Remembrance

Revd Edwin Smith, his brothers Fred (an aircraft engineer) and Sydney (killed in 1916) and their mother.

This year I have been looking at Edwin W Smith’s diary for 1915. At that time Britain was in the thick of war and his denomination, the Primitive Methodist Church, was part of a United Board of Nonconformist churches which was created to provide chaplains to serve their members in the armed forces. Smith volunteered and spent a few months in France and Belgium before his health broke down and he returned to Britain for lighter duties. It was a harrowing time. His work included ministering to wounded soldiers, some of whom were dying, others were shell shocked. He conducted services, censored letters, supervised cemetery work, buried the dead and wrote letters of condolence. The second week in July when he was in the area north of Ypres was particularly intense and this is how I have written about it; quotations are from Smith’s diary.

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Monday 12^th July. He went round the wards after breakfast. A young lieutenant (Hobson) was unconscious and dying from serious neck wounds. Another man (Private Lane) was badly wounded in the stomach and asked him to pray and ‘if I would tell him honestly whether he would recover: I had to tell him that he was very bad, but had a chance.’ He spent the rest of the morning censoring letters and supervising work in the cemetery. After visiting the Divisional HQ in a beautiful Chateau (presumably Elverdinghe) he returned to the hospital. Several men had been buried, including a Congregational lad from Swinton. In the evening he was taken on a fool’s errand to bury a man who had died at the dressing outpost only to find that the man had been buried already. Bullets were flying around as they returned with some wounded soldiers. News came in that Lieutenant Hobson (aged 19) had died.

On Wednesday 14 July Private Lane died. Smith had seen him in the night and spoke from Psalm 23 which the man valued and said every day. ‘This war is sheer madness’ said Smith. At 2.30 he took the funeral of Lt Hobson. Other funerals would follow; Private Lane of Y&L on Thursday 15 July and two more on Friday 16 July.

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There were many incidents like those until he went on home leave on 18 August. He did his bit but could see at first hand the terrible waste that was World War One.