HE stands proudly with rifle in hand and his prized kill at his feet. Lieutenant G S W Spencer Smith, of the 2nd/5th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment, poses with the panther he shot on March 23, 1916, at Secunderabad in India.

This remarkable picture graced the front page of the Southampton and District Pictorial two months later, an edition which featured the more sobering details of the unfolding horror on the First World War battlefields.

Among the fallen mentioned was a Shirley corporal, Harold A. Attwood, who had been killed in Mesopotamia at the age of 18.

His mother “heard to her great sorrow” that her eldest son ‘Bobbie’ was dead on March 29 and his friends were now mourning the “the loss of a life so full of promise.”

There follows details of Private R. H Philpott’s death in East Africa. The newly-wed son of “an old Southamptonian”, the Pictorial recalled he was “a promising specimen of a young Colonial” who excelled in boxing, football and Scouting.

His obituary notes: “Some time ago he earned fame as a Scout by cycling with dispatches from Johannesburg to Cape Town in 28 days.”

Fittingly, the Pictorial’s editorial comment on the following page did not miss the opportunity to instill the importance of the remembrance message among its readers.

Indeed, while the edition provided ample coverage of Southampton’s Empire Day, it praised the fact the celebration coincided with the unveiling of Southampton’s Roll of Honour.

Immortal memory The editor wrote: “The Empire Day spirit was a help to the children to get the true meaning of the Roll of Honour into their minds. Let Empire Day in future be the day in a school on which the immortal memory of its soldier sons is honoured – the old boys who shed lustre on their schools by fighting for Empire. Then will each generation salute the flag each Empire Day with new ardour, because it will seem a personal matter.”

He went on: “If you can think of a better cause for a flag day than that of the blinded soldier, you have got powers of self-persuasion quite out of the ordinary, and you will regret it if you fail to use the opportunity to help that particular scheme along today.”

The Hampshire Regiment, which could trace its origins back to 1702, served with distinction during the conflict.

The Regiment took part in the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915 and its men also fought in France and Flanders.

An estimated 7,580 members of the Regiment were killed in the war and last month the remains of one man were finally laid to rest after lying beneath the mud of Belgium for more than 90 years.

They were the remains of one of 21 Hampshire soldiers whose bodies were never accounted for in fighting near Ypres between July 6-9, 1915.

The skeleton was unearthed during the construction of an industrial estate on former farmland last year and the soldier’s Hampshire regimental badges were still intact.