Lieutenant Stewart Gordon RIDLEY.
Remembrance - The Yorkshire Regiment, First World War
Lieutenant Stewart Gordon RIDLEY
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Lieutenant Stewart Gordon RIDLEY.

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Lieutenant Stewart Gordon RIDLEY.

17th Squadron Royal Flying Corps, formerly 12th Battalion Yorkshire Regiment. Son of Thomas William and Emily Gordon Ridley, of Willimoteswick, Redcar. Killed 18 June 1916. Aged 19.
Buried CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY.
See The Ridley Memorial, Redcar

We are very grateful to Avalon Eastman of the Oundle School Roll of Honour website for permission to use the photo of Lieutenant Ridley. She also provides the following biographical information;-
Stewart Gordon Ridley was the second son of Mr T.W,. Ridley and the late Mrs Ridley of Willimoteswick, Redcar where he was born on 6th July 1896.
He came to Oundle (Grafton House) from Mr Roscoe’s School of Harrogate in May 1910. Ridley played several times for the XV in 1913. Leaving in April 1914 he was preparing for a business career when war came. With his brother he enlisted (September 1914) in the 4th Yorkshire Regiment. In July he transferred to the Flying Corps and went to France in August 1915 as an observer. Returning to England in December he took his Pilot’s Certificate.
He died in the Libyan Desert. Ridley and another officer, with a mechanic, lost their way in the desert and Ridley’s machine being damaged, the other officer flew back in an effort to find H.Q. Ridley and the mechanic were not found until it was too late and it seems clear that in order to give his companion a chance of surviving (their water supply failing), he shot himself.


Royal Aero Club Aviators’ Certificates, 1910-1950, are available on Ancestry.co.uk. The data for Stewart Gordon Ridley in this collection includes;-

Royal Aero Club Aviators’ Certificates, 1910-1950

Royal Aero Club Aviators’ Certificates, 1910-1950

See also the Find a Grave website for further photos.

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