Whatever happened to? CYRIL SMITH
The August 29, 1953 issue of the French publication ‘Moto Revue’ gave over its front cover to the photograph of a small, smiling, bald, moustachioed man in racing leathers, smoking a pipe. The caption translates as: “Cyril Smith, brilliant British side-carist, whose motto might be ‘the machine will give in, but not me!’”
Cyril John Henry Smith, or ‘Smudge’, was born in Birmingham on January 2, 1919 into a Quaker family, the eldest of three boys. Quakers are pacifists, and this led to one of the early conflicts in Cyril’s life, as in February 1939 he volunteered for Army service.
His relationship with his father never recovered. He spent much of the war in combat areas, serving with distinction with the Royal Tank Regiment in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and Greece, specialising in tank
