Regatta, Somers-Smith, Mackinnon, Kirby and Stanhope were in the Grand crew, but Kirby sprained his knee badly while training and had to participate in the race with his leg bandaged, whilst Stanhope, the stroke, strained his stomach and had to row in the race with his body strapped up. So neither was able to do his full share of work and, unsurprisingly, the Magdalen VIII were beaten in the Grand and the Stewards’. Somers-Smith’s great contribution to Magdalen rowing consisted in winning the OUBC Fours three times, plus four international races at Henley and an Olympic gold medal: it was said of his stroking that during the seven races in which he participated, he did not once look behind him to steer.

After graduating, Somers-Smith passed the Law Society’s Intermediate Examination in April 1911 and its Final Examination in 1913, and became a solicitor. On 20 July 1916, after his son’s death in action, Robert Vernon Somers-Smith wrote a long letter to President Warren, from whom he had received a letter of condolence:

You knew Bob so well & could gauge so completely his position & influence in the College that your generous appreciation is exceedingly pleasant to me. No father, at least no father who loved his boys as I did, could be a free judge of their merits, but Bob[’]s steadfastness & courage appealed to me strongly, & soldiering brought out all that was best in his character. After his brothe[r]’s death, (& even before, for poor Tom would have lived mainly abroad [i.e. in Ceylon as a tea planter]), I counted on Bob to be the mainstay of the family & I am confident that he would have amply fulfilled my best hopes. But it was not to be: perhaps it is well as it is: he had to the best of my belief a happy life; he might have lived to meet grief and disappointment. We are left desolate, but his boy is with us & a great joy to us. It is our dearest desire that he may follow in his father’s footsteps at school & college […]. Your letter to me is one of those which will be carefully kept for him to read in after years, & learn what manner of man his father was.

 

 

Military and war service

Given his previous military experience as a cadet and the time when he was at Magdalen, Somers-Smith probably served in both the Oxford University Rifle Volunteer Corps and the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps. But his rowing activities seem to have eclipsed them in importance. Nevertheless, as President Warren put it, “like so many Magdalen men” (cf. G.H. Morrison, H.L. Cholmeley, and Kirby) Somers-Smith was encouraged by another distinguished Magdalen rower, his old coach and mentor the Hon. Major Charles Desborough (“Don”) Burnell (later DSO, OBE; 1876–1969), to join the 5^th (City of London) Battalion (Territorial Force), the London Regiment (The London Rifle Brigade). Burnell had gained a rugby blue and four rowing blues while at Oxford (1895–98), won the Grand Challenge Cup (1898–1901) and the Stewards’ Cup at Henley (1899–1900), and rowed in the Olympic Regatta in 1908 together with Edward Gordon Williams (see above). He had also served in the London Rifle Brigade (LRB) from 1892 to 1912 and rejoined it in 1914. He was severely wounded on 2 May 1915 but became the Battalion’s Commanding Officer from 22 April to 20 May 1917 and from 10 May 1918 to the end of the war; and he was one of the Battalion’s three original officers in 1914 to survive the war.

 

 

Somers-Smith was gazetted Second Lieutenant on 16 March 1909, i.e. while he was still an undergraduate at Magdalen, and promoted Lieutenant on 22 March 1910 and Captain on 9 June 1914. The LRB was mobilized on 4 August 1914 and assembled at its HQ at 130, Bunhill Row, London EC1, as part of the 2^nd London Brigade, in the 1^st London (Territorial) Division. On 15 August the Battalion volunteered for service abroad and then trained until 3 November at Bisley (Surrey), East Grinstead (Sussex), and Camp Hill (near Crowborough, Sussex), where, despite tents and poor food, everyone became very fit thanks to the digging and marching. It embarked at Southampton on the following day, arrived at Le Havre on 5 November 1914, and spent a frosty night in the open. Travelling towards Ypres via St-Omer, Hazebrouck and Bailleul, the Battalion arrived at Romarin in a snow-storm on 19 November, three days before the end of the First Battle of Ypres, having been reassigned to 11^th Brigade, 4^th Division, part of III Corps, two days previously.

 

 

By 22 November the Battalion was in the Ploegsteert area, at the southern end of the Ypres Salient, where the trenches followed the eastern edge of Ploegsteert Wood to the east of Ploegsteert village. Conditions in the trenches were very bad, for they generally contained two foot of icy water so that it took three men to fill a sand-bag: one to hold it open, one to shovel and one to scrape the mud off the shovel. On 7 December 1914 the Battalion was assigned its own section of the line at Le Gheer, to the east of Ploegsteert Wood and just to the west of the Franco-Belgian border, and three days later Kirby was badly wounded by a sniper’s bullet and sent back to England. The first Christmas in the trenches seems to have been more tolerable than later ones would be, especially for men who came, like most of the soldiers in the LRB, from reasonably well-off or very well-off backgrounds, and the Battalion history describes it as follows:

The Christmas mail of the battalion was enormous, almost as large as that of all the rest of the division. People at home were most kind in sending out not only food, but comforters, socks and other things likely to be of use, to such a generous extent that large gifts, which were much appreciated, were able to be made to the regular regiments who were not so well looked after.

Much has been written about the Christmas truce in 1914. Here we reproduce a letter from Somers-Smith to his wife which was first published in the Surrey Advertiser, and which gives a first-hand account of the event in his part of the line:

 

The Christmas Truce in the Trenches.

Capt. J.R. Somers-Smith’s Graphic Letter.

London Captured by the Germans

I have been hard at it lately, and since my last letter things have changed considerably. We have a new system, by which one company of the L.R.B. is attached to a regular regiment. My company was attached to the Hampshires, and we were sent straight up to the reserve trench on Christmas Eve. It was a glorious night, a hard frost, a bright moon – typical Christmas weather. I was told off about 1 a.m. to go to see to the fortifying of a house about 50 yards behind the front trench. In an ordinary way this is a touchy job on a bright night, you are bound to make a noise, knocking down walls, and piling up parapets, etc., and when the enemy notices it he probably turns on a machine gun. Anyway, I took a platoon out as quickly as possible, and started work. I heard the Germans singing and shouting remarks to our chaps, who were replying in a friendly spirit. Eventually, about 2 a.m. some sort of music started in the German trenches, and the whole lot started singing. They sang “Deutschland uber [sic] alles.” “Der [sic] Wacht an [sic] Rhein,” and several others of their national songs, and the effect in the midnight air was extraordinarily beautiful.

            They sing magnificently, and in the deep silence of the frosty night it sounded quite enchanting. We all stopped work and listened, and when they had finished we all cheered and shouted encore, and then they sang “home sweet home,” in English, so beautifully, that it positively made me cry. Then they raised up some coloured lights on poles from the trenches and sang Christmas hymns. Our men were, of course, not shooting at them, and they even joined in the singing. The Germans eventually lit a bonfire behind their trench, and danced round it. Meanwhile, my men and I had stopped working, and walked right up to the back of our trench to listen. I don’t think I have spent a pleasanter evening since I have been out here. Eventually they quieted down, and we all went back to sleep. About 10 o’clock next morning I had occasion to go up to the front trench on duty. In the ordinary way, you have to creep up along a communication trench, and slip along behind some houses, and take your chance of being sniped. I started off in the usual way, and was astonished soon after starting to see a “regular” quietly strolling down the road, with his rifle slung over his shoulder, in full view of the German trenches. I shouted to him “What’s up?” and he replied, “Its all right, sir, all friends this morning.” I got out on to the road, and on coming in view of the trenches, saw a whole crowd of English and German soldiers quietly chatting to one another, half way between the trenches. I walked up and inquired what on earth was happening, and if “peace had been declared,” and I was informed that, in the early hours of the morning the Germans had called and beckoned to our men, and suggested a Christmas Day truce. Of course our men were quite willing to fall in with it, so we both “downed arms” and met half way between the trenches. I went over and talked to them, most of them seemed to be able to talk English. They were a Saxon regiment from Leipzig. I had some conversation with one of the subalterns, who said he did not want to fight, but that Germany was now fighting for her life against the whole of Europe, and they had to stand by one another. He also said that he was of the same race as I was, and bore no animosity against the English individually, but was angry with them for (as he said) causing the war.

            We spent the morning burying the dead, killed in the battle of the 19^th, as we had not previously been able to do. Some of them were nasty sights, I can tell you, and for the first time I saw what a human body looks like when it is half blown away. I felt quite sick for some time after it, but it is good for us to try to get used to it, as we shall no doubt see plenty more. But if some of the glib talkers could have come and looked at that field strewn with corpses they would talk less airily about wars. I tell you it made me feel what an awful crime against humanity war is.

            Well after burying the dead, and holding a funeral service, we returned to our trenches but that did not end the truce. Oh, dear no! Our men and the Germans walked about and chatted together, and exchanged “fags” and “drinks,” and at night we sang to one another again. We had a carol party led by F––. Next morning (Boxing Day) it was our turn to go to the front trench. The Germans were still quite friendly, and the officer informed us “that THEY did not intend to begin again until WE did: WE had started the war, and now it was up to us to start it again.” Of course we raised no objections, so we spent the day strolling about in the open, putting up fresh barbed wire in front of our trench, and generally improving it, and they did the same about 50 yards away. It was really too comical for words. We chatted with one another, and the conclusion I came to was that these Saxons were more sick of it even than we are, and will surrender if vigorously attacked. Its only the officers that keep them up to it: they have been afraid to surrender before because they have been so stuffed with such extraordinary tales, and honestly believed that the English shot all their prisoners.

            One of them asked in earnest, “How many Germans it took to take London!” He actually thought it was captured. They also thought that they were only 20 miles from Paris! Poor chaps! I felt quite sorry for them. Well Boxing Day and night passed in sweet friendship, and that night we were relieved, and went back to sleep in a village, and have a day’s rest. I had just got into my valise, and was comfortably asleep, when I was suddenly sent for by the Commanding Officer, and told to report to the Somerset Light Infantry. It appeared that this regiment had lost seven officers on the 19^th, and had asked the C.O. to lend them a few for a bit to carry on with. So Thompson and I were sent as captains and three subalterns were also sent……. The truce has more or less ended now, although there is much less sniping. I am still in the best of health and spirits in spite of the rain, which has started again. I got many Christmas presents, and everybody’s parcels arrived safely. Please thank all so much for them.

On 27 December, he, Lieutenant Guy Hargreaves Cholmeley (the younger brother of Henry Lewin Cholmeley), and three other LRB officers were lent to the 1^st (Regular) Battalion, the Somerset Light Infantry, because of the shortage of officers. Here, Somers-Smith assumed command of ‘A’ Company and Cholmeley was assigned to ‘C’ Company. But as no LRB war diaries exist for January–May 1915 and the War Diary of the Somerset Light Infantry is silent on the matter, we do not know when the five officers returned to the LRB. But on balance, it does not seem likely that their temporary transfer was an unofficial, albeit indirect, reprimand since, judging from their War Diary, the 1^st Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry had enthusiastically taken part in the Christmas truce.

Despite the lack of war diaries, we know that the LRB stayed in the area of the front near Le Gheer until 17/18 April, i.e. two days before the start of the Second Battle of Ypres (20 April 1915). It rested at Steenwerck, between Bailleul and Armentières in northern France, until 23 April and then, over the next three days, moved northwards for six miles or so to the area near Wieltje, Belgium, which it reached on 26 April. By the time the Battalion was forced to withdraw on 4 May, it had lost 408 men killed, wounded and missing. Somers-Smith survived the fighting and when, on 11 May, the Battalion found itself in a position north-east of Ypres just to the south of the Wieltje–Sint Juliaan road and to the west of the Ypres Canal, he was in command of 2 Company. Over the next two days the Battalion was heavily shelled and by late afternoon on 13 May Somers-Smith found himself the second-in-command of a Battalion that had been reduced to 20 officers and 218 other ranks. But that was also the day that Lance-Sergeant Douglas Walter Belcher (1889–1953) won the VC when, with a small party of men, he held an advanced position in the line after most of the rest of the Battalion had been withdrawn, and prevented a German advance by dint of rapid rifle fire. The Battalion moved back from the front on 16/17 May and was withdrawn from the Division after losing 540 men killed, wounded and missing since 24 April. By 19 May it was in the village of Tatinghem, just to the south-west of St-Omer, and was then withdrawn to St-Omer itself on 1 June 1915 where, together with survivors of the 12^th (Service) London Battalion (Rangers) and the 13^th (Service) London Battalion (Kensington Rifles), it formed a composite battalion until 11 August.

Somers-Smith, who was mentioned in dispatches in 1915 (London Gazette, no. 29,422, 1 January 1916, p. 57), contracted measles on 23 May 1915 and was invalided back to England on 21 June 1915. He remained there on home service until 9 September 1915 after a medical board had decided that he was suffering from “Nervous Disability”, marked by neurasthenia and insomnia. He spent this period of time, during which his brother Richard was killed in action at Hooge on 30 June 1915, training officers with the LRB’s 3^rd Battalion at Padworth, Berkshire. Somers-Smith returned to France on 1 November 1915, rejoined the re-formed 1^st Battalion of the LRB at Ryfeld, and in quick succession took over and helped train ‘A’, ‘D’ and ‘B’ Companies until 23 November, when the Battalion moved back to Poperinghe, a few miles west of Ypres. On 14 January 1916 Somers-Smith was awarded the MC (London Gazette, no. 29,438, 14 January 1916, p. 580) for his part in the Second Battle of Ypres, and until 8 February 1916 the Battalion spent three extended but uneventful periods in the trenches at Voormezeele, to the south of Ypres, with rest periods in Dickebusch, to the south-west of Ypres, and Reninghelst, to the south-east of Poperinghe, before being transported by train southwards to Pont-Remy, on the Somme about three miles south-east of Abbeville, where, on 10 February, it joined the 169^th Infantry Brigade, part of the 56^th (London) Division (Territorial Force) (see D.W.L. Jones). Martin Middlebrook would subsequently describe the 56^th Division as “probably the best Territorial division in France at that time”.

For the next four-and-half months Somers-Smith’s Battalion underwent a gruelling scheme of route-marching and training in preparation for the impending offensive. On 15 February it marched seven miles south-westwards from Pont-Remy to the village of Huppy, where it trained until 26 February; from 27 February until 12 March it trained at Ergnies, a tiny village c.13 miles to the north-east; from 13 to 17 March it was at Gézaincourt, a mile or so south-west of Doullens; it then marched eight miles northwards up the D916 to the village of Sibiviller, near the town of Frévent, where it stayed from 17 to 21 March; and from 21 March until 7 May it trained at Magnicourt-sur-Canche, about seven miles east-north-east of Frévent. From here, on 7 May it marched back southwards, this time to the village of Halloy, four miles east of Doullens, where it stayed until 21 May; and it then marched c.14 miles east-south-east to spend 21 to 28 May in the trenches at Hébuterne, just north of Beaumont Hamel, on which Jones’s Battalion also worked from 17 to 23 May. On 25 May, Somers-Smith commanded a covering party of about 110 men who positioned themselves 300–400 yards in front of the British trenches while the Royal Engineers marked out the line of the new trenches with string: these, together with a communication trench, were lightly held on the following day by Jones’s Battalion and the 1/7^th Battalion (Territorial Force) of the Middlesex Regiment. From 28 May to 3 June Somers-Smith’s Battalion rested at Bayencourt, about three miles to the west, and from 4 until 13 June it was back at Halloy, where it practised the attack using a new system of trenches. From 13 to 15 June it was at Bayencourt once again, digging trenches in very wet weather, and from 15 to 21 June it was at Hébuterne, digging new lines and assembly positions. On 22 June it practised attacks at St Amand, seven or so miles east of Halloy, where it stayed from 23 to 27 June. Finally, between 27 and 30 June, it marched back to Hébuterne via Souastre and took up positions in Y Sector of the front.

The Battle of the Somme had originally been scheduled to start on 28 June but was delayed because of bad weather until 1 July 1916, when the British attacked on a 25-mile front from Gommecourt in the north to Fay in the south. The village of Gommecourt, with its park, part of the grounds of a château, just to the west, was part of a salient that jutted out into the British line and formed the most westerly point of the entire German front line. The attack by VII Corps on the Gommecourt salient, with the 46^th (Midland) Division as the northern pincer and the 56^th Division as the southern pincer, was meant to straighten out this bulge and also to serve as a diversionary attack to distract the Germans while the main attack was launched further to the south. Consequently, as part of the larger deception, some of the preparations for the assault were made as openly as possible. To the south of Gommecourt, the attack went well: it began under cover of smoke at 07.16 hours; the first waves moved forward in silence at 07.37 hours; all objectives were reached by 07.50 hours; and by 09.00 hours the 56^th Division had taken nearly all the German trenches that were their objectives. But throughout the day until the evening, the Germans counter-attacked with artillery and grenades to such good effect that after 09.00 hours no British reinforcements could get through with much-needed supplies of grenades. So at 21.30 hours the survivors were forced to withdraw, taking heavy casualties as they did so.

Somers-Smith’s Battalion, together with the 9^th London Battalion (Queen Victoria’s Rifles) and the 16^th London Battalion (Westminster Rifles), was initially in support of the main attack by 168^th Brigade, and at 07.57 hours his platoon, part of the sixth wave, attacked north-north-eastwards over 350 yards of open ground through Gommecourt Park, with orders to capture the junction between the two German trenches on the Park’s southern edge that were code-named Fen and Ferret. Somers-Smith was killed in action, aged 28, probably in the afternoon of 1 July 1916 while engaged in close-quarter fighting to take possession of the German trenches, and his Magdalen friend Captain Guy Hargreaves Cholmeley was so severely wounded on two occasions during the initial stages of the attack to clear Gommecourt Park that he was never again declared fit for active service and after major, and not entirely successful, surgery plus a long period of recuperation he spent the rest of the war as an instructor back in Britain.

The Battalion War diary contains a report by Sergeant H. Frost of ‘A’ Company which throws light on the circumstances of Somers-Smith’s death. He recorded that the Battalion got across the Park “quickly and without many casualties” and captured the German trench: “A number of prisoners were taken and sent across by orders of Capt. Somers-Smith.” But, the report continues,

we never succeeded in gaining the whole of the “Strong point”, partly because our own Artillery continued to play for some time on that section and, later on, because of the stronger opposition offered by the enemy. […] The situation began to get critical about midday and we were attacked more and more by bombers [grenade-throwers] and snipers, causing us a number of casualties. We managed to hold on to our bit of trench however and, in fact, it was the last piece of enemy trench to be evacuated. […] During the afternoon a strong attack was made against the other end of the line, chiefly by bombers. I understand [that] our own supply [of grenades] was exhausted and that our men were using German ones found in the trench. At 6 p.m. Sgt. Lilley went and reported to Capt. de Cologan [later one of the wounded and missing] that our position was serious. Nothing had been seen of Capt. Somers-Smith or Lt. Baker [who survived the Battle] for some time. From this moment we could see the other end of the line being gradually driven in towards our L.R.B. bit of trench. Twice we had seen parties leave the trenches and cut across the open. Finally at about 8 p.m. the remainder (possibly 100 of various Regiments) came rushing along to “A” Coy. Trench followed by Germans who were showering bombs on them. There was no hope of holding on any longer and our party of “A” Coy. joined in the rush for the open.

According to Alexandra Churchill, Somers-Smith was demonstrably alive at about midday because he sent a message to another officer in which he ordered him to go back to the German front line – but after that he simply vanished. After the battle, the LRB numbered only four officers and 173 other ranks, with 19 officers and 588 other ranks killed, wounded and missing. Somers-Smith has no known grave, and is commemorated on Pier and Face 9D, Thiepval Memorial. He left £2,114 5s. 8d.

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘The Late Rev. Henry Richard Somers-Smith’ [obituary], Essex Newsman, no. 56 (25 February 1871), p. 3. 

[Anon.], ‘Isis Idol No. CCLXXXIX: Mr. R. Wellington Somers-Smith’, Isis, no. 312 (18 March 1905), p. 289.

[Anon.], ‘An Oxford Rowing Blue’ [brief death notice], The Times, no. 40,898 (5 July 1915), p. 14. 

[Anon.], ‘Second Lieutenant R.W. Somers-Smith’ [obituary], The Times, no. 40,901 (8 July 1915), p. 4.

[Anon.], ‘John Robert Somers-Smith’ [obituary], The Eton College Chronicle, no. 1,578 (20 July 1916), p. 56.

[Anon.], ‘Merton College: Richard Willingdon [recte Wellington] Somers-Smith’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, Extra Number (5 November 1915), pp. 18–19.

[Anon.], ‘Mr R.V. Somers-Smith’ [obituary], The Times, no. 46,719 (4 April 1934), p. 14.

[Anon.], ‘The Christmas Truce in the Trenches’, The Surrey Advertiser and County Times, no. 7,134 (9 January 1915), p. 11.

Massue de Ruvigny, Melville Amadeus H.D.H. de la Caillemotte de marq. de Ruvigny, The roll of honour, a biographical record of all members of his majesty’s forces who have fallen in the War (London: Standard Art Book Co., 1917), vol. 2, p. 280.

The History of the London Rifle Brigade (1921), pp. 68, 85, 103–53, 481.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 26–7, 114, 245, 328.

Middlebrook (2016), pp. 65, 73, 170–1, 214–15.

Hutchins (1993), pp. 26–30.

McCarthy (2002), pp. 31–3.

Blandford-Baker (2008), pp. 68–72, 83, 92, 109–11.

MacDonald, Pro Patria Mori: The 56^th (1^st London) Division at Gommecourt, 1^st July 1916 (Milton Keynes: Iona Books, 2008).

Churchill (2014), pp. 193–7.

 

Archival sources:

MCA: 04/A1/1 (MCBC, Captain’s Notebook 1888–1907), p. 460.

MCA: 025/P1/1 (Photograph Album of the Rupert Society).

MCA: PR 32/C/3/1089 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letter concerning J.R. Somers-Smith [1916]). 

OUA: UR 2/1/61.

WO95/1498.

WO95/1499.

WO95/2961.

WO374/64106.

 

On-line sources:

‘The Fallen of the 1/5th London Regt. (London Rifle Brigade), 1st July 1916’: http://www.gommecourt.co.uk/fallenlrb4.htm (accessed 25 August 2018).