PFC. MATTHEW A. SMITH, WWII: Felled by friendly fire in training accident
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| The battleship USS Arizona burns after being struck by several air-delivered armor-piercing bombs during Imperial Japan's Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. The Arizona today rests on the bottom of the harbor under the iconic USS Arizona Memorial. Fears of future Japanese attacks led the U.S. to build defenses on other islands, including Kaua'i, which is where Pfc. Matthew A. Smith met his demise to friendly fire in late April 1942. (Wikipedia Commons, public domain) |
Dec. 7, 1941 is a day that lives in infamy. Less well known is the uncertainty and fear that gripped the nation in the aftermath of Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
The United States did not know where the next attack might come. In fact, while avenging the attack was preeminent in the minds of many, the federal government was all too aware of the need to strengthen or create defensive positions against possible future attacks by the Empire of Japan.
Forgotten by most were the attacks on U.S. and British territory by the Japanese that coincided with the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941. The U.S. territories of the Commonwealth of the Philippines and Guam, ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the 1898 Spanish-American War, and the British colonies Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaya were all attacked that day.
Watching those sites fall, the U.S. focused on preventing further Japanese incursions on American territory, specifically Hawai'i. With that in mind, the Army Air Forces sent troops to its Barking Sands Army Air Forces Base on the island of Kaua'i in early 1942 to build defenses.
Among those troops was Irvington native, private first class Matthew Aloysius (Matty) Smith of 27 S. Eckar St. and more exactly, Company F of the 165th Infantry Regiment attached to the 27th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army Air Forces. His outfit, the 165th, was originally known as the 69th New York, or better still by its famous nickname given ]by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee during the Civil War, "The Fighting 69th." It has also been known as "The Fighting Irish" and "The Irish Brigade," celebrating the Irish immigrants who made up its ranks during the Civil War. It was known also as the 165th Infantry Regiment from 1917 to 1992. The Fighting Irish nickname is also the source of the University of Notre Dame's eponymous athletics nickname.
With his Irish heritage, joining an outfit like the 165th couldn't have been more appropriate.
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This is the DVD cover illustration for the 1940 film "The Fighting 69th" starring James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Dennis Morgan. It is not a stretch to think Irvington's Matty Smith might have seen this film before enlisting in the Fighting 69th's renamed successor, the 165th Infantry Regiment on Feb. 6, 1942. (Illustration courtesy Warner Home Video, copyright 2000) |
Smith was among the first Irvington residents drafted under the Selective Service Act of Sept. 16, 1940. He had completed his basic training before Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. More on that story later. First a closer look at Irvington's diminutive and unlikely hero.
Five-foot-four Matty Smith was born on Feb. 23, 1916 in Irvington to Joseph Patrick Smith, Irvington’s first chief of police, the village's police captain before the advent of an official police department. He was elevated to chief when the Irvington Police Department was officially established on Dec. 1, 1915, but remained colloquially known as Capt. Smith. Matty was the third-born son of Capt. Smith and his second wife, Julia Bergin (Dawson) Smith.
Capt. Smith joined the unofficial police department of the village in 1902 and policed the village until his death at 54 on Feb. 26, 1924. He actually was on duty up to a week or so before his death. Before being named chief, Capt. Smith served from 1909 to 1915 as captain under the old system where a captain would have two or three patrol officers (called patrolmen at the time, since women weren't eligible) working under him. To show how primitive policing conditions were during the era, a local report indicated that in 1915, the force had acquired a pair of horses and a pair of bicycles. No cars yet.
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| U.S. Army Air Forces Pfc. Matthew Aloysius Smith's grave marker at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is barely legible today. (Photo courtesy FindAGrave.com) |
Matty Smith had two older brothers, Joseph Patrick Jr., 3, and William (Billy or Smitty), 2, when he was born. Younger brother Edward John would come along a year later, followed by sister Margaret Mary (Peggy) in 1919. He and his siblings were born to Capt. Smith and Julia, and joined a much larger blended family that included step-sisters Ellen (known as Nellie), Elizabeth and Mary (known as Mae) ages 16, 14 and 10 when he was born, and a step-brother, John, 13, when Matty was born. The step-siblings were born to Capt. Smith's first wife Ellen who was born in 1866, married in 1889 and died in 1910.
Matty's brother Billy became well-known in the village as the Irvington Volunteer Fire Department's chief driver, its only paid full-time employee, in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Smiths' home at 27 South Eckar Street, where Matty grew up, eventually became the property of his sister Peggy (Smith) Matney, a widow who moved to her childhood home from Briarcliff in 1966 and raised her family in the house after the deaths of her mother Julia at 82 in 1964 and unmarried brother Billy, who had lived in the house his entire life, at 51 on Aug. 12, 1966.
Julia Dawson Smith faced a daunting task in raising her combined family after the death of Capt. Smith, but somehow managed. She got a hand from likely contributions from her sons including Matty who held a variety of jack-of-all-trades jobs for Irvington residents and mom-and-pop businesses. Among his regular employers were senior citizens Catherine C. (Duff) Tewey, an invalid living at 60 Main Street (southwest corner of South Eckar) and Vincenzo "Pop" Maffucci, a barber at 52 Main Street (site of Sunnyside Federal Savings & Loan Association today) as well as widowed Mrs. Henry Graves III of Ardsley Park.
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| Nawiliwili Bay on Kaua'i, Hawaii (pictured) was fortified by U.S. troops after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The military used the beaches of Kaua'i as training sites for the types of amphibious landings that would be used throughout the Pacific theatre in World War II as part of the Allied island-hopping military campaign. Pfc. Matty Smith was accidentally killed by friendly fire during one of those training exercises. (Public domain photo) |
An Irvington Gazette newspaper editorial on April 30, 1942, shortly after Matty's death, described the young man who'd dropped out of school (he attended Immaculation Conception School and Irvington public schools) no later than the eighth grade and was well-known around town:
"Matthew Smith was an ordinary boy in an ordinary village. He liked to have fun. He didn’t much care about working and had more courage than most of us in that he worked at what he wanted to work and refused to work when he didn’t like the job. He had the strength of a Samson and the kindness and gentleness of a small child. For his friends he would do anything.
"For long hours, day after day and night after night, he nursed an old Italian barber [Pop Maffucci] who was his friend; to an elderly woman, [the widowed Catherine Tewey], an invalid for years, whom he had known since childhood, he was as solicitous as a son in his desire to see that she wanted for nothing that his service could give; to those for whom he worked he gave himself wholeheartedly, thinking nothing of time or personal comfort as long as the job he was doing was done to the satisfaction of his employer."
In its April 30, 1942 remembrance of Matty, the Irvington Gazette talked about his entry into the military:
"When the call came for him to take his place in the group being sent off in one of the early contingents called from Irvington under the Selective Service Act, he grumbled a bit but he went willingly and with a cheerful goodbye.
"When he came home on furlough there was to him nothing finer than the Army and the buddies he had found within its all-embracing ranks.
"And so Matthew Smith went first to California after the news of Pearl Harbor and then on to Hawaii. There in that far-off island [chain] in the Pacific his life has come to an end, far from Irvington, but strangely enough a greater figure in Irvington forevermore than had he never left its familiar sidewalks."
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| This map shows the geographic relationship of Kaua'i to O'ahu and Pearl Harbor. |
On Feb. 27, 1942, some 22,000 soldiers of the 27th Infantry Division, including the 165th Infantry Regiment Combat Team — which included Smith — set sail from San Francisco on an 11-day trip to Hilo in Hawaii, still a U.S. territory at the time, statehood not to come for 17 years. After landing on March 10, the 165th Infantry Regiment was assigned to Kaua’i where it arrived on March 16.
The Garden Isle newspaper of Kaua'i reported on the 165th, saying the regiment arrived at "... Port Allen and was immediately trucked to Barking Sands, where it built and manned beach defenses in the vicinity of Barking Sands Airfield against a possible invasion by Japan."
Reports indicated that concertina wire laid by U.S. forces blanketed and protected the beaches of Kaua'i and other Hawaiian islands throughout the war.
War-fear fever was at a peak at the time and for good reason. On the night of Dec. 30-31, 1941, a Japanese submarine fired shells from its deck gun at targets on Kaua’i. Then, on Jan. 28, 1942, a Japanese submarine torpedoed and sank the U.S. Army transport vessel USS General Royal T. Frank between the islands of Hawaii and Maui southeast of Kaua’i, killing 24 of the 60 men on board.
In response, the troops newly arrived in Kaua’i built bunkers to house four Navy 7-inch guns capable of firing 168-pound plus shells some 8.5 miles to sea and ammunition depots a mile back from the bunkers to protect the shells the guns fired.
The 165th were among more than 40,000 GIs stationed on Kaua'i at any given time during the war. The Garden Isle newspaper of Kaua'i reported: "... the Army established camps, training areas, firing ranges and artillery impact zones for the purpose of training troops for combat in the Pacific.
Training was specific to future island-hopping campaigns, the Army using the coral-laden beach approaches and heavily forested areas of the island to prepare the young soldiers for future island-hopping campaigns. Landings also took place at night without lights and only compasses to guide the trainees.
How Pfc. Matty Smith died remains somewhat of a mystery. For obvious, if not always good reasons, the military tended to avoid going into depth in reports of accidental friendly-fire deaths.
The Irvington Gazette reported it this way in its Thursday, April 30, 1942 edition:
"Irvington recorded its first casualty in the war this week when it was announced on Sunday [April 26, 1942] by the War Department in a brief message ho his mother that Matthew Smith, private first class, son of Mrs. Joseph Smith of South Eckar Street, and the late Captain Smith of the village police department, had accidentally been shot on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.
"Details of how Private Smith … met his death were lacking in the brief communication from Washington but it is assumed that it probably occurred during maneuvers or drill while the regiment of which he was a member was undergoing training in Hawaii en route to the Pacific front.
"The message came by telegraph to village police headquarters in the Town Hall on Sunday evening and was thence relayed to Rev. S.J. McGovern, assistant pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception, of which Private Smith was a parishioner. Father McGovern broke the news to the family at about 9:30 Sunday evening and it was not long before it had spread through the entire village."
Pfc. Smith was remembered at a Mass of Requiem at Immaculate Conception Church and buried alongside his late father at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.
The final words on Pfc. Smith come eloquently from that April 30, 1942 remembrance on the front page of the Irvington Gazette:
"Matthew Smith has given his life for his country, the first Irvington boy called upon to make the greatest of all sacrifices in the second great war of our generation.
"Matthew Smith, private first class in the United States Army, accidentally shot while with his regiment on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, died as gloriously as if he had been in the charge of another Light Brigade.
"To the world at large Matthew Smith was just another of the millions and millions of men drawn into a war in which they have no personal interest, just another cog in the vast war machine the United States — Matthew’s country— is building to battle for the things we all fundamentally believe in but which few of us have the words to describe.
"To Irvington, Matthew Smith was a person, having his own place in the community, humble though some of us may have thought it was. But now his memory is on another plane. He is no longer just one of the boys in the army. He’s one of our boys called upon to pay with his life for the things, the ideals and the traditions that make the United States what it is. That he is the first boy from our own community to be killed in the line of duty makes him a significant figure among us, a symbol of what the war really means. And his passing brings the war closer to all of us."
By Joyce Kilmer
We’ve taken on the contract, and when the job is through
We’ll let them hear a Yankee cheer and an Irish ballad too.
The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls shall fill the air with song,
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is neared by our triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the Kaiser in a sack,
New York will be seen one Irish green when the Sixty-ninth comes hack.
We brought back from the Border our Flag—’twas never lost;
We left behind the land we love, the stormy sea we crossed.
We heard the cry of Belgium, and France the free and fair,
For where there’s work for fighting-men, the Sixty-ninth is there.
The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls shall fill the air with song,
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is neared by our triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the Kaiser in a sack,
New York will be seen one Irish green when the Sixty-ninth comes back.
The men who fought at Marye’s Heights will aid us from the sky,
They showed the world at Fredericksburg how Irish soldiers die.
At Blackburn Ford they think of us, Atlanta and Bull Run;
There are many silver rings on the old flagstaff but there’s room for another one.
The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls shall fill the air with song,
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is neared by our triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the Kaiser in a sack,
New York will be seen one Irish green when the Sixty-ninth comes back.
God rest our valiant leaders dead, whom we cannot forget;
They’ll see the Fighting Irish are the Fighting Irish yet.
While Ryan, Roe, and Corcoran on History’s pages shine,
A wreath of laurel and shamrock waits the head of Colonel Hine.
The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls shall fill the air with song,
And the Shamrock be cheered as the port is neared by our triumphant throng.
With the Potsdam Palace on a truck and the Kaiser in a sack,
New York will be seen one Irish green when the Sixty-ninth comes back.
Links to similar personal stories about Irvington heroes who gave their lives for their country*
◼ Pfc. Cuthbert Powell Sinkking: Class of '42 gave 3 of its own to the ages
◼ Pfc. John Joseph (Joe) Gilchrist: Died after capture of Saint-Lo
◼ Lt. (j.g.) George Eddison Haines: Lost at sea, awarded Silver Star
◼ Pfc. Joseph Thomas Costello: Teen lost life in Battle of Mindanao
◼ MSgt. James Peter Kelley: Survived WW II and Korea; died in fall
◼ S1 Archibald Ronald: Lost on next-to-last Navy ship sunk by U-boat
◼ TSgt. Raffaele R. (Ralph) Reale: A hero's life ended on East Sunnyside Lane
◼ Sgt. Robert F. Morrison: Took fight to the enemy, fell in Alsace
◼ Lt. Col. George W. Beavers Jr.: Re-upped as private; died on war's eve
◼ F2 Claude L. Bronnes: Went down with the Atlanta at Guadalcanal
◼ MMLC William James Downey: Died aboard ship off West Coast
◼ Pvt. Alick Main Ian: Died taking Aachen, first German city to fall in WWII
◼ Pfc. George Mills Hill Jr.: Survived Okinawa, only to fall in South Korea
◼ Pvt. Peter R. Robinson: Lost to shadows of time over Pacific, answers never found
WORLD WAR I
* World War II deaths include soldiers who enlisted during the World War II era and died while still in uniform, either killed in combat, or died of accidental or other causes. Two of the World War II fallen served in both World War II and the Korean Conflict and are listed under World War II. One of those died in an accidental fall after surviving both wars, the other was killed in action in Korea after surviving World War II.World War I deaths also include battlefield deaths and accidental or illness-related deaths by service members still in uniform at the time of their passing.
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