George Buchanan Smith

His father was Professor George Adam Smith, Free Church theologian and future Principal of the University of Aberdeen, whose career made him a leading figure in public life in Scotland, and a controversial one in 1902 when he was arraigned before the United Free Church Assembly for heresy on the strength of a lecture he gave at Yale University in 1899.

No further action was taken. Young George set out on a path which could have led to equal distinction, though in the Law rather than the Church. Sadly, just a few months before his father was knighted, he was killed at the Battle of Loos, on 25th September 1915.

George Buchanan Smith began his studies at the University of Glasgow in 1907, when he matriculated in the Arts Faculty. He graduated MA with third class Honours on 16th November 1912. He began his studies, as many Arts students did, with Latin and Greek in his first year, Logic and History in the second.

He did well at History, gaining a certificate in 1909. In his third year he took a slightly different direction and took classes in Political Economy, in which he also gained a mention in the prize-list, and Mathematics - which he had to re-sit in the autumn. History was his chosen subject, however, and he took this on to Honours, an option available to few students at the time.

He also belonged to that inner group, including Walter Elliott and Foster Franklin, who made a name for involvement in Union and Student Recruitment Council (SRC) politics, rectorial election battles, and the quieter pursuits of writing for the Glasgow University Magazine. George was both a man of action on the rugby field and a man who occasionally submitted poems to the magazine. After an SRC conference at St Andrews in 1912, he and his friends apparently walked home on a bitter cold night singing 'rollicking songs'.

George took a commission into 3rd (Reserve) Battalion The Gordon Highlanders in Aberdeen, and then transferred to 2nd Battalion The Gordon Highlanders upon the completion of his training. 2nd Gordons had suffered grievously at First Ypres in October 1914 and Smith would have been a badly needed replacement subaltern. He arrived in France & Flanders on 1 December 1914 and would have witnessed the Christmas Truce first-hand. His first large-scale action would have been at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle (10 - 13 March 1915), where 2nd Gordons again suffered badly. 2nd Gordons also lost heavily at the Battle of Festubert (15 – 25 May 1915), and were on the fringes of Givenchy (3 – 4 June 1915). By the morning of 25 September 1915, Smith would have been regarded as an experienced officer. He had seen action and his men knew him. He had witnessed the best and the worst of times rotating in and out of frontline trenches. He died at the very beginning of his Battalion’s advance on 25 September 1915, hardly making it over the parapet. He was 24 years old and his body was never recovered.

Foster Franklin, George's friend, wrote of him in a special memorial edition of GUM;

"For a long time we were inclined to think, in spite of his originality and vitality, that he lacked some of the sterner qualities of life, that he could never be induced to be serious."

War forced a whole generation to be very serious. Lieutenant George Buchanan Smith, son of the Very Reverend Sir George Adam Smith and Lady Smith is commemorated at Loos Memorial.