Before ‘Saving Private Ryan’ there was ’Saving Private Smith’

Carved into the simple obelisk commemorating the fallen are the names of five sons of Margaret and John McDowell Smith.

Before ‘Saving Private Ryan’ there was ’Saving Private Smith’

There’s a story behind the name that isn’t there, a sixth brother, Wilfred, and a century after the First World War, an historian has dug out the archives.

Wilfred Smith’s survival is a story of sacrifice amid a war that demanded so much of it from virtually every family in Britain.

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