2nd/4th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment
Frederick William Richings was born in 1877 to Roseanna and Alfred Richings of Cirencester.
He served 24 years with the Gloucestershire Regiment. He was with 1st Battalion during the Boer War and endured the Siege of Ladysmith. At the outbreak of the Great War he was posted to Bristol to train recruits. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for this work in 1917.
In June 1917 he volunteered for service overseas and was posted to 2/4 Battalion on the Western Front. The battalion was active in the Ypres Sector, before moving to Arras and then Bapaume in November 1917. On 1 December the battalion was heavily involved in an action at Havrincourt Wood and the Battalion War Diary records that Sergeant Major Richings and others were badly wounded by shell fire, when leaving their trench. Richings was invalided home and was in hospital until March 1918. He was no longer fit for service overseas and reverted to training duties, first at Sittingbourne and then Larkhill, on Salisbury Plain.
Frederick William Richings died on 17 February 1919, aged 42, from a brain tumour, just days before retiring on an Army pension and was buried in Chesterton Cemetery, Cirencester.