Albert Elliot "Smiler" Marshall (15 March 1897 – 16 May 2005) was a British veteran of
the First World War and the last surviving British
cavalry
Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from "cheval" meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry ...
man to have seen battle on the
Western Front.
Albert Elliott Marshall was born on 15 March 1897 in
Elmstead Market
Elmstead Market is a village in the civil parish of Elmstead, in the Tendring district of Essex, England. It lies 3 km north-east of Wivenhoe and 6 km east of Colchester. It is on the A133 road which runs to Clacton-on-Sea to the south ...
, a village in the
Tendring
Tendring is a village and civil parish in Essex. It gives its name to the Tendring District and before that the Tendring Hundred. Its name was given to the larger groupings because it was at the centre, not because it was larger than the other ...
district of
Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
, close to
Great Bromley
Great Bromley is a village and civil parish in the Tendring district of Essex, England. It lies south of Manningtree and east of Colchester and includes the hamlets of Balls Green, Hare Green and Bromley Cross. The A120 trunk road (with the ...
,
Great Bentley
Great Bentley is a village, civil parish and electoral ward in the Tendring district of north Essex, England, located seven miles east of Colchester. The parish includes the hamlets of Aingers Green and South Heath. It is home to the second larg ...
,
Wivenhoe
Wivenhoe ( ) is a town and civil parish in north-eastern Essex, England, approximately south-east of Colchester. Historically Wivenhoe village, on the banks of the River Colne, and Wivenhoe Cross, on the higher ground to the north, were two ...
and
Colchester
Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian.
Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colches ...
. He was the eldest of three children born to James William Marshall and Ellen Marshall, née Skeet. His mother died in 1901, aged 24, leaving James to raise the children on his own.
Marshall joined the
Essex Yeomanry
The Essex Yeomanry was a Reserve unit of the British Army that originated in 1797 as local Yeomanry Cavalry Troops in Essex. Reformed after the experience gained in the Second Boer War, it saw active service as cavalry in World War I and as ar ...
in 1915, at the age of seventeen, after lying about his age; he took part in the
Battle of Loos
The Battle of Loos took place from 1915 in France on the Western Front, during the First World War. It was the biggest British attack of 1915, the first time that the British used poison gas and the first mass engagement of New Army units. Th ...
in the same year. He was given the nickname "Smiler" during his basic training at
Stanway, Essex, where he threw a snowball at someone during drill, stood there looking innocent, but the sergeant suspected him and addressed him "You, smiler!" and that name stuck.
Marshall served in the
1/1st Essex Yeomanry and later the 8th Battalion,
Machine Gun Corps
The Machine Gun Corps (MGC) was a corps of the British Army, formed in October 1915 in response to the need for more effective use of machine guns on the Western Front in the First World War. The Heavy Branch of the MGC was the first to use tank ...
between 1915 and 1919 and saw action at the
Battle of the Somme
The Battle of the Somme ( French: Bataille de la Somme), also known as the Somme offensive, was a battle of the First World War fought by the armies of the British Empire and French Third Republic against the German Empire. It took place bet ...
,
Battle of Arras, the
Third Battle of Ypres
The Third Battle of Ypres (german: link=no, Dritte Flandernschlacht; french: link=no, Troisième Bataille des Flandres; nl, Derde Slag om Ieper), also known as the Battle of Passchendaele (), was a campaign of the First World War, fought by t ...
, the Germany Offensive of 1918 as well as the Advance to Victory and the Army of Occupation campaigns at the end of the war. Marshall recalled the horrors of the battlefield and his memories of seeing many of his comrades blown to bits by enemy shells or mown down in No Man's Land by a hail of bullets.
The Battle of the Somme, beginning on 1 July 1916, had no greater resonance for Smiler than all the other battles he had fought throughout the war. He had been sent to France in late 1915 and despite a number of periods of home leave had remained in or near the front line for the remainder of the war. He was present on the Somme for the first day of the offensive in which over 20,000 troops were killed in the first several hours, with 40,000 more injured, making the battle one of the heaviest death and wounded tolls of the war. Marshall had been kept well behind the lines during the opening day of the Somme campaign waiting for a breakthrough, however it did not come.
As a result of his unit being kept back during the Somme, Marshall was not credited with being the last veteran of the opening day; nonetheless, he remembered the trauma and horror of that campaign and the images on the battlefield remained with him. He later recalled picking up and sending home the letters found next to the body of a man killed near
Mametz Wood
The Mametz Wood Memorial commemorates an engagement of the 38th (Welsh) Division of the British Army during the First Battle of the Somme in France in 1916.
The memorial
The memorial, erected in 1987 by Welsh sculptor David Petersen, is a ...
.
In March 1917, Marshall suffered a
blighty wound "Million-dollar wound" (American English) or "Blighty wound" (British English) is military slang for a type of wound received in combat which is serious enough to get the soldier sent away from the fighting, but neither fatal nor permanently crippli ...
in the hand and was sent home. On his return he joined the Machine Gun Corps and fought at the
Battle of Cambrai where he was captured as a Prisoner of War by the Germans. Smiler was released by his captors as they were short of rations and returned to the front.
When the war ended in 1918, Marshall volunteered for a tour of duty in
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
and was stationed near
Dublin
Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...
. He was demobbed in 1921 and returned home to Tendring where he married Florence C. Day. The couple had five children.
In his later years, Marshall continued to live in a small house, which was attached to a larger house in which he had worked for the owner since the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. He kept by his bedside a wooden cross taken from the rubble of
Albert Basilica at the time of the Battle of Somme.
In the final decade of his life, Marshall was awarded the
Legion d’honneur
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon B ...
and appeared on numerous television shows as well as attending a veterans' party at
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace () is a London royal residence and the administrative headquarters of the monarch of the United Kingdom. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is often at the centre of state occasions and royal hospitality. It ...
. He also took part in three pilgrimages to the battlefields of the First World War, including one to mark the 80th anniversary of the Third Battle of Ypres.
Marshall died at the age of 108 on 16 May 2005 in
Ashtead, Surrey
Ashtead is a large village in the Mole Valley district of Surrey, England, approximately south of central London. Primarily a commuter settlement, Ashtead is on the single-carriageway A24 between Epsom and Leatherhead. The village is on ...
. At the time of his death he was survived by one son; twelve grandchildren; twenty-four great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
Marshall's legacy as one of the last surviving veterans of the First World War was that he was able to claim a number of records: the last man to wear the
1914-15 Star; the last man to serve on the Somme and perhaps, the most significant for a man who had served in the Essex Yeomanry, the last man to have served in the cavalry.
References
Further reading
* Arthur, Max. ''The Last Post'' (2005)
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marshall, Albert
Essex Yeomanry soldiers
Machine Gun Corps soldiers
English centenarians
Men centenarians
British Army personnel of World War I
British military personnel of the Irish War of Independence
Recipients of the Legion of Honour
1897 births
2005 deaths
People from Tendring (district)
Military personnel from Essex