This Date in History: June 25

On Friday, June 25, 1943, British official executioners Thomas Pierrepoint and Albert Pierrepoint hanged U.S. Army Corporal Harold A. Smith at Shepton Mallet Prison for the crime of murder.

In 1941, Harold A. Smith was a 5’8″, 116-pound white soldier, who was once described as a person who walked “with a slouchy appearance,” whose ears were “unusually prominent” and who “always seems to be in a sleepy daze.”  As a child, he suffered from measles, mumps and whooping cough.  Smith was born in Troup City, Georgia on January 4, 1923.  Prior to his induction, he worked as a waiter in “Charlie’s Café” in Columbus, Georgia – making sandwiches at $7 a week.  Smith graduated from grammar school, and spent three years in high school, but did not graduate.  He liked to ride a motorcycle.  He enlisted in the Army on February 4, 1941; soon after came down with influenza. After basic training, he joined Battery B, 17th Field Artillery Battalion as a gunner.  A Special Court-Martial convicted him on July 7, 1941 for loitering as a sentinel on post.  On August 3, 1942, Smith transferred to the First Tank Destroyer Group at Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in Pennsylvania, as a cook’s helper – even though he noted that at “Charlie’s Café” he did no cooking.  By this time, he was 5’10” and 145 pounds. However, Smith’s Defense Counsel asserted that his true age, at the time when he shot and killed a fellow soldier, was only sixteen and that assertion led to one of the strangest jury actions during the entire war.  (The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II)

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On June 25, 1943, after speaking with Colonel General Walter Model, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, Adolf Hitler declared that July 5, 1943 would be the absolute certain date that the offensive would commence.  (Waffen-SS Tiger Crews at Kursk: The Men of SS Panzer Regiments 1, 2 & 3 in Operation Citadel, July 5-15, 1943)