Online Articles On Leonard Smith

"Leonard Smith, a sapper with the Royal Engineer's Special Branch, was often armed with no more than a crumpled piece of paper, a pencil and crayons.

His diary records that he took huge risks to sketch German troop positions, their weapons, formations and movements.

He hid the finished sketches, some in full colour, down his trousers and they were later used to plan military strategy.

In one of his missions in Arras, France, in 1915, Mr Smith crept within yards of an enemy headquarters and drew a tree so accurately that a hollow steel replica could be recreated.

Soldiers removed the real tree under cover of darkness and replaced it with the replica, which was then used as a listening post. A soldier stationed inside was able to report back every German movement.

A network of underground tunnels gave soldiers access to the 'tree'.

Mr Smith, known to his comrades as 'Smithie', wrote in his diary: "The spot where the natural twin tree stood now would commence a job of much daring danger and need for caution."

In another sortie, Mr Smith spent four days avoiding mortar shells and sniper fire to produce a two-yard long, panoramic view of enemy front line troops at Vimy Ridge.

He wrote in his diary: "the Huns' shelling was almost incessant. So I had to scramble over the top, making rough pencil notes over a period of four days - real hard risky work, and at dusk poling back to the billet cellar to prepare the whole thing as a finished coloured sketch by the aid of the candle."

Mr Smith's great nephew, David Mason, has published a book containing the sketches, 'The Pictures and Diary of a Wartime Artist'.

Mr Mason, 62, of Woodford Green, Essex, said: "Len, like most of his generation, was a humble man who did not boast or revel in what he had been through during the war."

Mr Smith died in 1974, aged 83."

A link to Smithies Art Online.