77366. Private Norman Smart

“B” Company, 15th. (Service) Battalion, Durham Light Infantry. Formerly 18th. (Service) (1st. County) Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, “Durham Pals”. Born 1899 in Knaresborough, Yorkshire. Enlisted in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Killed in Action on Wednesday 17th. April 1918, aged 19, during The Battle of the Lys (Operation Georgette). Lost Without Trace. No Known Grave. Known unto God. Commemorated on Panels 128 to 131 and 162 and 162A of The Tyne Cot Memorial to the Missing, West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. Son of Jane Smart of Market Place, Knaresborough, Yorkshire and the late Thomas Smart. 3 of Norman’s Comrades from the Battalion also Fell on this day. Norman is also Commemorated on The Knaresborough War Memorial in the grounds of Knaresborough Castle, overlooking the river Nidd, together with 155 other Knaresborough Servicemen who also Fell during The Great War.

The inscription carved in the stone above the lists of names reads:

Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends

The inscription carved in the stone around the base reads:

Remember with Thanksgiving and Honour all ranks from this town who gave their lives in the war 1914 - 1918

Norman is also Commemorated on St. John’s Church War Memorial in Knaresborough

TO THE HONOURED MEMORY OF THOSE MEN FROM THIS TOWN AND PARISH WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE GREAT WAR 1914-18

THIS MEMORIAL IS PLACED HERE IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE

Norman Smart was called up and enlisted at Harrogate on 18th August 1916 - he was one month short of eighteen years of age. At this time he was living in the Market Place, Knaresborough - an unmarried man working as a locomotive cleaner i.e. a railway employee. His mother, Jane, was a widow - his father having died on 25th November 1902. He had no brothers or sisters and his closest relatives, apart from his mother, were a grandmother, Mrs. Eliza Williamson, and an aunt, Mrs. Mary Ellis. He was medically examined on 27th. March 1917 - his height is given as five feet two and a half inches and his weight as 122 pounds. On the 9th. May 1917 he was appointed to General Service. On 21st. December, 1917 he was posted to the 18th. Battalion, Durham Light Infantry but then re-posted three days later to the 15th. Battalion. of the same Regiment. By this time he was in France and it was here that he was Killed in Action on the 17th. of April 1918 while serving as a Private in “B” Company. He was awarded the British War and Victory Medals.

The German offensive in Flanders - Operation 'Georgette' the Battles of the Lys, 9 – 29 April 1918.

Though organised on a smaller scale Ludendorff’s Flanders Offensive met with dramatic early success and generated a far greater sense of military and political crisis than the earlier epic ‘Michael’ attack on the Somme. In twenty-one days of intense and sometimes bewilderingly complex fighting, a series of divergent, but often simultaneous German attacks sought to capture Hazebrouck and regain control of Ypres so as to cut-off and then destroy British and Belgian forces to the north. These aims were ultimately frustrated by desperate and stubborn Allied defensive fighting in which the newly-established Royal Air Force played an important role.

Following spectacular gains on 9 April ‘Georgette’ was extended next day north of Armentières against Second Army whose formations were driven back across familiar ground: Messines village and part of the hard-won Messines-Wytschaete ridge were lost. The deteriorating situation on 11 April, with the abandonment of Messines Ridge and German infantry pouring across the Lys to within five miles of Hazebrouck, was one of acute crisis, soberly acknowledged by Sir Douglas Haig’s ‘Backs to the Wall’ special Order of the Day. Pushed back but not broken, hard-pressed and exhausted defenders were gradually shored-up by the feeding-in of reserves, but not before good German progress towards Ypres by 14 April convinced Plumer of the need to shorten his lines and relinquish the gains of the previous year’s Passchendaele fighting. Following desperate but unsuccessful attempts to seize Béthune on 18 April, German attention switched northwards.

After a respite in the fighting, ferocious assaults wrested Mount Kemmel from the French on 25 April, the last important enemy success; German moves towards the vantage of the Scherpenberg on 29 April were heavily defeated and though spasmodic local fighting continued, ‘Georgette’, having failed to attain its objectives, was called off.

Barry Jenkins