CORPORAL 12748 JOSEPH SMITH (MM), 10th BATTALION WEST RIDING REGIMENT.


CORPORAL 12748 JOSEPH SMITH (MM), 10th BATTALION WEST RIDING REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 18th OCTOBER 1917 AGED 21


Joe Smith was barely 18 years old when he enlisted in the Ilkley Pals Company of the 9th West Riding Regiment, in September 1914. A butcher by trade he was one of four sons born to Thomas and Emma Smith in Burley in Wharfedale. The family had moved to Ilkley in the years immediately before the war and lived variously in East Parade and Wellington Road.


Not long after the battalion arrived in France in July 1915 Joe was badly wounded in the legs by enemy shrapnel and was evacuated back to England. In total he would spend 15 months recovering from his wounds and would not return to France until November 1916. Instead of returning to the 9th Battalion he was posted to the 10th where he would serve with 'A' Company, which by chance contained a number of men from Ilkley.

Joe was promoted to corporal and on the 20th September 1917 took part in an attack on the German Trenches near to Sanctuary Wood in the Ypres sector. For his bravery in this action he was awarded the Military Medal.

A few weeks later, on the 18th October Joe and his battalion where in the front line west of Polygon Wood when at 2am in the morning they came under heavy German attack. A major trench raid was launched against the battalion which was only beaten off with great difficulty and the loss of 18 men killed. Sadly, Joe was one of those who lost their lives. His Sergeant Major would write to Joe's family to tell them that he had been killed when a shell burst in the trench killing him instantly. His commanding officer would say of Joe, " he was a most highly respected and reliable NCO whose loss was keenly felt".

Private Joe Smith was buried near to where he fell but his grave was lost during subsequent fighting. Today he is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing and remembered with pride on our war memorial in Ilkley.

Photo courtesy James Cooper



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19

Image
PRIVATE 77570 HUGH McALISTER ALLAN-BLACK 9 th BATTALION ROYAL FUSILIERS (LONDON REGIMENT) KILLED IN ACTION 8 th AUGUST 1918 AGED 19 The youngest son of John Allan-Black and his wife Claire, Hugh was born in the hamlet of Stone Gappe near Lothersdale in the Craven District on the 25 th May 1899. His father was a wool merchant whose father Charles Ingham Black was a noted Irish scholar and poet and formally the Vicar of Burley in Wharfedale. His mother Claire nee Delius was the sister of the famous conductor Frederick Delius of Bradford and who in 1935 would write his biography. When Hugh was very young the family moved to Victoria Avenue in Ilkley where he attended the grammar school. However, in 1914 the family left the town and moved to Castletown on the Isle of Man where Hugh attended King Williams College. Hugh left school in 1917 when he achieved the age of 18 and enlisted into the army. His health was not of the strongest and he appears to have suffered from a w
Read more

2nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28.

Image
2 nd LIEUTENANT LEONARD FOSTER, 15 th BATTALION WEST YORKSHIRE REGIMENT (LEEDS PALS BATTALION) DIED OF WOUNDS 13 th AUGUST 1916 AGED 28. On the morning of the of the 1 st July 1916, the opening day of the Battle of the Somme, one thousand men of the Leeds Pals awaited the signal to leave the relative safety of their trenches and advance towards the German trenches situated a few hundred yards away in the remains of the village of Serre. Days of heavy British shelling had reduced the landscape to a sea of craters and it was blithely assumed that the enemy wire and trenches had been obliterated. At 7.30am precisely whistles blew and the Pals climbed out of their trenches and began to fan out before starting their deliberate advance towards the German lines. But contrary to their expectations the enemy had not been subdued and instead rushed to man their firing lines and opened up a deadly hail of machine guns bullets. The Leeds men now moving forward in lines walked steadily
Read more

CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22.

Image
CAPTAIN GEOFFREY SKIRROW 2/4 th BATTALION KINGS OWN YORKSHIRE LIGHT INFANTRY (Attached). KILLED IN ACTION 27 th AUGUST 1918, AGED 22. During the Summer of 1918 as the war on the Western Front progressed towards its conclusion there was no let up in the intensity of the fighting as the Allied armies drove against a faltering but still dangerous enemy. After the successes achieved by the Germans during their Spring Offensive the British slowly and steadily regained the ground that they had lost earlier in the year and were now poised to breach the fearsome defences of the Hindenburg Line. Even though the fighting now took place over the shattered battlefields of 1916 and 1917 fighting  was more mobile and success depended on speedy rather than meticulous planning; it was a type of warfare at which British Divisions seemed to excel. The 62 nd (West Riding) Division had only arrived in France in 1917 and was recruited largely from the old West Riding of Yorkshire. Its effi
Read more