Euan Lucie-Smith

Euan Lucie-Smith (14 December 1889 – 25 April 1915) was a British Army second lieutenant of World War I, of mixed British and Afro-Caribbean descent.

He was one of the first mixed-heritage infantry officers in a regular British Army regiment, and the first killed in World War I.

Early life

Lucie-Smith was born on 14 December 1889 at Cross Roads, St Andrew, Jamaica, the younger son of Catherine, the granddaughter of Samuel Constantine Burke, a lawyer and politician referred to as "coloured"; and John Barkley Lucie-Smith, a white colonial civil servant who was Postmaster of Jamaica. His grandfather was John Lucie-Smith, Chief Justice of Jamaica, and an uncle was Alfred Lucie-Smith; the art critic Edward Lucie-Smith (born 1933) is his nephew.

He was educated at Berkhamsted School, and then Eastbourne College, both private schools in England. He travelled to England in December 1914, and undertook training on the Isle of Wight. He then went to France on 17 March 1915, and was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres on 25 April 1915, age 25. In researching Lucie-Smith, Carver realised from a photograph that he did not appear to be white. a record price for such plaques.