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The Rushden Echo, 5th November 1915, transcribed by Gill Hollis
Rushden Officer At Home
Receives Special Attention
From an Enemy Sniper
Six Britishers With 200 German Prisoners
 Lieut. G. F. Smythem, formerly assistant master at the National Schools, Rushden, and who, received promotion on the field, spent last Monday night in Rushden with his friends Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Packwood. He left France on Monday morning for a few days’ leave in England in order that he may obtain his new equipment. In the course of a brief conversation with a representative of the “Rushden Echo” he casually mentioned one or two thrilling experiences through which he has passed.
As the English and German troops were fighting in the large village of Loos, he was coming in at the other end of the village with a convoy when an enemy sniper singled him out for special attention, the bullet whizzing right across the top of his head, so close that he actually felt the heat of the missile. Lieut. Smythem had his cap off at the time, or it is probable that otherwise he would have required a new one.
During the same battle he saw the extraordinary sight of a lance-corporal and five privates escorting over 200 German prisoners to the rear. The woman and children of the district were showing their “affection” for the Boches by slinging mud and stones at them. The night before the big battle Lieut. Smythem and his men were engaged in rigging up a building that had been captured from the Germans, as a storehouse, this building being situated about four miles to the rear of the firing line. The intensity of the bombardment that preceded the advance may well be imagined from Lieut. Smythem’s statement that every window in the building was smashed by the concussion of the big guns. Asked how he obtained his commission, Lieut. Smythem proved very reticent and said that he preferred not to give any details, but told our representative that since his enlistment he had held every rank from a private up to his present position. He had been attached to a cavalry division and has therefore moved about a great deal. At Ypres he had a narrow escape. He had left a building used as an office but ten minutes later when the Germans dropped a shell on it and blew it to smithereens. He was gratified to hear, he said, that recruiting was so brisk in Rushden, and added that Rushden men could not do better than join the Northants Regiment, of which he had heard some fine accounts from officers at the front. The Steelbacks, he said, are splendid fighters, and whenever they take a trench never relinquish it again.
Asked his views as to how things are going on the western front, Lieut. Smythem said that in his opinion the food question will settle the war.
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