A German Spring Offensive Officer’s Memorial Plaque awarded to Lieutenant B.C. Metcalfe-Smith, 4th Battalion attached 21st Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment who died of wounds on 22nd April 1918, which he had suffered 4 days earlier. He is now buried in the British Cemetery, Pernes, Pas-De-Calais, his commanding officer later writing ‘Your son was a good soldier, always cool and cheeful in danger, and he was very popular with us all. We shall miss him greatly. He died a soldier’s death, with his duty well done, and you may be proud of him.’
Great War Memorial Plaque; (BERTRAM CECIL METCALFE-SMITH)
Condition: Good Very Fine
Bertram Cecil Metcalfe-Smith was born in London on 6th March 1894 and educated at Parkfield, Haywards Heath, Malvern College and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He initially joined the Queen’s Westminster Rifles on 5th August 1914 and served on the Western Front from the following November and was invalided home in February. He would be gazetted Second Lieutenant in the West Yorkshire Regiment on 13th April 1915 and returned to France in December 1916 being shortly afterwards attached to the 21st Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment and subsequently being promoted Lieutenant in 1917.
Metcalfe-Smith died of wounds on 22nd April 1918, which had been received 4 days earlier on the 18th April 1918, he is now buried in the British Cemetery, Pernes, Pas-De-Calais. He was the only son of Reginald Metcalfe-Smith of Nunirons, Olney, Buckinghamshire and Kate Francis, 3rd daughter of the late Lieutenant Colonel Bailey, 4th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment.
His commanding officer would write:
‘Your son was a good soldier, always cool and cheeful in danger, and he was very popular with us all. We shall miss him greatly. He died a soldier’s death, with his duty well done, and you may be proud of him.’
