A Must buy - Len Smith’s war journal

The publication of Len Smith’s war journal was widely reported in the press during the week. This post is largely lifted from the Guardian article. Having read this and other articles I’m definitely purchasing a copy (see below)

During WWI Len "Smithie" Smith was to be found by day in a shell hole in no man's land with pad and pencil - or perhaps poking his head out of a British trench to make a quick sketch. Later, in a candlelit cellar, he would painstakingly produce detailed images that were designed to help the top brass plan their war strategy, but would not have looked out of place as works of art on a general's drawing room wall.

Smithie’s story is being told for the first time after his diary, complete with hundreds of vivid illustrations, was published on Tuesday (7 Oct). His journal recalls daring missions, such as when he produced a detailed sketch of an oak tree just six metres from enemy lines so engineers could produce an exact copy - with a built-in observation post - that was swapped for the real thing. But it also describes more ordinary but moving tasks he was commissioned to undertake, including painting the names of fallen comrades on simple wooden crosses or scrubbing out German street names in northern France and replacing them with the French originals. Remarkably, even in the heat of battle he produced work that was not merely functional but beautiful.


Before the war, Smith had a fledgling career as a commercial. At the age of 22 he enlisted as an infantryman. He hid his notebook and pencils in his leggings and kept an illustrated diary. Smith started off sketching his friends. He drew his pal Sam reading the letter informing him his son had been born. He sketched caricatures of friends after the regimental barber had shorn their hair. Smith also produced images of British and German equipment. On one page a rudimentary British grenade - explosive packed into an old jam tin - is juxtaposed with the much more professional German equivalent.

Smith's skill with the rifle and the pencil were noticed after a year and he was made a sniper and an observer. Delighted at no longer having to hide his pencils and paper, Smith spent whole days hidden away in no man's land making sketches and taking notes until the evening mist fell and he could crawl back home. In 1916 he was ordered to make a detailed sketch of the German lines at Vimy ridge in northern France. Despite constant shelling from the Germans he produced a two-metre-long image of the enemy's position. "I had to scramble all over the shop making rough pencil notes," he wrote. "Real risky work." The brigadier-general was clearly impressed with the work's artistic merits as well as the strategic benefit. Smith recalls that he declared it "very cleverly executed ... but above all infinitely useful".

His most startling job involved sketching an oak tree stump that stood within the barbed wire six metres from German trenches. Engineers then produced a copy of the tree in iron and steel, complete with ladder running up through the hollow centre. "Scene shifters" removed the real tree and replaced it with the fake one by night, "praying that Jerry will not tumble the game". They didn't and, amazingly, a man was able to scramble through tunnels to the tree and observe what the enemy was up to.

War ended, and Smith's final sketch is of a one-way ticket back home that reads: "Blighty route. Single to England-home-beauty."After he returned, Smith had a successful career as a commercial artist. He never spoke about the war but tried unsuccessfully to get his diary published. He died in December 1974 at Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, at the age of 83, believing his diary would languish forever in a cupboard. But his great-nephew, Dave Mason, has published it by putting the collection online at greatwarartist.com.

The journal can be purchased as an e-book for £9.95. Money well spent in my view!