GUNNER 781346 RONALD SHEARD 246 BRIGADE ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY.


GUNNER 781346 RONALD SHEARD 246 BRIGADE ROYAL FIELD ARTILLERY. KILLED IN ACTION 7th AUGUST 1917 AGED 24 


Ronald Sheard was born in Ilkley in 1894 at 29 Gordon Street, the youngest of 4 sons. Before the war his widowed mother, Charlotte, moved to a house on Wilmot Road which she ran as a small boarding house whilst Ronald worked as an errand boy for a local chemist.


Ronald was also a territorial soldier having enlisted with the 4th West Riding Howitzer Battery which was based at the Drill Hall on Leeds Road. In July 1914 just a couple of weeks before the start of the war Ronald appears to have resigned from the battery.

In 1915 he married Agnes Ball who was from Leigh in Lancashire and the following year a daughter, Mildred, was born. At about the same time as his marriage, Ronald, appears to have enlisted back into the army. Given his previous service it isn't surprising that he enlisted into the Royal Field Artillery and was allocated to 246 Brigade which was mainly recruited in the West Riding of Yorkshire. He arrived in France in March 1916 and would have served throughout the Somme campaign of that year and the Arras battles in 1917.

On 7th August 1917 the 246th Brigade were based near to the Belgian town of Nieuport north of Ypres and away from the main attack at Passchendaele. Nieuport was in fact a seaside town and was the northern most point of the Western Front. The Germans were convinced that the Passchendaele attacks were merely diversionary and the main British attack was aimed at striking towards the U-boat base at Antwerp. German artillery had been shelling British positions around Nieuport for several days with both high explosive and mustard gas. During one barrage a German shell seems to have exploded in the gun pit where Ronald and four other men were working, killing all of them.

Today, Gunner Ronald Sheard lies alongside his four comrades in the British Military Cemetery at Coxyde and is remembered with pride on our war memorial in Ilkley.





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