Captain Lewis Wilberforce Goldsmith
Dan Hill’s research, edited by Ellie Grigsby
The national census system was launched in 1801, and every decade since then, the nation has set aside one day for the census to formulate an account of all people and households. It has acted as the most complete source of information about the population that we have. An extraordinary tale of this way of mass documentation perhaps reached its glorious peak with Emily Wilding Davison, during the 1911 census. Davison, illegally hid herself during the night of the census inside what was once the ‘broom cupboard’ inside parliament. In this way she was able to record her address on the night of the census as being ‘ the houses of parliament,’ thus making her claim to the same political rights as men. Besides this system being manipulated in order to implement political and symbolic protest, for laymen use it can prove to be incredibly useful. When searching for the roots of Old Mertonian Lewis Wilberforce Goldsmith, we can find him with his family on both the 1901 and 1911 census. However, the 1901 census is no entirely clear of the family dynamic. If we go to the following census, we can ascertain a clearer understanding of the family situation. From this we can see architect, Mr. Francis Thomas Wilberforce Goldsmith, is head of the family, married to his wife Mary of 16 years; together they bore Lewis, (born July 9th, 1895) Janet, Edward and Humphrey. But it is not clear as to whether the family had a fifth child. The 1911 census shows an entry, but it has been scored through. Interestingly, the census for the decade previous does show an entry of a then 4-year-old child by the name of what appears to look like a ‘Francis P.’ This could just be a mistake, but it is perhaps probable the family lost a child. Goldsmith senior’s occupation afforded the family a life-style of certain luxury; testament to this is the 3 domestic servants living with the family in 1911 inside the 12-room property, ‘St. Leonard’ of Footscray, Sidcup. After his primary education at Merton Court, Goldsmiths was educated at the King’s school Canterbury from January 1910-1914, where he was granted a junior scholarship in July 1910 and a senior scholarship in June 1913. Goldsmith was a keen rower and rugby player, playing in the Rugby XV from 1912 to 1914, winning his colours in 1912. Additionally to his sporting presence at the school, Goldsmith held a prestigious role (honorary secretary) in the debating society and was also a member of the Officer Training Class (OTC), passing the practical paper for certificate ‘A’ in February 1914. Just a few short months later, young Goldsmith, and many of his childhood friends were to embark on a very different journey, one from which some would not return, and those who did, would never be the same again.
When The First World War was declared, Goldsmith had just received news that he had been accepted into St. John’s College, Oxford. Instead, he elected to apply for a commission in the British Army, joining the Alexandra, Princess of Wales own Yorkshire regiment on September 1st holding the rank of Second Lieutenant. Within just three months, Goldsmith had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant whilst he continued to train his men for industrialised warfare. Evidently, Goldsmith oozed leadership quality as he was promoted once more to temporarily hold the position of Captain in April 1915 whilst awaiting orders that would send him overseas to the war being fought in France and Belgium. Goldsmith’s wait was not a long one, as on the 14th July 1915, he and his men of the 7th Yorkshire regiment (known as the ‘Green Howards’) landed at Boulogne. From the battalion war diary we can see the battalion disembarked from Folkestone on the 13th at 22:30pm with a strength of 30 officers and 937 other ranks. We know that Goldsmith was one of the officers in ‘A Company’ an as such, at the tender age of 20-years-old, had command of around 200 men, most were his senior and from the tough working-class towns and villages of Yorkshire. Turning once more to the surviving war diaries of the battalion, we can follow in Goldsmith’s footsteps as he first tread into trench warfare…
Once arriving at Boulogne, the men marched to ‘Ostrone’ and remained there until the following morning. On the 15th, the men arrived by train to ‘Remeilly Wirquin’ from station ‘Pont de Briques.’ After relocating twice more, Goldsmith was in ‘Steenvourde’ by the 19th after a ‘long and trying march.’ Goldsmith’s battalion was then subjected to an inspection the following day after arrival. On the 21st, four company commanders were sent into the trenches occupied by the 3rd division, for two shifts, whilst the remaining men had their time consumed by drill practice, inspections, exposure/practice with gas and smoke and helmet usage for instance. By the start of August, at ‘La Clytte’ the first deaths and casualties by the battalion were suffered. By the 2nd, the battalion took over the trenches then occupied by the 1st Wiltshire regiment on the night/early morning of the 2nd/3rd at ‘Voormezeele’ suffering one casualty in doing so. On the 3rd, Goldsmith and his men were ‘heavily’ bombed during the morning. A Captain L. E. P. Jones was killed by shrapnel and buried close to ‘Chateau Rosentaal.’ Holding the same rank as Goldsmith, his death would have been hard-hitting for Goldsmith to experience so early into his military service. The next day (4th) 8 men were wounded and one killed, by the following day, artillery fire was a little less active but still perilous. Another was killed and four wounded. To evaluate, since arriving with a 30 strong officer class and 937 men of other ranks on July 14th, but importantly, not entering trenches until the 21st, within 15 days, the numbers were -4 officers, and nearly 20 men of other ranks lost by death or wounds without engaging in any active attacks. That is at least 4 telegrams sent home, four families destroyed, just two weeks into their son or husband’s service. This is without considering the numbers of the men of other ranks who may have suffered life changing injuries or died. Goldsmith’s battalion received support in the form of ’10 men from England’ on the 5th. The 6-8th are labelled as ‘quiet days’ but within 48 hours, a further four were wounded and on soldier killed.
By August 9th, Goldsmith’s battalion was involved in a diversion tactic to distract the enemy’s attention from an attack happening at Hooge. This deception technique, by holding rapid fire to demand manpower and artillery took place from 02:30am, with similar orders given to the battalions on Goldsmith’s left and right, simultaneously taking place whilst the attack at Hooge was waged. Miraculously, there were no casualties suffered. On the 14th, Goldsmith lost yet another one of his ‘brother officers’ when a Lieutenant was killed by a sniper (five others were wounded), then the battalion were relieved by the 7th Lincolnshire regiment. Goldsmith’s men had spent their recent time by this point, strengthening the parapets and digging new shelter trenches. The fears that the ‘good enemy snipers’ were at a greater advantage due to the thin trenches is aired in the diary.
By the 15th, the battalion were at ‘Reninchels’ where they arrived at a rest camp. The following day, half the battalion were graced with the opportunity for hot baths and a change of undergarments which would have been greatly appreciated! On the 19th, an accident occurred. The following describes the dreadful accident that probably would have happened before Goldsmith’s eyes:
“(A bomb exploded)… instantaneously in the throwers hand instead of at the end of 6 seconds. 2nd Lieutenant T. Large, 2nd Lieutenant D. Preston and two men wounded, one man killed. A count of enquiry assembled to investigate the matter and found that the bomb…spark (went) from the lighter…straight past the fire to the detonation causing the bomb to explode instantaneously. Similar cases have occurred elsewhere, and the accident was unavoidable.’
Till the 26th, ‘nothing of importance’ was recorded consecutively for three days. Then, the men returned to the trenches at ‘Voormezeele,’ and took over the same trenches as they occupied before the 7th Lincolnshire regiment. On the 28th, the war diarist is sure to capture the extraordinary happenings in the form of psychological terrorism. The enemy, sent over the Yorkshire battalion, an undetonated rifle grenade, which landed in the company Head Quarters dugout. Attached to it was an edition of the La Gazette Des Ardennes. For all countries participating in the war, the press was the principal means of controlling or at least influencing public opinion. In the occupied territories, the local inhabitants had no access to information about their loves ones, or knowledge of the wider fate of the French army. The Germans controlled the flow of news and to this end, they started publishing the paper La Gazette Des Ardennes in November of 1914. Distributed by German authorities, it was originally a weekly publication with a small circulation (4,000 copies) whose sole purpose was to publish translations of official German communiqué. Conscious of the general hostility towards the paper from the locals, understandably, the German army attempted to rectify this by recruiting a French journalist by the name of Prévost who proposed in April of 1915, publishing the names of the latest French soldiers to have been taken prisoner or to have died in prisoner camps. All in all, more than 250,000 names would be put into print up until the last edition on November 2nd, 1918. By October, they were printing 175,000 copies of every edition. Although the people of Nord despised the paper, coining it the ‘paper of lies’ it was the only source of information available to them. The edition attached to the rifle grenade listed 2000 recent French casualties and signed anti-British articles. This mental torment was one of the small ways the aggressor could consciously assert their power through this ‘up-manship.’ Often employing passive-aggressive behaviour to specifically demoralise or dis-empower the thinking subject, making the aggressor look superior was what symbolic acts pivoted on. The struggle for prestige, meant manipulation of fears as emotional coercion was used a war technique. Once more, we observe enemy manipulation with symbols in the later months of September. On the 13th, the enemy planted a German Empire flag in the centre of no man’s land. As the British soldiers were keen to remove it, as soon as it was in the hands of a soldier, it exploded and killed him. The following day, the Germans did the exact same thing by erecting another flag in no-mans land. By the 27th the battalion were rested, and back in the trenches. This emotional manipulation and deadly deception warfare behaviours were not unique to the Germans on the other side of the wire to Goldsmith. On the September 1st the battalion war diarist finely details an extraordinary trench illusion designed not only for trickery, but to inflict maximum damage. Here we learn saps began to dig a ‘V’ shaped ditch which was ordered to be directly in front of their trenches. The ditch was intended to be continuous along the whole front and was dug 5ft deep and 9ft wide. Once completed, the idea was, the ditch would be filled with wire entanglements and the ground behind, sloped away in order that the bottom of the ditch may be visible from their parapets, but from the advancing adrenaline pumped Germans on flat ground landscape view, virtually impossible. In the winter, the ditch would fill with water and the whole thing would form a rather disastrous obstacle; the shredded legs of the immersed German would be shredded, especially the more he panicked, it is probable he would drown or be faced with painful injuries. Importantly disallowing or at least slowing the entry into the British trenches.
The 29th was reportedly a quiet day apart from yet another tragic event that would have saddened Goldsmith to hear. A Captain T. Smith was accidently shot by a comrade; he soon died afterwards. Goldsmith would not have been graced with the quiet of an autumn day to reflect on the loss of another companion, as an enemy mine exploded on their left the following day, miraculously, no damage was done.
If we pick up the story once more in April of 2016 when the plans for the forthcoming attack to the south, in the newly held Somme sector, were well underway, Goldsmith and his men were shortly to join the mass migration of men and materials in preparation for the largest British offensive of the war up to that point. Whilst at ‘Pont Ballot’ on April 1st, the 7th Yorkshires were onto their second day in the trenches and carried out much work on improving their trench structures until they were relived on the 7th. The battalion returned to the trenches, 8 days later after resting in billets to continue work on trench structures as they were lucky to find the enemy being ‘quiet’ for the rest of the day. This was not to last - Goldsmith and his men were exposed to high explosives and shelling as the enemy attacked ‘Pont Ballot’ and the neighbourhood throughout the day, fortunately little damage was done with no fatalities inflicted, but two casualties. In ‘Armentiers’ the men were inoculated with a typhoid vaccine. By May 12th we can track the men’s movements. On this day the men left for ‘Estaires’ arriving on the 13th to then march to ‘Wardrecques.’ Two days later, the men marched 15 miles to ‘Mantque’ (training area) and stayed here until the 10th June, so just under a month preparing for battle. After a couple of days marching, by the 13th the men were providing relief in the trenches immediately south of ‘Fricourt.’ From the 14th military action resumed and for the next six days the enemy inflicted ‘several’ casualties by oil drums filled with explosives. Goldsmith and his men were relived on the 20th and marched to ‘Heilly’ where the battalion was to rest before ‘big operations’ as the war diarist states. Goldsmiths and his men moved then to ‘Ville’ arriving just before midnight at 11:45pm and went into billets. The following day took Goldsmith and his men even closer to the attack day, and so the men were ‘stocking’ up their kits etc and moved to the trenches in front of ‘Fricourt’ in readiness. It is noted that 25 officers were to be taken into the trenches for the attack, Goldsmith one of those men for the impeding attack planned for the morning of the 29th. Due to the terrible weather conditions, this attack was eventually postponed until the 1st of July.
The 1st of July is today an important date for many different communities for different reasons. Yet they are connected through the factuality of the date, that it was the bloodiest singular day in British military history; a battle that left a deep mark on millions of families across the commonwealth. The area allotted to the men of the 7th Yorkshire regiment was opposite the German held village of Fricourt, on the southern sector of the Somme battlefield. After months of planning and a week-long artillery bombardment which saw 1.7 million shells fired at German positions across no-man’s land, the attacked was launched at 07:30am. The war diary once more records the progress of the attack, informing us of the attack waged by the 7th Yorkshires’ who were acting as a supporting wave and attacked the same ground that other battalions had failed to capture that morning. The following exert records their movements and the immense trouble they faced:
“At 2pm on 1/7/16 our artillery began a half hour preliminary bombardment of Fricourt Village. This bombardment was futile and did little damage to the enemy as the Battalion soon learned to its cost. At 14:30pm the battalion assaulted and were met by murderous machine gun fire and rifle fire. Officers and men were literally mown down and were finally brought to a standstill about half way to the enemy trench. Thirteen officers and three hundred men became casualties in about three minutes. The survivors lay in shell holes until dark with a few officers who managed to crawl back. Many magnificent deeds were accomplished, especially in treating the wounded under shell fire.”
Goldsmith survived. Once the ‘dust had settled’ Captain Goldsmiths was one of the few remaining officers from this attack to still be standing unscathed. As the 7th Yorkshires’ were withdrawn from the line, they left more than half of their battalion behind. This disastrous day marked only the beginning of the battle of the Somme; the battle waged on for another 140 days. An estimated 3.5 million men took part in the battle and by its end the total British and Empire deaths on the Somme amounted to around just short of a million, and the overall casualty list totalled, 4000,000 killed, wounded, missing and taken prisoner. Of the dead, nearly 20,000 were killed on the first day, cementing the battle in public memory as a terrible slaughter. The Somme offensive did achieve its aim. What made and makes this battle a source of controversy and disaster to the British even today, is the ‘price’ paid for that achievement. Some 150,000 commonwealth servicemen lie buried in 250 military cemeteries, and 150 civilian cemeteries on the Somme. There are 6 memorials to the missing, which commemorate by name, more than 100,000 whose graves are not known.
As the battle waged on ferociously, the Yorkshires’ were twice more sent into the attack, losing heavily on two more occasions. Goldsmith survived going back into the attack on those occasions, but his battalion was almost destroyed. It was not until the 5th November, almost at the end of the battle, that Goldsmith and the Yorkshires’ would go into attack one more time. The battalion war diary records early November by starting with the note that the battalion were preparing for taking over front-line trenches between ‘Gueudecourt’ and ‘Lesboeufs.’ The first wave of the Yorkshires went into the trenches on the 2nd at 17:00pm, which was complete by 02:45am on the 3rd. It was reported the weather was making transport ‘very difficult’ which would have slowed down the ‘pack animals’ further. At 16:00pm on the 3rd, members of Goldsmith’s coy, reported having seen 4 limes of enemy advancing against the battalion on the left. The diarist wrote: ‘He thought first line had got in but had helped to wipe out the other three by rifle and Lewis gun fire.’ Shortly afterwards the 7th Lincolnshire battalion delivered an attack against 80 yards of ‘Zenith’ still then held by the enemy. A few bombers from Goldsmith’s battalion took part as support, which resulted in being ‘quite successful’ so the diarist claims, with some 40 prisoners taken. On the 4th, orders were received at night, for an attack by a ‘battle patrol’ of 40 men, to be made the following morning on ‘Finch trench’ that Captain Goldsmith, along with 2nd Lieutenant S J House, was to command. Together, this team of men would play a part in the battle of Le Transloy (the final big attack of the Somme offensive). At 11:10am on the morning of the 5th November, Goldsmith, House and their men led them ‘over the top’ towards the enemy positions. A company’s battle patrol attacked in two lines. The enemy were seen n force, running from their trench, but, considering how small the battle patrol was in comparison the Germans opened fire on them. 2nd Lieutenant House was hit, and Goldsmith was ‘severely wounded.’ The diarist wrote: ‘With both officers knocked out the attack did not reach the objective, or the few men who did reach it fell into the hands of the greatly superior enemy.’ Goldsmith’s father received the following telegram dated the 8th of November 1916: "Deeply regret to inform you that Capt. L.W. Goldsmith was killed in action Nov. 5th. The Army Council express their sympathy."
Eyewitness accounts were gathered in order to establish what happened to Goldsmith. However, the two eye-witness accounts referenced by the King’s Canterbury roll of honour offer slightly different observations. Elizabeth Loftus, an American cognitive psychologist, specialises in human memory. Conducting extensive research on the malleability of human memory, Loftus is best known for her ground-breaking work on the ‘miss-information effect’ (which exposes two of the ‘cardinal sins’ of memory: ‘suggestibility’ and ‘misattribution.’ By digesting Loftus’ work we must be wary of the two privates’ accounts, especially as they differ, but as they are all that we have, we must acknowledge them as rare pieces of evidence. A private William M. Green from Goldsmith’s coy, spoke about his captain’s death in the march following his death. Green tell us that Goldsmith was carried by stretcher bearers back to their lines at night but was instantaneously killed by a ‘whizzbang’ about 20 yards from their trenches. Green adds he knew nothing of the particulars of his burial but offers his assumption that he would have probably been buried behind the lines somewhere. Our second statement from a Private William Todd of C coy, 7th Yorkshires, taken just a few months after the attack on January 23rd, 1917, tells us after Goldsmith was wounded, he was: ‘put into a shell hole for the time being.’ Todd goes on to state that a German sniper was quick to spot him withering the in the shell hole trying to stay sheltered and was killed ‘outright’ from the shot. Todd states at night, Goldsmith was collected and buried. The two accounts offer different times, hours out, different eventualities of his final moments and importantly the longevity of his death post that initial attack and wounding. However, what they both seem to agree on, is that Goldsmith did not die instantaneously from that first wounding whilst on patrol. His heart carried on beating until a second instance.
Goldsmith’s father designed and executed the erection of the Foots Cray memorial, without charge, as a labour of love and a tribute to his late son and the other men of Foots Cray, who gave up, everything for ‘King and Country.’ Goldsmith’s body was never found. Although it is most likely he was buried in close proximity behind the lines, he was lost to that day. Today his name is engraved alongside some 72,337 British and commonwealth soldiers that fell in the battle of the Somme on the Thiepval memorial to the missing.