Labourer Ross Smith served in the AIF for over two years but his time on the front line was a total of only six months before he was killed in action on 4 October 1917 in the Third Battle of Ypres.
When Ross Smith enlisted at Holsworthy on 29 August 1915 he declared his age to be ’33 years 9 months’ and that he was married to Iantha Ada Smith of Oxford Street, Lidcombe. After a standard four months training in Australia, Ross Smith embarked on the Medic on 30 December 1915. Several further months were spent in Egypt before Smith boarded the Transylvania and arrived in the French port of Marseilles on 4 April 1916.
The troops were taken by train to the nursery sector in the far north of France and Private Ross Smith was taken on strength of the 3rd Battalion on 18 May 1916. Two months later Ross Smith was wounded, ‘gunshot wound left leg’, during the fierce fighting around Pozières and Smith was taken back to England via hospitals in Rouen and Le Havre.
Private Smith remained in England for the rest of the year, returning to France on 1 January 1917. The first six months of the year 1917 were spent at Australian bases in Etaples and Le Havre until Smith was under orders to return to his unit, the 3rd Battalion on 25 June 1917. During September 1917 Smith was promoted to L/Corporal and he spent the month of September at the Infantry Brigade school. Four days after returning to the 3rd Battalion, Smith was killed in action in the Passchendaele offensive. Lance Corporal Ross Smith was buried on Broodseinde Ridge but after the war his grave could not be found. His name was inscribed on the Menin Gate Memorial arch when that monument was unveiled by the British in 1927 in the Belgian town of Ypres (now Ieper).
Smith’s widow, Iantha Ada Smith, moved to the NSW town of Wellington in November 1919 and it was there that she received the memorial scroll. However, by August 1922 Iantha had remarried and moved back to Sydney, to North Street, Auburn, where she received her late husband’s medals.
Ross Smith is honoured on the following memorials in Australia
Auburn Public School First World War Honour Roll
Auburn Old Boys Public School Great War Honour Roll
Roll of Honour Australian War Memorial Canberra