Smyth, Kenneth Bowes Inman, born on 31-01-1907, in Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, 
the son of Charles Inman Smyth and Jessie Smyth, Wood Leys, Finchfield, Wolverhampton. Kenneth attended Malvern College, Worcestershire, from 1920 to 1924, where he was a School Prefect and Head of House, he also joined the Officer Training Corps.
He was commissioned, as a Second Lieutenant, in The South Wales Borderers 
30-08-1926 and on the 4 September he was posted to the 2nd Battalion, and embarked on the ‘Assyria’ for India. Kenneth arrived there on the 7 December, but the stay there was brief, as on the 01-01-1927 the 2nd Battalion was sent to Aden. He remained there until the 10-11-1928, when he returned to the U.K. to attend a Course of Instruction.
Kenneth was promoted to full Lieutenant on 30-08-1929, and returned to the 2nd Battalion, The South Wales Borderers on 18-01-1934. He married Elizabeth Elspeth Geddes on the 21-12-1932, and the following year they had a daughter.
On the 22-10-1934 he was reposted for attachment to MI2 (b), but completed this attachment on the 14-01-1935. He was then posted to the 1st Battalion on the 26-11-1935, and embarked for India on the 14-03-1936, where he was stationed in the Rawalpindi District as a Staff Station Officer. Here he was appointed the Official Interpreter in Russian on the 28-10-1936. Then on the 31-01-1937 Smyth was appointed Staff Station Officer 1st Class at Rawalpindi, at the same time being second for that post. On the 05-08-1937 he was promoted to Captain and remained seconded.
He embarked at Karachi on the 02-08-1939, arriving in the UK on the 24 August, and took up a Staff Appointment on the 21 October. On the 11-01-1940 he attended an Intelligence School Course at Minley Manor, in Camberley, completing it on the 04-05-1940. The next day he was appointed GSO III (MI2 (b)) replacing Capt. Hirsch of the Welsh Regiment.
On the 24-06-1940 he took up the appointment of GSO III (I) at XI Corps 
in Bishops Stortford. However, within a month he had been selected for an appointment as GSO II (I) with No 4 Military Mission, taking up this post on the 20-08-1940. Four days later he was granted the Acting Rank of Major. The following month he had another change of appointment taking up the post of GSO Home Forces, but had to relinquish the Acting Rank of Major, but soon after this he was posted to the Headquarters Aldershot Area as a General Staff Officer Class II, and on 04-12-1940, he was promoted to Temporary Major.
On the 22-11-1943 the 10th Battalion, along with other elements of the 1st Airborne Division 
, under command of Major General Robert Elliott “Roy” Urquhart 
embarked for the UK, disembarking there on the 10-12-1943. Lieut-Colonel Smyth and his Headquarters settled into Somerby in Leicestershire.
After training and preparing for numerous operations after the Normandy invasion the chance for action came on Monday, 18-09-1944. The 10th Battalion, 
along with the whole 4th Parachute Brigade, 
and its attachments, were going to land in Holland as part of the second lift of operation ‘Market-Garden’. The jump onto DZ ‘Y’, Ginkel Heath, was met by stiff German resistance and some of the aircraft were hit. When Lieut-Colonel. Smyth finally got his Headquarters together and was given a ‘roll call’ he was short of approximately 100 men. Worse still the plan had to be changed and instead of moving directly to the east into their allotted defensive positions, they were to remain where they were to cover the move of the rest of the 4th Parachute Brigade south-east towards Wolfheze and Oosterbeek. The 10th Battalion were not to get going until just after mid-night and formed the rear-guard of the Brigade. It took them from 01.00 hours until 10.00 hours to move into position for the attack that had been planned to try and break through to the north of Arnhem.
The 10th Battalion was ordered to withdraw from the pumping station, just before the Polish gliders came in to land on LZ-L, half a mile away from the area. Captain Nick Hanmer, the Adjutant, was with Headquarters when the order came through over one of their radio sets. He told his Colonel that they couldn’t do that as it was always said to never disengage while under attack. Captain Hanmer shouted across to Lieut-Colonel Smyth: “We can’t withdraw from here – the Jerries are all around us.” The Commanding Officer shouted back: “We’ve got our orders – let’s get going!” Orders were sent out to each of the Battalion’s companies, and the withdrawal got underway without serious loss.
As the 4th Parachute Brigade’s vehicles and equipment were slowly passed through a tunnel underneath the railway line, the 10th Battalion were charged with holding the ground west of the area. Now with only 100 men, Smyth began to fortify his men inside Wolfheze, and also made use of some glider pilots present and a large force of men separated from the 156 Battalion. nickname Red Devils 
under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Richard des Voeux 
However the expected German attack on Wolfheze did not come during the night.
Death and burial ground of Smyth, Kenneth Bowes Inman.
On the morning of Thursday 21, the Germans made a determined attempt to remove the 10th Battalion from their positions. The initial assaults were all repelled, but a self-propelled gun was later placed where it could not be attacked, and it proceeded to blow the occupied buildings apart, sometimes using phosphorus shells to set them alight. During this assault, Smyth was severely wounded in the stomach. Unconscious, he was brought down into the cellar of No.2 Annastraat 
with the other wounded. Upon waking it became clear that he was utterly disorientated and kept on asking “Where am I?” As he drifted in and out of consciousness, the owner of the house Mrs Bertje Voskuil 
tried to explain that he was in Holland, at Oosterbeek, but he didn’t understand.
Soon after, German troops moved into the buildings and captured most of those inside. A rather stereotypical German officer entered the cellar; a seemingly hideous man, with a centre parting and a monocle on a ribbon. Lieut-Colonel. Kenneth Smyth regained consciousness and asked to see a commanding German officer. The man spoke no English and asked Mrs Voskuil what “that man” wanted. She was quite outraged and abruptly said that “The Colonel” needed a doctor. He left and returned several minutes later with a German doctor. He briefly examined Smyth’s stomach wound and asked Mrs Voskuil to “Tell the officer I am sorry I have to hurt him but I must look at his wound. Tell him to grit his teeth.” As the doctor began to pull back the clothing around the wound, Smyth fell unconscious once more.
Lieut-Colonel. Smyth was left paralysed from the waist down, and was moved to St Elizabeth’s Hospital in Arnhem. 
Kenneth occupied a room with only two other patients in it, one of whom was Briggadier John Winthrop Hackett: 
‘My companions in the room were a glider pilot officer called Robson with a fractured leg-he was to be moved out before long – and my poor old friend Kenneth Smyth, the Lieutenant Colonel who had been the Commanding Officer of the 10th Parachute Battalion in my brigade since we had first raised it in Egypt. He had been wounded in the arm on the third day, in the woods, and again in the stomach and spine during the tremendous fight put up by the remnants of his battalion in Oosterbeek, for the defence of the houses east of the M.D.S. He was paralysed from the waist down and lived – but only just – with tubes in his stomach. He was very low. He was to die a little later but we had been parted by then.
I was making good progress. On the fifth or sixth day after the operation a Dutch nurse gave me a cup of thin soup. Soon I was getting three cups a day and before long tea as well. Then McGowan found on one of his expeditions a big tin of Oval tine and Kenneth Smyth and I were given hot mixtures of it. I drank mine most gratefully.
Poor Kenneth was not doing well. Much of the time he was in a coma and even when he was fully conscious he could speak only with difficulty. We managed nonetheless, at intervals, to talk a good deal together and by the time I was promoted to tea I had had from him names and the material for citations for any decorations he wished to have recommended in his battalion. These I wrote out as best I could, with the intention of getting them into the right hands somehow or other later on. I wondered whether Kenneth would himself survive, to receive a richly deserved award for gallantry on his own account. He was almost completely helpless now and was being washed and handled like a little child.’
After a few weeks an escape was arranged for Brigadier Hackett: ‘I said a hasty goodbye to Kessel and McGowan and came to Kenneth Smyth. He was dozing.
‘Goodbye,’ I said gently. ‘I’m off.’
There was no reply.
‘Good luck!’ I said.
He gave no sign.’
A little while after this Lieut-Colonel Smyth was transferred to the Juliana Hospital at Apeldoorn, 
where he died on the 26-10-1944, age 37. Initially buried in the ‘Heidehof’ General Cemetery at Apeldoorn, 
he now lies at rest in the Arnhem/Oosterbeek C.W.G.C. Cemetery, Plot 18. B. 8.
On 14-10-1943 Major (temporary Lieutenant Colonel) Kenneth Smyth was awarded the Order of the British Empire, “In recognition of gallant and distinguished services in the Middle East”.
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