Notes
The Bradford Grammar School website (see References) states: 'David Rickards was born in Wakefield on 8th December 1883, the third of five children born to Arthur and Elizabeth Mary (nee Logan) Rickards, from Berwick upon Tweed. Arthur, who was from Armley,
became Chief Mechanical Engineer with the Monk Bridge Iron & Steel Foundry of Leeds. In 1891, David and his elder brother were pupils at Chevin Dell Boarding School, Otley. David moved on to the Bradford Grammar School in 1896, which he attended until March 1901. He came top in German and Greek in November 1900 and represented the 2nd XV against Woodhouse Grove. In 1901 in Form V. Modern (for boys who were not intended for university) he achieved one first class pass in the Lower Certificate. His younger brothers, Clement and Alfred were also at BGS, and played together in the Cricket XI, in the same team as Kershaw.
David followed his elder brother and father into engineering. He served an apprenticeship with Messrs Hathorn, Davey & Co. of Hunslet, and then he took up a position as Draughtsman in the Drawing Office at the Britannia Iron Works of Messrs. Marshall Brothers at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where he lived alone at 36 Nelson Street. He was an active
man: he served in the Nottinghamshire Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry (Territorials) for several years from 1908, although he had left before 1914; he was involved in the Boy Scouts movement; played Golf; was a leading member of the Gainsborough Operatic Society; and he sang in Morton Church choir.
As the European crisis deepened in 1914, Rickards presented himself to his old unit and he was appointed to his old rank of Lance Corporal. He was promoted to Corporal and agreed to serve overseas. But the Army needed officers and his application for a commission was successful—in March 1915 he was gazetted Second Lieutenant in the 1/4th K.O.Y.L.I, a Territorial battalion which recruited around his birth town of Wakefield, part of 148th Brigade, 49th West Riding Division. They landed in France on 12th April 1915. The experience of his battalion was closely linked to that of the 6th West Yorkshires in the same division. In October 1915, C.H. Broadbent, a master at the Grammar School, also joined the 1/4th as a Second Lieutenant, although Rickards not known him at School. The battalion spent its first weeks in a quiet sector, before moving north to the Ypres Salient, where it endured months of heavy rain and liquid mud north-east of Ypres. In October the battalion carried out a great
deal of useful work to improve the division’s front-line positions—unfortunately this was undone by shortage of building materials, continuous rain and German shelling.
Relief from their ordeal in the mud and cold was in sight when on 19th December the Germans launched a major attack supported by releasing a cloud of chlorine and phosgene gases, accompanied by a heavy bombardment with high explosive and gas shells. Rickards died of gas poisoning, which suggests that his battalion were not alert to the danger and did not put on their gas masks in time. They suffered 300 casualties. Phosgene gas (Carbonyl Chloride) was a more refined colourless form of chlorine, which meant it could be inhaled for a considerable time without being noticed. The resulting inflammation of the lungs caused the victims to literally drown in their own bodily fluids—Rickards must have inhaled a catastrophic quantity of gas. His body was taken to nearby ‘Bard Cottage’, a house a little set back from the line, close to a bridge across the canal called Bard's Causeway, where a cemetery was made sheltered position by the canal bank. His grave is in Plot I, Row M, Number 43, in the centre of the cemetery.'