Name
Hugh Francis Russell-Smith
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
05/07/1916
28
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Captain
Rifle Brigade
1st Bn.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
1914 /15 Star, British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
ST. SEVER CEMETERY, ROUEN
Officers, A. 3. 10.
France
Headstone Inscription
Not Researched
UK & Other Memorials
Christchurch Memorial, Little Heath, Potters Bar, Little Heath & Bentley Heath Memorial, Potters Bar, All Souls Chapel Book of Remembrance, Potters Bar
Pre War
Born in Highbury, 11 August 1887. Second son of Henry Russell Smith, of Heathside, Little Heath and Ellen Russell-Smith, of London. Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Educated at Rugby School from September 1901 to 1906, he won a Classical Scholarship to St. John’s College, Cambridge. He obtained a Second in Part I of the Classical Tripos in 1909 and a First in Part II of the Historical Tripos in 1910. He also won the Winchester Reading Prize and the Thirlwall Prize for a dissertation on “The Theory of Religious Liberty in the Reigns of Charles II and James II” which he published in 1912. He was elected an Allen Scholar, and a Fellow of St. John’s, and appointed a Lecturer on Political Science. A close friend of the poet Rupert Brooke at Rugby and at Cambridge. Married Dorothy Catharine Willett Tait in 1914.
Wartime Service
Commissioned in April 1915, and landed in France, 25 October 1915, attached to the 1st Battalion. Promoted to Captain in January 1916. Died of wounds 5 July 1916. Hit by shrapnel in the attack on Beaumont Hamel in the Battle of the Somme, on 1 July, and died in No2 British Red Cross hospital at Rouen. The Colonel of the 6th Battalion wrote :- “We shall all feel his loss very much. He had been doing splendid work with the 1st Battalion. I had a letter from the Colonel Commanding the 1st Battalion a short time ago recommending him for promotion and saying that he was a most capable Officer and in every way fit to command a Company.”
Acknowledgments
Martin Cope
