Second Lieutenant David Smith

Second Lieutenant David Arthur Smith, Durham Light Infantry. ( The C.W.G.C. site shows his Unit as 4th ( Territorial )Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers so it is likely he had been transferred from the D.L.I. ). He was killed in action in Belgium on 26th October 1917 during the Battle of Third Ypres and is commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, Zonnebeke, Flanders, Belgium. He was the son of David Smith of Woodside Cottage, Scremerston. Before enlisting he had been in charge of instructing forestry students at the Armstrong College of Forestry in Co. Durham. The photographs attempt to show the desolation of the Flanders battlefields where the incessant shelling had destroyed the fragile drainage systems.