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Pte. William Henry Smart
British Army 11th Battalion Royal Sussex Regiment
from:Hull
My grandfather William Smart is a World One soldier from Hull. He fought in the lesser known campaigns of the War. The Macedonian Campaign in Greece 1916-1917 and in the North Russian Intervention in 1918-1919 before being finally demobbed in September 1919 nearly a year after the Western Front Armistice. This is his story. The story is cobbled together from desk research, online records and my mother’s memories
William Henry Smart was born 1895 in Hull. At the start of the hostilities in 1914 William was working as a groom and joined up in May 1915, just before his 20th birthday, joining the East Riding Yeomanry. His training took place on the Beverley Westwood and he was transferred into the 2nd Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment becoming a lance corporal in August 1916.
The 2nd battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment was in India at the start of the war but returned to serve with gallantry in France at the Battles of Loos and Ypres in 1915 as part of the 28th Division. At the end of 1915 it was shipped, firstly to Alexandria in Egypt and then to Salonika, Greece at the start of 1916. My grandfather set sail from Davenport in September 1916 and arrived in Salonika in October where he was almost immediately transferred to the 2nd Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment.
The Regiment took part in the Macedonian Campaign. After preparing the port of Salonika for defence, the troops moved up country to Lake Dorian and The Struma Valley. Whilst the lines were steady and little fighting took place, the conditions, however, were terrible. Boiling hot in the summer and freezing in the winter. Malaria proved to be a serious drain on manpower during the campaign. In total the British forces suffered 162,517 cases of the disease and in total 505,024 non-battle casualties.
William Smart was one of these statistics and he was hospitalised firstly with malaria and then a serious ear infection and anemia. He was finally invalided, to be sent, home in late November 1917. He set sail from Itea in Southern Greece, arriving in England in March 1918. Although he stated on his record he was past fit to service in France or Italy. He made it back to Hull and in on 12th of September 1918 he married my grandmother Catherine Witty.
If he thought his war was over he had to think again! In July he was posted to the 13th Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment and transferred once more into the 11th Battalion East Sussex in September 1918 for one more final adventure.
On 18th of September 1918, as part of the 236th Brigade, he set sail from Leith to Murmansk, for Northern Russian Expedition. This was part of the Allied Intervention in Russia after the October Revolution. The intervention brought about the involvement of nearly 30,000 Allied troops in the Russian Civil War on the side of the White movement. While the movement was ultimately defeated, the Allied forces fought notable ending defensive actions against the Bolsheviks in the battles of Bolshie Ozerki, allowing them to withdraw from Russia in good order. The campaign actually lasted from 1918, during the final months of World War I, to 1920. My grandfather survived the campaign returning on the SS Toloa, landing back in the UK on 26th August and was finally demobbed on on 4th September 1919.
He lived until 1974, having two sons, one of whom, Roy Smart, served in WW2 and is also a D-Day veteran and twin daughters, Margaret and Patricia, who is my mum.
