The Missing of the Somme
The Missing of the Somme Historian Charles Bean observed during the Somme offensive how ‘a scrap piece of iron flung at random on the hillside in front of Mouquet drove its course right through to the furthest end of the world.’ It was a random scrap of iron that struck Captain Ralph Ekin-Smyth in the failed attack on Mouquet Farm on 3 September 1916. His body unrecovered, Ralph was classified as missing in action. For months afterwards, his wife Hilda waited patiently for news about her husband, but little came. Then ‘out of the blue’, she received a parcel containing his prized Kodak camera. Then in 1923, Hilda received an unexpected letter. It explained that Ralph’s remains, along with those of 18 others, had been discovered in a large crater just beyond the farm. The contents in his badly deteriorated wallet had helped to identify him. Hilda requested that it be returned so her sons, Raymond, Walter, and Kenneth would have something to remember their father by. For these young boy