Gerald Smyth

Lieutenant-Colonel Gerald Bryce Ferguson Smyth, DSO and Bar, French Croix de Guerre and Belgian Croix de guerre (7 September 1885 – 17 July 1920) was a British Army officer and police officer who was at the centre of a mutiny in the ranks of the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Irish War of Independence.

Smyth volunteered at the outbreak of World War I even though he had been offered a position as Professor of Mathematics at the Royal School of Military Engineering, Chatham.

Serving throughout the war he was seriously injured on a number of occasions, losing his left arm at the elbow during the Battle of the Aisne at Givenchy whilst rescuing a wounded soldier who was caught in the open under heavy shellfire.

He was cited for a mention in dispatches for "consistent skill and daring," after being severely wounded, receiving shrapnel pieces in his right shoulder which at the time was believed would permanently weaken his arm.

In his memoirs, Brigadier General Walker wrote of Smyth in the Royal Engineers Journal: "No words can do justice to his services during the retreat of 1914.

On 19 June 1920 Smyth allegedly made a speech to the ranks of the Listowel RIC in which he was reported to have said: "Police and military will patrol the country roads at least five nights a week.

However, Mee's claims were denied by Smyth plus Major General Henry Hugh Tudor and Inspector John M. Regan, who were both present at the occasion.

[5][6] Smyth was summoned to London to brief Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his own written account of his remarks was read to Parliament and debated: "I wish to make the present situation clear to all ranks.

On the evening of 17 July 1920 he was in the smoking room when a six-man IRA team led by Dan "Sandow" O'Donovan entered and allegedly said to him, "Colonel, were not your orders to shoot on sight?

[12] The date of Smyth's burial coincided with the mass expulsion or "clearing" of Catholics, Socialists and Protestants (that were considered disloyal) from Belfast's shipyards, foundries, linen mills and other commercial concerns that was part of the Troubles of the early 1920s.

Osbert Smyth was fatally shot in October 1920 while trying to arrest IRA members Dan Breen and Seán Treacy at a house in Drumcondra.

Several other Cairo Gang members were shot dead early in the morning of Bloody Sunday, 21 November 1920, on the orders of Michael Collins.