Smeatham J M Lt Royal Engineers
LIEUTENANT J. M. SMEATHΜΑΝ
ROYAL ENGINEERS
JULIAN MISSENDEN SMEATHMAN was the second son of Lovel and Frances Smeathman, of Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.
He entered the School in 1902, and passed on to the R.M.A., Woolwich, in 1905. After a course of training at Chatham and Newcastle-on-Tyne, he received an appointment at the War Office, and was, in 1910, sent out to South Africa, where he was stationed at Pretoria.
On the outbreak of War he returned, with the 7th Division, to England, went to the Front in October, and was killed in action in the first Battle of Ypres, on October 24th, 1914, on the same day that his younger brother, Lieutenant C. Smeathman (O.R.), died of wounds. Age 26.
His Colonel wrote:-
“His death has been a great blow to us. His Captain had previously told me that he was the best Subaltern he had ever had, and that he could not wish for a better. I, too, had remembered him as a youngster at Chatham, and had marked him then as an Officer of much promise.”
A brother Officer said:-
“Professionally I had a good deal to do with him, and a better Officer in that Regiment of distinguished Officers it would have been impossible to find.”
He married in 1914, during his few weeks in England, Gladys Monica, the youngest daughter of the Rev. Gordon Browne, D.D., Vicar of Lymp-stone, Devon.
Source : Memorials Of Rugbeians Who Fell In The Great War Vol 1