Record price for WWI plaque
A recently discovered Great War Memorial Plaque that rewrites
Black History in World War I sold for £10,540 (includes Buyer’s Premium) and achieved a world record price for a WWI memorial plaque at Dix Noonan Webb in auction of Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria. The plaque, which was estimated to fetch £600£800, related to Lieutenant Euan Lucie-Smith, 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who is believed to have been the first black officer commissioned into a British army regiment during the Great
War and is also believed to have been the first black officer casualty of the Great War, when he was killed in action on 25 April, 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres.
After much interest on the telephones, it was bought by
The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers Museum (Royal Warwickshire) due to substantial fundraising.
Like Walter Tull, Euan LucieSmith hailed from a mixed heritage background. He was born at Crossroads, St. Andrew, Jamaica, on 14 December, 1889 to John Barkley Lucie-Smith,
(the Postmaster of Jamaica), and Catherine ‘Katie’ Lucie-Smith
(nee Peynado Burke). He was educated in England, initially at Berkhamsted School, before Eastbourne College. Returning to Jamaica, he was commissioned into the Jamaica Artillery Militia on 10 November, 1911.
He appears as a Lieutenant in a later, pre-war, Forces of the Overseas and Dominions list. Just six weeks after the outbreak of war, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the regular force of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, appearing in the supplement to the London
Gazette of 30 November 1914.
He landed in France on March 17, 1915, and, just over a month later, was confirmed as being killed in action on 25 April 1915, aged
25, during the Second Battle of Ypres. (two years and 11 months before Walter Tull).
He has no known grave and is commemorated on Panel 2 to 3 of the Ploegsteert Memorial, Belgium. He is also commemorated on the Berkhamsted School Memorial, the Eastbourne College Memorial and has an entry in Jamaica in the Great War.