Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

The historically important Great War Memorial Plaque to Lieutenant E. Lucie-Smith, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who is believed to have been the first black officer commissioned into the British Army during the Great War, and is also believed to have been the first black officer casualty of the Great War, when he was killed in action at the Second Battle of Ypres on 25th April 1915

Memorial Plaque (Evan Lucie-Smith) nearly extremely fine £600-£800

Much has been written about Walter Tull, who is erroneously assumed to have been, (and is still regularly referred to), as the first black officer commissioned into a British army regiment during the Great War, on 30 May 1917. It is also claimed that Tull became the first black officer casualty of the Great War, when he was killed in action during the First Battle of Bapaume on 8 March 1918.
Tull’s sporting and military achievements must be celebrated, not least that he is believed to have achieved the honour to have been the first Black soldier to be commissioned from the ranks into a regiment of the British Army during the Great War. This fact alone, cements his place in British history, yet there were other Black officers commissioned before him.

Euan Lucie-Smith, like Walter Tull, hailed from a mixed heritage background. He was born at Crossroads, St. Andrew, Jamaica, on 14 December 1889 to John Barkley Lucie-Smith, (the Postmaster of Jamaica), and Catherine ‘Katie’ Lucie-Smith (née Peynado Burke). His father hailed from a line of distinguished white colonial civil servants. His mother was a daughter of the distinguished “coloured” lawyer and politician Samuel Constantine Burke, who campaigned for Jamaican constitutional reform in the late nineteenth century through his desire for Jamaica to have greater control over her own affairs, than Whitehall. His advocacy on behalf of both the black and “coloured” populations of Jamaica, helped create a reputation that even led him to later be referred to, by name, in an essay of the renowned Black activist, Marcus Garvey.

Lucie-Smith was educated in England, initially at Berkhamsted School, before Eastbourne College, (his address during his Great War service is noted as Berkhamsted School). Returning to Jamaica, he was commissioned into the Jamaica Artillery Militia on 10 November 1911. He appears as a Lieutenant in a later, pre-war, Forces of the Oversea and Dominions list. Just six weeks after the outbreak of war, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the regular force of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, appearing in the supplement to the London Gazette of 30 November 1914, backdated to 17 September 1914: ‘The undermentioned candidates from the self-governing Dominions and Crown Colonies to be Second Lieutenants. – The Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Euan Lucie-Smith…’. Believed to have been the only name on this list from the Caribbean, or East and West Africa, he appears as the first of fourteen names, giving him seniority above the other men also commissioned from Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and New Zealand. His commission also pre-date, by nine days, that of Alan Noel Minns, another early black officer, whose temporary Lieutenancy in the Royal Army Medical Corps was Gazetted on 6 October 1914, backdated to 26 September 1914

Lucie-Smith landed in France on 17 March 1915, and, just over a month later, although initially reported as missing, he was later confirmed as being killed in action on 25 April 1915, aged 25, during the Second Battle of Ypres. A statement made by a Private F. Jukes, at Suffolk Hall Hospital, Cheltenham, stated ‘Lieutenant Lucie-Smith - Was told by his servant that he was killed, and had seen him dead. Shot through the head’. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Ploegsteert Memorial, Belgium. He is also commemorated on the Berkhamsted School Memorial, the Eastbourne College Memorial, and has an entry in ‘Jamaica’s Part in the Great War.’

Note: Lucie-Smith’s Medal Index Card notes that his 1914-15 Star, British War and Victory Medals were sent: c/o The Colonial Secretariat, Kingston, Jamaica. The war office clerk had erroneously noted his Christian name as “Evan”, and the personal details used during the production of a Memorial Plaque were always taken with reference to an Army casualty’s Medal Index Card, where again his Christian name had been erroneously recorded as Evan. He is the only man recorded with this surname on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Roll of Honour.

Sold with copied research.