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22-922: Albert Marshall may refer to: Albert Marshall (veteran) (1897–2005), British veteran of the First World War and the last surviving British cavalryman to have seen battle on the Western Front Albert Marshall (American football) , American football coach A. L. Marshall (Albert L. Marshall), American football player and coach Bert Marshall (born 1943), retired Canadian ice hockey defenceman Albert Marshall (author) , Maltese poet and author A. P. Marshall (Albert P. Marshall), American librarian and educator Albert W. Marshall (1874–1958), American naval officer and aviator See also [ edit ] Bertie Marshall , musician Bertie Marshall (cricketer) [REDACTED] Topics referred to by

44-605: A Picton-five-feet-four paragon of the Line, from Newcastle Emlyn or Talgarth in Brycheiniog, lying disordered like discarded garments or crumpled chin to shin-bone like a Lambourne find. The Welsh poet Owen Sheers commemorated the battle with his poem Mametz Wood (2000), including the words: This morning, twenty men buried in one long grave, a broken mosaic of bone linked arm in arm, their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre In 2014, National Theatre Wales performed Mametz ,

66-558: A distinct lack of "push" Sir Douglas Haig with Lt-General Henry Rawlinson visited the HQ of the Welsh Division to make their displeasure known. Major General Ivor Philipps , officer commanding the Welsh Division, was relieved of his command. Haig passed control of the Division to Major General Herbert Watts , commander of the 7th Division and told him to use it "as he saw fit". Watts planned

88-447: A full-scale attack for 9 July but organising the attacking formations took some time and the attack was postponed until 10 July 1916. The operational order was blunt, stating that the Division would attack the wood with the aim of "capturing the whole of it". The 10 July attack was on a larger scale than had been attempted earlier. Despite heavy casualties the fringe of the wood was soon reached and some bayonet fighting took place before

110-488: A northerly direction over a ridge, focusing on the German positions in the wood, between 7 July and 12 July 1916. On 7 July the men formed the first wave intending to take the wood in a matter of hours. However, strong fortification, machineguns and shelling killed and injured over 400 soldiers before they reached the wood. Further attacks by the 17th Division on 8 July failed to improve the position. Infuriated by what he saw as

132-529: A single handed attack on the enemy trenches in Mametz on 4 July 1916. The Welsh artist Christopher Williams painted The Welsh at Mametz Wood at the request of David Lloyd George , Secretary of State for War . Williams visited the scene in November 1916 and later made studies from a soldier supplied for the purpose. The painting is in the collection of National Museum Wales . The poet Robert Graves fought in

154-540: A tour of duty in Ireland and was stationed near Dublin . He was demobbed in 1921 and returned home to Tendring where he married Florence C. Day. The couple had five children. In his later years, Marshall continued to live in a small house, which was attached to a larger house in which he had worked for the owner since the Second World War . He kept by his bedside a wooden cross taken from the rubble of Albert Basilica at

176-522: A village in the Tendring district of Essex , close to Great Bromley , Great Bentley , Wivenhoe and Colchester . He was the eldest of three children born to James William Marshall and Ellen Marshall, née Skeet. His mother died in 1901, aged 24, leaving James to raise the children on his own. Marshall joined the Essex Yeomanry in 1915, at the age of seventeen, after lying about his age; he took part in

198-522: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Albert Marshall (veteran) Albert Elliot "Smiler" Marshall (15 March 1897 – 16 May 2005) was a British veteran of the First World War and the last surviving British cavalryman to have seen battle on the Western Front . Albert Elliott Marshall was born on 15 March 1897 in Elmstead Market ,

220-472: The Battle of Loos in the same year. He was given the nickname "Smiler" during his basic training at Stanway, Essex , where he threw a snowball at someone during drill, stood there looking innocent, but the sergeant suspected him and addressed him "You, smiler!" and that name stuck. Marshall served in the 1/1st Essex Yeomanry and later the 8th Battalion, Machine Gun Corps between 1915 and 1919 and saw action at

242-783: The Battle of the Somme , Battle of Arras , the Third Battle of Ypres , the Germany Offensive of 1918 as well as the Advance to Victory and the Army of Occupation campaigns at the end of the war. Marshall recalled the horrors of the battlefield and his memories of seeing many of his comrades blown to bits by enemy shells or mown down in No Man's Land by a hail of bullets. The Battle of the Somme, beginning on 1 July 1916, had no greater resonance for Smiler than all

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264-599: The Essex Yeomanry, the last man to have served in the cavalry. Mametz Wood The memorial, erected in 1987 by Welsh sculptor David Petersen , is a Welsh red dragon on top of a three-metre stone plinth, facing the wood and tearing at barbed wire . It was commissioned by the South Wales Branch of the Western Front Association following a public fund-raising appeal. The memorial is located near

286-534: The battle and described the wood immediately after the battle: It was full of dead Prussian Guards, big men, and dead Royal Welch Fusiliers and South Wales Borderers, little men. Not a single tree in the wood remained unbroken. The poet and visual artist David Jones , who took part in the battle, wrote a vivid description of the fighting in Mametz Wood in his long poem In Parenthesis (1937), including And here and there and huddled over, death-halsed to these,

308-554: The letters found next to the body of a man killed near Mametz Wood . In March 1917, Marshall suffered a blighty wound in the hand and was sent home. On his return he joined the Machine Gun Corps and fought at the Battle of Cambrai where he was captured as a Prisoner of War by the Germans. Smiler was released by his captors as they were short of rations and returned to the front. When the war ended in 1918, Marshall volunteered for

330-428: The other battles he had fought throughout the war. He had been sent to France in late 1915 and despite a number of periods of home leave had remained in or near the front line for the remainder of the war. He was present on the Somme for the first day of the offensive in which over 20,000 troops were killed in the first several hours, with 40,000 more injured, making the battle one of the heaviest death and wounded tolls of

352-409: The same term This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Marshall&oldid=1227312621 " Category : Human name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

374-613: The site of the engagement in northern France. It can be reached from the village of Mametz on the D64 road. On 12 July 2013, the Welsh Government announced that it was helping to fund refurbishment of the memorial in time for the 100th anniversary of the Battle in 2016. Mametz Wood was the objective of the 38th (Welsh) Division during the First Battle of the Somme . The attack was made in

396-409: The time of his death he was survived by one son; twelve grandchildren; twenty-four great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren. Marshall's legacy as one of the last surviving veterans of the First World War was that he was able to claim a number of records: the last man to wear the 1914-15 Star ; the last man to serve on the Somme and perhaps, the most significant for a man who had served in

418-598: The time of the Battle of Somme. In the final decade of his life, Marshall was awarded the Legion d’honneur and appeared on numerous television shows as well as attending a veterans' party at Buckingham Palace . He also took part in three pilgrimages to the battlefields of the First World War, including one to mark the 80th anniversary of the Third Battle of Ypres. Marshall died at the age of 108 on 16 May 2005 in Ashtead, Surrey . At

440-450: The war. Marshall had been kept well behind the lines during the opening day of the Somme campaign waiting for a breakthrough, however it did not come. As a result of his unit being kept back during the Somme, Marshall was not credited with being the last veteran of the opening day; nonetheless, he remembered the trauma and horror of that campaign and the images on the battlefield remained with him. He later recalled picking up and sending home

462-483: The wood was effectively cleared of the enemy. The Welsh Division had lost about 4,000 men killed or wounded in the engagement. It would not be used in a massed attack again until 31 July 1917. The wood still stands today, surrounded by farmland. Overgrown shell craters and trenches can still be made out. The war poet Siegfried Sassoon , of the Royal Welch Fusiliers , recorded in his memoirs that he had made

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484-461: The wood was entered and a number of German machine guns silenced. Fighting in the wood was fierce with the Germans giving ground stubbornly. The 14th ( Swansea ) (Service) Battalion, the Welsh Regiment , went into the attack with 676 men and after a day of hard fighting had lost almost 400 men killed or wounded before being relieved. Other battalions suffered similar losses. However, by 12 July

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