Second Lieutenant Richard Wellington SOMERS-SMITH (1903)

7th (Service) Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps
Born 27 October 1883 in Hersham, Surrey
Killed in action 30 June 1915, aged 31
Buried at Bedford House Cemetery, Ypres, West Flanders, Belgium. Also commemorated on the war memorials at Eton College, St Peter’s church, Hersham, and St Mary Oatlands church, Weybridge.

Richard Somers-Smith was the second son of the athlete Robert Vernon Somers-Smith & Mary Gertrude Wellington, née Radcliffe, of ‘Burlea’, Westcar Lane, Weybridge, Surrey.

He was educated privately and at Eton College. He rowed for Eton, and Merton, and rowed No 2 for Oxford in 1904, and bow oar in 1905. In the words of one of his rowing coaches he was “the most lion-hearted man who ever sat in a boat.”

After leaving Merton he travelled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) as a planter, returning at the outbreak of war.

He enlisted in January 1915, was commissioned as a temporary Second Lieutenant in February, and his battalion were sent to the Western Front in May.

He was killed in action at Hooge, on 30 June 1915; a bursting shell had buried some of his men, he ran to dig them out and was struck by a piece of shrapnel and killed instantly. His brother John was also killed in action a year and a day later.

(His middle name is sometimes given as Willingdon and his surname as Sommers-Smith.)