An interesting inter-war O.B.E. group of four awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel H. M. Smyth, late 1/9th Gurkhas and Acting Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police, who latterly served in M.I. 6: the brother of Brigadier Sir John Smyth, V.C., M.C., and himself the winner of a “mention” on the North West Frontier, he faced more than his fair share of challenges on the occupation of Shanghai - once being asked to arrest some British nationals for anti-Japanese activities

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Civil) Officer’s 2nd type breast badge, silver-gilt; British War Medal 1914-20 (Lieut. H. M. Smyth); India General Service 1908-35, 3 clasps, Afghanistan N.W.F. 1919, Waziristan 1919-21, Waziristan 19121-24 (Lieut. H. M. Smyth, 1/9/Gurkhas); Shanghai Municipal Council Emergency Medal 1937, the earlier awards with contact marks and polished, thus nearly very fine, the O.B.E. and Shanghai awards good very fine (4)
£1200-1500

O.B.E. London Gazette 9 June 1938.

Awarded to Smyth in his capacity as Assistant Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police.

Henry Malcolm Smyth was born in Witney, Oxfordshire, in December 1898, the son of William John Smyth, a member of the Indian Civil Service, and a younger brother of the future Brigadier Sir John Smyth, V.C., M.C., whose autobiography Milestones offers a glimpse of early family life:

‘My father was tall and handsome, a fine cricketer and keen yachtsman, with a delightful sense of humour. My mother had no intellectual attainments at all. She was small, sturdy and good-looking, with an immense capacity for making friends. Quite early in their married life, having produced three sons, they had to face the critical decision which confronted so many families tied to a job in the East. Should the wife remain with her husband and let other people look after her children in England, or should she go home and let other people look after her husband? As soon as I was of prep school age she chose the former and was thereafter nearly always with me at home during this period of our lives. The three sons were myself, John George, named after my grandfather's distinguished brother; Herbert Edward Fitzroy, my next brother, named after the Fitzroy side of the family and commonly called “Billy”, and the youngest, Henry Malcolm (known to us always as “Lit”, the little one, though he grew to be almost twice my size). He was called Malcolm after my godfather, Malcolm Jardine, who was the father of Douglas Jardine, England's famous cricket captain. Malcolm Jardine and my father were great friends at Oxford and played a lot of cricket together.’

For his own part, young “Lit” was also educated back home at boarding school, attending St. Bees School before going up to Pembroke College, Oxford.

Active service - North West Frontier

Having then attended the Royal Military College at Quetta, he was commissioned in the 1/9th Gurkha Rifles in October 1917, in which capacity he witnessed active service in the Third Afghan War in 1919, when his men were among the first troops to be deployed and carried out a successful counter-attack at Dakka on 17 May 1919 - by the declaration of peace in August, the regiment has lost 16 men in action, two of them British officers.

Described in a confidential report about this time as being of the ‘right stuff’, Smyth was back in action in the Waziristan operations, gained advancement to Captain in October 1922 and won a “mention” for his command of the Vickers section during the fighting in the region of Makin in February 1923, when the 1/9th Gurkhas sustained casualties of 11 killed and 26 wounded (see London Gazette 18 November 19240. He later became Adjutant, a role in which he ‘had to know everything, forget nothing and forgive nothing’, according to a fellow Gurkha Adjutant, John Masters - see his Bugles and a Tiger.

In December 1929, Smyth left India on leave, afterwards studying Russian at Riga, Latvia, in which he qualified at interpreter level. But in March 1932, instead of taking up an anticipated staff appointment, he was attached to the Shanghai Municipal Police as an Assistant Commissioner with charge of the Sikh contingent of the force.

Shanghai Police - murder and mayhem

His transfer to Shanghai having become permanent in April 1936, Smyth suffered personal tragedy with the murder of his fiance in the same year. The China Daily News takes up the story:

‘Miss Margaret Wexler, 24-year-old Russian emigre, was found murdered yesterday evening in the Broadway Mansions flat of Captain H. M. Smyth, Deputy Commissioner of the Shanghai Municipal Police. Miss Wexler, who had known Captain Smyth for some time was about to leave for England to visit his relatives, had been killed in the drawing-room of the flat by being smothered with a blanket after she had been hit on the head with a bottle. Captain Smyth's room-boy, who is suspected of the crime, had absconded when the body was discovered. The apparent motive was robbery, Miss Wexler having no jewellery on her when found and there being no money in the small bag she carried.

It was learned that Miss Wexler was to have had tea with Captain Smyth late yesterday afternoon. The flat is on the fifth floor of the apartment building, at the end of a corridor. Captain Smyth telephoned from his office at about 5.30 p.m. to inform Miss Wexler that he would be late for tea but received no reply. He arrived home shortly after 6.30 and got no response when he rang the door-bell. The manager of the building was summoned and opened the locked door.



In the drawing-room the two men discovered Miss Wexler's body, a heavy blanket wrapped about her head. In the forehead were deep gashes which apparently had been inflicted with a small beer bottle lying close by. A terrific struggle evidently had taken place between the attractive young woman and her murderer, causing her dress to be torn and the furniture to be displaced. It appeared that she had finally been suffocated under the thick blanket.

The room-boy who had been in the flat when Miss Wexler arrived had disappeared. His description was broadcast by the Police last night, and all wharves were being watched lest he attempt to leave Shanghai. The suspect being from Ningpo, special attention was paid to jetties from steamers leave for the Chekiang coast.’

If the loss of Miss Wexler was hard to take, Smyth soon faced further challenges, namely the Shanghai Emergency of 1937, during which the Japanese formally seized the Nationalist Chinese areas of the City, but not the International Settlements - though the latter did not escape the attention of Chines bombers, some 2000 being killed. Meanwhile the local population swelled from 1.5 million to 4 million as a result of the influx of refugees, around 100,000 of whom would died in the harsh winter conditions. Smyth, however, clearly rose to the challenge, being appointed O.B.E., but the political situation continued to deteriorate, the Japanese establishing a puppet regime under the traitor Wang-Jing_Wei, who established a secret service to terrorise his opponents - as a result, murder, kidnapping and terrorist bombs became commonplace and an attempt was made to assassinate Deputy Commissioner D. R. Yorke of the Special Branch.

By the time of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and the various Treaty Concessions in December 1941, Smyth was Acting Commissioner of Police, which position he occupied August 1942, during which time he remained in command of the Shanghai Municipal Police working in conjunction with, and under the direction of the Japanese occupying forces. Here, then, the moment he once found himself under orders to arrest eight British nationals for anti-Japanese activities, an order declined. Then as a result of a special arrangement made with the Japanese, Smyth and over 100 senior Shanghai Municipality Civil Servants and Police Officers were repatriated to the neutral Portuguese colonial port of Lorenco Marques.

Military Intelligence

An attempt by Tony Keswick, the “taipan” of Jardine Matheson, to recruit Smyth to S.O.E. in East Asia having failed, the latter was appointed to the Military Intelligence Department M.I. 6, and given the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He then departed England by flying boat, arrived at Karachi on 7 June 1943, and proceeded to Chungking, China’s wartime capital. And according to Empire Made Me, by Dr. Robert Bickers, Smyth then made his way to one of the liberated areas in Chekiang province, behind Japanese lines.

At the end of the War, he served in Germany, first as a member of the Berlin Military Government 1945-46, and later with the Special Police Corps Germany, 1946-49. Smyth died in July 1963.

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