Hero of the Month - April 2023
Published in Britain at War in 2023.
Brigadier The Rt. Hon. Sir John George Smyth, 1st Baronet, VC, MC, PC
Brigadier the Rt. Hon. Sir John Smyth crammed an awful lot into his eighty-nine years. He was a highly-decorated British Indian Army officer, a long-serving Conservative MP and the co-founder of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association. He was also the last VC recipient to sit in the House of Commons.
Smyth, who was usually known by friends as ‘Jackie’, was born in Teignmouth, Devon, on 24 October 1893. He was the eldest of three sons of William and Lilian Smyth and his father worked for the Indian Civil Service in Burma.
From 1901, he was educated at Lynam School (now Dragon Preparatory School), Oxford. Whilst a pupil there, he contracted a serious illness from which he was thought unlikely to survive. Despite being desperately ill for two years, he recovered well and returned to Lynam, where he received a scholarship, aged fourteen, to attend Repton School, Derbyshire.
As a teenager, Smyth wanted to embark on a military career, ideally with the Indian Army. In 1911, he attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, where he later passed out as ninth in his class. On 24 August 1912, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on the unattached list for the British Indian Army.
The following month, he sailed from England to India for a one-year attachment with the Green Howards (Yorkshire Regiment). On 5 November 1913, he joined the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs, becoming a full Lieutenant a year later.
By the time of this promotion, Smyth was in France, where he had served with the Lahore Division since September 1914, shortly after the start of the First World War. In the final week of October 1914, the battalion suffered nearly 400 casualties – dead and wounded – in heavy fighting near Rue Tilleloy.
For the winter of 1914-15, Smyth spend most of his time near Festubert and Givenchy. In March, the 15th Sikhs again suffered heavy losses, this time in fighting north-east of Ypres, Belgium.
However, it was for his outstanding gallantry in the spring of 1915 that Smyth, then only twenty-one years old, was awarded the Victoria Cross (VC).
The Allies had captured a trench, known as the ‘Glory Hole’, near Richebourg L’Aouve, France. Early on the morning of 18 May 1915, during the Battle of Festubert which had begun three days earlier, the Germans tried to recapture it.
At the time, the British forces had control of some 200 yards of the captured trench, 500 yards south-east of Rue du Bois. However, the enemy’s assault was relentless and the Allied soldiers were in danger of running out of ammunition.
Efforts were made to supply two forward companies – one from the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs and the other from the 1st Highland Light Infantry – that had moved in under cover of darkness to relieve the men in the trench. However, those attempting to bring the supplies were shot down before they had covered half the distance. Groups sent back for supplies by both of the forward companies suffered the same fate.
In this desperate situation, Smyth asked for volunteers from his Sikhs and every man in the company stepped forward. He therefore chose the ten he considered to be the strongest. This little party gathered up bandoliers of ammunition and two boxes, each containing forty-eight bombs. After sneaking over the parapet, they quickly lost three men to shell fire.
However, using smoke from the German shelling as cover, they continued to creep along a trench barely two feet deep and full of British, Indian and German dead. They were only a third of the way to their objective when they were spotted, and enemy machine-gunners and riflemen inflicted additional casualties. Further along, they had to wade through a chest-deep stream.
Eventually, only Smyth and one other man, Sepoy Lal Singh, reached a shell hole close to their objective with one of the boxes of bombs. As they dashed over the last few yards, Singh was mortally wounded. Smyth was uninjured, although his tunic and cap had been pierced with bullet holes. All the Sikhs in his party had been killed or seriously wounded.
It later emerged too that Smyth had been encouraged by a fellow officer to disobey the order – from Brigade HQ – to embark on the mission, on the grounds it was considered far too dangerous, but the young Lieutenant insisted on carrying it out.
Smyth’s VC was announced in The London Gazette on 29 June 1915 when his citation stated: ‘For most conspicuous bravery near Richebourg L’Avoue on 18th May 1915.
‘With a bombing party of 10 men, who voluntarily undertook this duty, he conveyed a supply of 96 bombs to within 20 yards of the enemy’s position over exceptionally dangerous ground, after the attempt of two other parties had failed.
‘Lieutenant Smyth succeeded in taking the bombs to the desired position with the aid of two of his men (the other eight having been killed or wounded), and to effect his purpose he had to swim a stream, being exposed the whole time to howitzer, shrapnel, machine gun and rifle fire.’
Nine of the men who accompanied him on his dangerous mission were posthumously decorated with the Indian Distinguished Service Medal (IDSM) and another the 2nd Class of the Indian Order of Merit (IOM).
When Smyth received his VC at Buckingham Palace on 12 July 1916, he was the only man from a large group of recipients who could walk unaided. At that point, it was the largest investiture of the war. He was also awarded the Russian Order of St George, 4th Class.
After his investiture and following his promotion to Captain, Smyth rejoined his battalion and sailed to Egypt in August 1915. From November 1915 to February 1916, he took part in the Senussi Campaign in the Western Desert, during which his battalion suffered 200 further casualties.
After returning to India, Smyth served on the North-West Frontier for nearly three years, being promoted to Brigade Major. In May 1919, two frontier tribes, the Wazirs and Mahsuds, rose up against the British. On 31 May, Smyth helped to save a convoy of supplies that had been seized during an ambush by the Mahsuds. For his bravery, he was recommended for a Bar to his VC but he was eventually awarded the Military Cross (MC) instead.
Smyth was presented with his MC by the Duke of York at Buckingham Palace on 21 July 1920 before getting married the very next day at Brompton Oratory, London, to Margaret Dundas. The couple went on to have three sons and a daughter.
Thereafter, Smyth remained in the Army and continued his illustrious career. He was Mentioned in Dispatches at least three times in three other further conflicts: in Mesopotamia; quelling a riot in the Indian city of Peshawar; and in the Second World War, when he was involved in fighting prior to Dunkirk. Later in the war, he served in Burma and took part in several battles against the Japanese.
By this point, Smyth’s first marriage had been dissolved and he was married to Frances Read, the daughter of an Army officer. The couple had married in Southsea, Hampshire, on 12 April 1940.
However, there was also a controversial incident during his service in Burma when, during heavy fighting, the 17th Division lost almost two brigades in confused fighting at the Sittang river. Smyth was blamed for poor leadership and deprived of his rank of Temporary Major-General, reverting instead to that of substantive Colonel and Acting Brigadier. He finally retired from the Army on medical grounds on 7 November 1942 in the rank of Honorary Brigadier.
One of his sons, Captain John Lawrence Smyth of the 1st Battalion, Queen’s Royal Regiment (West Surrey), was killed on 7 May 1944, during the first attack on Jail Hill at the Battle of Kohima in 1944.
After the war, Smyth unsuccessfully contested the seat of Wandsworth Central, London, against Ernest Bevin in the 1945 general election. Instead, he became the military correspondent for several national newspapers and, from 1946, the tennis correspondent for The Sunday Times.
In 1950, he was elected as the Conservative MP for Norwood, and five years later he was created a baronet. In the same year, 1955, he was made a Freeman of the City of London.
In 1956, he was a co-founder of the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association, being the first chairman from 1956 to 1971. From 1971 until his death, he was a life president of the association, which represents the interests of all the living recipients of the VC and GC, UK’s and the Commonwealth’s two most prestigious gallantry awards.
Smyth was also the author of a staggering thirty-six books which included The Story of the Victoria Cross 1856-1963, first published in 1963, and The Story of the George Cross, first published in 1968. He was also a cat lover, writing three books on the subject of his favourite pet animal. Furthermore, he published two volumes of his autobiography.
Both from his own experiences on the battlefield and his own research, Smyth became something of an expert on the subject of gallantry. With typical wisdom, he once wrote: ‘Who can say whether it takes more courage to attack an angry bull elephant with a spear, than to disarm a very sensitive mine, or to have your toenails pulled out and still disclose nothing, or to dive into a burning aircraft to try to pull out members of the crew when the rescuer was well aware that the plane was carrying bombs which might explode at any moment.’
Smyth was made a Privy Councillor in 1962 and he retired from Parliament in 1966. He died at his home in Dolphin Square, central London, on 26 April 1983, aged eighty-nine. He was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium, north-west London.
Smyth’s name is on the Memorial Gates at Hyde Park Corner, central London, along with other VC recipients from the Indian Army.
Smyth’s medal group is on display at the Lord Ashcroft Gallery in the Imperial War Museum. However, I do not own his gallantry and service medals as these were bequeathed to the IWM. In fact, his VC is a replacement decoration after the original was stolen and never recovered. I have immense admiration for the bravery and rich life led by this quite remarkable man.