SECOND LIEUTENANT STEWART GORDON RIDLEY
ROYAL FLYING CORPS
18TH JUNE 1916 AGE 19
BURIED: CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY, EGYPT
Stewart Ridley's inscription quotes the final line of a poem by John Drinkwater, which he wrote in Ridley's memory. The poem is called 'Riddles' R.F.C. - Riddles being Ridley's nickname.
He was a boy of April beauty: one
Who had not tried the world: who while the sun
Flamed yet upon the Eastern sky, was done.
Time would have brought him in her patient ways -
So his young beauty spoke - to prosperous days,
To fullness of authority and praise.
He would not wait so long. A boy, he spent
His boy's dear life for England. Be content:
No honour of age had been more excellent.
'The Saturday Review' published the poem on 5 August 1916 with the following note:
"Lieut. Stewart G. Ridley, Royal Flying Corps, sacrificed his life in the Egyptian desert in an attempt to save a comrade. He was twenty years of age."
Ridley enlisted in September 1914, took a commission in February 1915 and in July 1915 transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He received his wings in December and was posted to north Africa where the Turks were encouraging the Senussi, a religious sect active in Libya and Egypt, to raise jihad against the British in Egypt. The Royal Flying Corps flew patrols over the Libyan desert for reconnaissance purposes.
On Thursday 15 June 1916, Ridley set out on a routine patrol over the desert in company with another aircraft. Ridley's plane was forced to land and the other plane returned to base to get help. The brief account of his story says that, with water running out, Ridley decided to shoot himself in order to give his observer, Garside, a chance to survive. Garside died the next day.
The October 12 1916 edition of Flight magazine gives the whole story. Had Ridley and Garside stayed where they were they would have been found but they moved on, and not just once but twice. Garside kept a rough diary from which the information comes.
The search party discovered the bodies on Tuesday 20 June and five days later an army chaplain went out into the desert and buried them under a heap of stones marked with a wooden cross. In April 1960 the bodies were exhumed and reburied in Cairo War Memorial Cemetery.