Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Kingsley Smith, known to all as King, was 18 when he signed up to the AIF in 1915 at the Keswick barracks in Adelaide. He required the permission of his parents, who provided a letter to this effect, as he was under the minimum age of 19. His enlistment record lists him as a clerk, and records elsewhere show he worked for SA Railways, as did all his brothers. His father was Deputy Superintendent of Railways and the Smiths were therefore very much a railway family. King was the first of three brothers to enlist, with Les and Arn sunsequently joining up. The fourth brother, the eldest, Stan, was already married with a young family and a fully fledged stationmaster, and was needed at home.  King left Australia with the 27th Batallion on the troop ship Geelong for Egypt, where he trained in the desert under the Pyramids before landing at Gallipoli on 12 September. He was quickly promoted to Lance Corporal while at Gallipoli on 22 September and then to Corporal less than a week later on 28 Septmber. In November he fell ill with jaundice, probably viral hepatitis as a result of poor sanitation, and was transferred to hospital at Heliopolis where he spent several months, rejoining the Batallion in early March at Ismailia to be shipped out from Alexandria for the battlefields of France. 

There he saw front line service in the trenches of the Western Front and was wounded twice, and twice medically evacuated to England for hospitalisation. The first injury, in 1916, is listed as GSW (gun shot wound) thigh, and the second, in 1917, as GSW head but later in the records as GSW legs. 

On 4 October 2017 he was in the trenches at Westhoek Ridge when he witnessed a whiz-bang land on the parapet of the trench and kill three of his company, two of them brothers. Two of the men were blown to pieces such that he reported that there was no trace left of them.

He was court martialed twice. Once for going AWOL after  his first lot of medical leave in England, the second time for letting a person in his charge, a Private Fisher, escape. For this second offence he spent 22 days in custody. 

In the latter part of the war he resigned his rank of Corporal to return to ranks and took a transfer to the 4th Australian Broad Gauge Railway Company. Perhaps as a wounded and shell shocked soldier, the familiarity of railway work, away from the trauma of leading men in to battle at the front line, was welcome respite.

He returned home on the troop ship Suffolk in June 1919, shortly after the birth of his namesake, his nephew Ronald Kingsley Smith. His other two brothers also made it home.The Mayor of Pt Adelaide gave the assembled crowd at Port Adelaide a welcome home speech. The Mayor was King's Uncle RH Smith.

He was issued the 1914-15 Star, the British Military Medal and the Victory Medal. 

He returned to railway work for a few years before joining the SA Metropolitan Tramways, where he worked as a conductor for the rest of his life. He married Irene (Rene) Jones in 1926, and they lived a quiet life in the polite southern suburbs of Adelaide. They had no children - his war injuries prevented this. He and Rene became Jehovah Witnesses, much to the incomprehension of his strict Methodist family. After his years at war, after the horrors he witnessed, the pain of his wounds and the constant fear of the trenches, there is a logic to finding support in a belief system that is opposed to war. 

I vaguely remember Great Uncle King as a tall, thin old man who visited our house to see Dad a couple of times when I was a child. I wish I had known then what a story he had to tell.