Captain Robert Shaw Ledgard

Captain and Adjutant Robert Ledgard was thought to have been the first soldier of the Yorkshire Regiment to be killed in World War One. While the 1st Battalion were in India at the outbreak of war, Captain Ledgard was on leave in England. He was ordered to join the Yorkshire Light Infantry when they went to the front. On 25 Aug 1914, at Cambrai, the KOYLI went into action. Their casualties were 19 officers and 800 men, of whom Robert Ledgard was reported to be one. He was in fact taken prisoner and held at Torgau.
He was born on 17 Jan 1884, the eldest son of Mr Armitage Ledgard of Scarcroft, Thorner, Leeds. He was educated at Aysgarth and Winchester schools and commissioned into the Yorkshire Regiment on 16 Dec 1903. He was promoted to lieutenant on 19 April 1905. The Army List of 1905 puts him in the 2nd battalion which was in the Channel Isles in 1914, but the Green Howards Gazette says that he was in the first battalion, and home on leave from India. After he was erroneously reported dead, a fellow officer wrote of him:
‘By the death of Ledgard we lose a rare good fellow, both as a soldier and socially. We shall miss him, too, as Adjutant, for he showed never-failing tact in all circumstances. He was always cheery in and out of the mess, and all ranks will feel his loss very much, for he loved the regiment. It is difficult to believe that we shall not see him again in his bungalow compound, with his dogs and his ponies. He takes an honoured place in being the first of the 19th to lay down his life for his country in the present war.’

Regimental Details | Soldiers