Veteran Of Both World Wars, Much-Decorated General Dies

Maj. Gen. Ralph Corbett Smith, the oldest surviving general officer of the U.S. Army who served in both world wars and did much to establish CARE for war-torn Europe in the mid-1940s, has died. He was 104.

Smith died Wednesday in his Palo Alto, Calif., home where he had lived since his retirement in 1947.

The centenarian’s military career began when he joined the Colorado National Guard in 1916. He was made a lieutenant and posted to an infantry regiment in Nogales, Ariz. Under the command of Gen. John J. Pershing, Smith’s first campaign was a punitive expedition against Mexican revolutionary Francisco “Pancho” Villa.

When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, Smith was mustered to France with Pershing. He earned a battlefield promotion to major, was wounded a month before the armistice and earned the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, a Purple Heart and a French Croix de Guerre with Palme.

Orville Wright taught him to fly, and Smith’s pilot’s license was No. 13 in the country.

In the peacetime Army, Smith taught French at West Point, studied at the Army War College in Washington, D.C., and l’Ecole de Guerre in Paris. He held several command posts at U.S. bases including the Presidio of San Francisco, where he later recalled that his 30th Infantry’s mule-drawn equipment convoy required four days to travel to Monterey for training exercises.

During World War II, Smith led his 27th Infantry Division landing on Makin Atoll in late 1943 as part of the American assault against Japanese forces in the Gilbert Islands.

Smith’s telegram, “Makin taken,” signaled the first capture of a Japanese-held island, rallying Allied forces in their counter-offensive in the Pacific.

At war’s end, Gen. George C. Marshall dispatched Smith to Paris to help create the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE). Smith managed initial CARE operations to relieve post-war food shortages in France, Belgium, Holland and Norway.

At his retirement, Smith collected he following World War II decorations: the Legion of Merit with Oak Leaf Cluster, French Commandeur de Legion d’Honneur, British Companion of the Bath, Belgian Commandeur and Ordre de Leopold II.

Born in Omaha and brought up in Colorado, Smith earned his degree at Colorado State College and polished his his French at the Sorbonne.

Twice widowed, Smith is survived by three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.