The Deputy Grand Master invested W Bro. Frederick Henry Smyth PAGDC with The Grand Master’s Order of Service to Masonry. The citation read:

“Bro. Frederick Smyth was made a Mason at the age of 23, 60 years ago, in May 1943, in Lodge Devon No. 1999 in the District of the Punjab, as it then was. His Masonic career was somewhat hampered by postings on military duty, but in 1966 he became Master of Lodge Hazara No. 4159, which had transferred to London many years before from its former meeting-place in the Punjab. He is, or has been, a member of various other Lodges under this and other Constitutions, including Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, the Premier Lodge of Masonic Research, in which he served as Master in 1979. He was exalted into the Royal Arch in Chapter Jullundur No. 1999 in November 1943; following the surrender of its Charter (in 1961) he joined Connaught Army and Navy Chapter No. 4323 in 1964, becoming its First Principal in 1973. As a Territorial, Bro. Smyth was called up in 1939 and served in the Indian Army from 1942 to 1946. After a tour of duty in Germany from 1950 to 1953 he returned to the Civil Service in the War Office and Ministry of Defence until his retirement in 1979. He has been regularly delivering talks and papers on Masonic subjects for some 42 years and was the Prestonian Lecturer in 1990 when his lecture was entitled The Master Mason at Arms – Short Study of Freemasonry in the Forces.  He was appointed a Past Assistant Grand Director of Ceremonies in 1992, the year after he had become a Past Grand Standard Bearer in the Royal Arch. He is also a distinguished member of many other Masonic Orders. Bro. Smyth is a skilled indexer and was a member of the Society of Indexers, of which Brothers Reginald Hewitt and Norman Knight were founders. He was responsible for indexing the proceedings of Quatuor Coronati Lodge from 1970 to 1992, and was their editor briefly from 1990 to 1992. He is also a notable Masonic author, once known for his revisions of the late Brothers Pick and Knight’s Pocket History of Freemasonry and Pocket Reference Book. These having gone out of print he compiled in 1998 his own Reference Book for Freemasons. His writings have also included contributions to the Quatuor Coronati transactions and books relating to other Masonic Orders. Now aged 84, Bro. Smyth can justly claim to be one of the foremost authorities on Freemasonry and its history and has the satisfaction of knowing that he has contributed so extensively to the passing on of Masonic knowledge.”