Lieutenant-Colonel H.D. Nelson-Smith
1st Battalion, Hampshire Regiment

I was behind the leading companies and its an old story because I had got 50 yards up the beach and was hit. Some soldier dragged me along a bit further and I was hit again. And that was really the end of the story … I remember the drip feed and being taken aboard an American [ship], otherwise I was out for the count.

(Nelson-Smith, IWM interview, Jan 1993)

Born on 30 November 1913, Harold David Nelson-Smith was commissioned into the Hampshire Regiment in 1934, and served with the 1st Battalion in India, Palestine and the Western Desert. He became second-in-command when the unit was attached the 231st Independent Brigade and participated in the defence of Malta before it joined the invasion of Sicily campaign. Nelson-Smith earned the Military Cross and assumed command of the battalion in September before it returned to the United Kingdom as part of the 50th Division.

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