Genealogical war memorials of Bournemouth’s fallen.
Le Cateau: August 26th, 1914
Introduction
Tales from the Front (5) tells the story of Harold Rowland Smith, a native of Victorian Bournemouth who fought in the Great War. He had served with the 2nd Battalion, Dorset Regiment, based in Poona, India. By August 1914, he had returned to England, where he transferred to the regiment’s 1st Battalion. He fell at the Battle of Cateau, a major engagement fought during the early part of the Retreat from Mons.
Tales from the Front (5): Part 1
Stand and fight
Dawn at Le Cateau, August 26th, misty; the anniversary of Crecy, a battle fought by the English over half a millennium before, three days’ march away. The previous day, the Dorsets had experienced the new type of warfare. Five enemy aircraft had observed Smith and his colleagues trudging along. The 1st Dorsets had survived their desperate fighting withdrawal on August 24th. Smith may have served with the 2nd Dorsets in Poona (Pune), India. Soldiering of the old type: sparkling kit, an endless parade, but training on how to fire fifteen rounds a minute. The professionals would have read the signs: extensive troop arrivals at night, forming a line of units along the road, the officers running around in response to frequent messages. The BEF would pause its withdrawal to Paris. Its second corps would turn to face the enemy, this time in a more benign terrain than ash-heaps at Mons.
Tales from the Front (5): Part 2
Family
The army ran in Smith’s blood. The 1871 census records a Wiltshire barracks as his grandfather’s birthplace. Smith’s father had served with the RHA, a gunner. The birthplaces of Smith’s elder siblings place the family at barracks in Christchurch and St John’s Wood, London. His grandfather had left his parents in Wiltshire, moving down to the rural hinterland of Wimborne, Dorset, by the 1850s. This area consisted of many rural settlements, forming a maze where the inhabitants dwelt on the edge of hardship. Most of the men laboured for a living, for the most part in agricultural employment. Families would rotate through the area, attracted by the bait of work. Smith’s grandfather baptised his aunts and uncles at Tarrant Rushton, Gussage, and Witchampton, a universe perhaps ten miles in diameter. His mother had broken away, come to Bournemouth, married there, and settled in Parkstone after her husband left the army.
Trouble indoors?
Widowed soon after Smith’s birth, his mother remarried in 1889. Her second husband, from the same area as his new wife, laboured for a living. New children entered the family. The stepchildren from the previous marriage had their names changed. Smith became Harold Maidment. Then, in 1901, Smith’s mother listed herself as ‘widow’, while Smith, 15, had retaken his former surname. By 1911, however, the stepfather had returned, perhaps earlier. Turbulence may have run through the household. Maidment may have served a prison sentence. Her false reference to her married status may indicate she tried to protect her social standing. This may have caused Smith to leave, for he joined the 2nd Dorsets, who served in India. By 1913, however, he returned and married a bricklayer’s daughter from Wareham. She had worked in service. On departure for France, he left one child in the house, another in the womb.
Tales from the Front (5): Part 3
The sad day
II Corps stretched along the road running from Le Cateau to Cambrai. During the day, along this line, the British troops became engaged in desperate encounters. Some battalions suffered a high level of casualties. Notable bravery occurred. Unlike Mons, where rifle fire characterised much of the encounter, Le Cateau became an artillery battle, the Germans taking advantage of their superiority with this weapon. At first, however, the Dorsets saw little action. ‘Our part of the line was not directly attacked’. The men heard ‘very heavy rifle fire from the direction of our right’. At one point, they contemplated a counterattack, but did not get permission. Thus, compared to Mons, the Dorsets had a quiet day. Late in the afternoon, however, as they withdrew, they came under artillery fire several times. That day, they incurred very few casualties. At Le Cateau, they lost three men, but Smith lay among them.
Aftermath
After the war, Smith’s widow continued to live in Parkstone, with two children to raise, one born after her husband’s demise. She did not appear to remarry. No further information has emerged about either child. Two of Smith’s brothers also fought in the war. One had already joined the army by 1911. After the war, he would resume his career as a professional soldier, becoming a CSM at Bovington. He may have served with T.E. Shaw, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia.
After Le Cateau, the BEF continued withdrawing. By September 5th, however, they attacked, pushing the Germans back. The 1st Dorsets participated in the Battles of the Marne and the Aisne, without incurring major casualties. Later, they moved northwards to the area which would become the killing ground of Ypres. Here, in familiar terrain, the industrial landscape of La Bassee, the battalion suffered high losses in desperate fighting.
Takeaway
Tales from the Front (5) has explored the life, world, and military service of Harold Rowland Smith (1886-1914), an infantryman serving with the 1st Battalion, Dorset Regiment. He had survived the close encounter at Mons to fall at Le Cateau, although his unit had a quiet day. One of three men killed in that battle, he may have fallen because of artillery fire.
‘Tales from the Front’
A collection of personal stories honouring the Bournemouth natives who gave their lives on the battlefield and the regiments with which they served. Blending social and military history with genealogical insight, it explores their roots, families, occupations, and the ultimate sacrifices they made for their country.
Set against the backdrop of regimental war diaries and enriched by period media accounts, the series offers a powerful and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes — a mosaic of personal courage within the broader sweep of history.
Serving as a companion and continuation of Victorian Bournemouth, Tales from the Front forms part of News from the Past: History for the Rest of Us.
References
For references and engagement, please get in touch. Main primary sources: here and here (subscriptions needed). For War Diaries, go here. See also here. The featured picture shows an imagined scene.
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