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Remembrance
- The Yorkshire Regiment, First World War Captain Lewis Wilberforce GOLDSMITH Close window to return to main page |
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Captain Lewis Wilberforce GOLDSMITH
A Company, 7th (Service) Battalion Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards)
Killed in action on the 5th of November 1916 aged 21.
Commemorated on Panel and Face 3A and 3D, THIEPVAL MEMORIAL.
The following information on Captain Lewis Wilberforce Goldsmith and the photo
above have been provided by John Hamblin (<jc.hamblin@btopenworld.com>);-
Lewis Wilberforce Goldsmith was born in Aveton Gifford in Devon on the 9th
of July 1895 the eldest son of Francis Thomas Wilberforce Goldsmith and Mary
H Goldsmith of Chislehurst. He was educated at Merton Court Preparatory School
in Sidcup and at the King's School, Canterbury, from January 1910 to July
1914 where he was granted a Junior Scholarship in July 1910 and a Senior Scholarship
in June 1913. He was a keen rower and rugby player, playing in the Rugby XV
in 1913 and was made a school monitor in September 1913.
He was entered for St John's College Oxford but instead applied for a commission
and was gazetted as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Yorkshire Regiment being promoted
to Lieutenant in September 1914.
On the 5th of April 1915 he was promoted to Temporary Captain and sailed for
France with his battalion on the 13th of July 1915, landing at Boulogne. He
saw action on the first day of the Battle of the Somme being one of the few
officers in the battalion to be neither killed nor wounded during the day.
He saw action with the battalion through the summer on the Somme and on the
4th of November 1916 the battalion received orders to carry out a "small
attack" against an enemy trench which ran up to the edge of the road
to Le Transloy. It was decided that in view of the relatively small objective
that A Company alone would be sufficient to make the attack.
At 10am on the morning of the 5th the British artillery opened up a heavy
fire which intensified onto the enemy front line at 11.10am, when A Company
went over the top to the attack. Soon after midday the officer commanding
the neighbouring battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment reported that he
could see the enemy "running like hell" and this was soon corroborated
by Lieutenant Robertson of A Company although he reported that losses had
been heavy and that Captain Goldsmith had been wounded. Captain Goldsmith
was being carried to the rear on a stretcher when he was struck and killed
by machine gun fire which also killed three of the stretcher bearers. It was
thought by eyewitnesses that this had been a deliberate act by the Germans.
. He is also commemorated on the King's School, Canterbury, War Memorial and
both the Foots Cray and Sidcup memorials.
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