Merton Beckwith-Smith

Major-General Merton Beckwith-Smith, (11 July 1890 – 11 November 1942) was a senior British Army officer during both the First and Second World Wars. Early life and military career Beckwith-Smith was born on 11 July 1890 at 24 Walton Street, Chelsea to stockbroker Beckwith Smith and Georgina Butler Moore. His education took in Warren Hill School at Eastbourne, Eton and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1910 he was commissioned into the Coldstream Guards. He served with the Guards throughout the First World War, eventually becoming a staff officer in the Guards Division. On 4 October 1914, while the 1st Guards Brigade was holding trenches opposite the German line at the River Aisne, Beckwith-Smith was ordered by Brigadier-General Charles FitzClarence to carry out a nighttime raid against a German position known as 'Fish Hook Trench'. This was the first British trench raid of the First World War. Beckwith-Smith was still just a lieutenant at the time and the raid was considered to be a striking success. On the front of the 1/Coldstream, just east of the Troyon factory road, the Germans had run out a sap, and it was decided to fill it in. At 8 P.M. a platoon of the battalion, led by Beckwith-Smith (who was wounded and subsequently received the Distinguished Service Order), crossing the hundred yards of No Man's Land, rushed the trench with the bayonet. The award of the DSO was reported in the Edinburgh Gazette on 13 November 1914,