2nd LIEUTENANT RICHARD WILFRED FAWCETT 2nd BATTALION SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE REG.

2nd LIEUTENANT RICHARD WILFRED FAWCETT 2nd BATTALION SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE REGIMENT. KILLED IN ACTION 25th SEPTEMBER 1915.

At the outbreak of the war on 4th August 1914 23 year old Richard Wilfrid Fawcett was a medical student at St Barts Hospital in London. Just four days later he was appointed as a probationer surgeon aboard the destroyer HMS Ferret patrolling the North Sea. Life at sea and a lack of any action did not suit Richard, who a few months later transferred to the army and became a Second Lieutenant in the 4th South Staffordshire Regiment. On 25th September 1915, Richard, now serving with the 2nd Battalion, led an attack near to the La Bassee Canal at Bethune in northern France. His unit reached the German barbed wire but heavy machine gun fire forced them to halt. Richard was hit and helped into shell hole where he lay all day. That evening a search party was sent out to find the wounded. Lieutenant Fawcett, still alive, was brought back to the British lines, but despite medical treatment died the following day. Richard Fawcett was the son of a wool merchant and born in Rawdon. He was a boarder at Wharfedale School in Ilkley and was then a pupil at Haileybury School, Dorset. He read medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge before training at Barts Hospital. Richard's mother, following the death of her husband, lived at Wells House in Ilkley during the war before moving to Ripon. Her son Richard is buried in Bethune Town Cemetery and named on the war memorials in Ilkley and Rawdon