Frank Hicks was born in Hemel Hempstead on 10th February 1894 to Henry and Eliza Matilda and was baptized at St Mary’s Church on 9th March in the same year. The family lived at 3 Bailey’s Place close to where Bank Court is situated on Marlowes today. Frank’s father Henry died in 1899 aged 41 and his mother Eliza remarried in 1902. His step-father Albert Blackmore was a Moulder working in the Boxmoor Ironworks who was a widower also marrying for the second time.

Frank had eight siblings in all; William Henry, Percy, Mabel, Ethel, Harold, Dorothy, Ellen Eunice and Ronald his half-siblings. By 1911 the four youngest children where living with their parents at 105 Marlowes and seventeen-year-old Frank was working as a Millhand at John Dickinsons. Mabel, Ethel and Ellen were also employed by Dickinsons.

Henry Hicks, Frank’s father, had been a regular soldier for ten years between 1874 and 1884 with the Bedfordshire Regiment and he re-enlisted with the 4th Bn. Bedfordshire Regiment, a militia battalion, in 1888. Men would volunteer for the militia and undertake basic training for several months at an army depot. Thereafter, they would return to civilian life, but report for regular periods of military training (usually on the weapons ranges) and an annual two-week training camp. The militia appealed to agricultural labourers, colliers and the like, men in casual occupations, who could leave their civilian job and pick it up again. It is likely therefore that Henry re-enlisted to benefit from military pay and a financial retainer, a useful addition to his civilian wage as a general labourer. He remained with the militia until his death on 15th May 1899.

It may have been due to his father’s military service that Frank felt inclined to enlist as a regular soldier and he did so on 31st August 1912, joining the Scots Guards in London when he was 18 years and 5 months old. And was posted to the 2nd Battalion.

At the outbreak of war, the 2nd Battalion left the Tower of London with orders to assemble at Lyndhurst Camp in the New Forest. The contemporary postcard shows soldiers of the “17th” Division (in all likelihood this was the 7th Division) in various scenes prior to departure to Belgium.

Sailing on 6th October 1914, the Battalion disembarked at Zeebrugge on the 7th as part of the 20th Brigade 7th Division and was soon engaged in action against the enemy at the First Battle of Ypres.

This is the battle that most marked out the Scots Guards. The deaths recorded in the four weeks from 18th October, including those who died of wounds later or as prisoners of war having been captured at Ypres, exceeded the total number of Scots Guardsmen who died in each of the years 1917 and 1918. The 2nd Battalion lost four out of five men.

Frank spent his 21st birthday in the trenches on 10th February 1915. The following month he fought in the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle between the 10th and 13th March 1915, the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards War Diaries record details of operations:

“On 12th March at 4.15am the Battalion moved off along the Nueve-Chapelle – Fauquissart Road to a point in a captured communication trench and from there proceeded to advance to a position 300 yards from enemy lines where the assault halted as they made plans for a further attack. A message from the Brigade postponing the attack until 12.30 PM was not received owing to the orderlies who carried it being Killed and the attack was launched at 10.30 AM. The attack proceeded over difficult terrain for about 150 yards when it was compelled to stop by a very heavy machine gun and rifle fire. Three officers and about 100 men where lost during this advance”

In all six officers and 192 NCOs and other ranks were lost over two days.

Frank Hicks was killed in action on Friday, 12th March 1915 when he was acting as a stretcher bearer and rescuing a wounded man amidst fierce fighting and heavy enemy fire.

The Hemel Gazette published a report of Frank’s death under the headline “A Noble Death” on 27th March 1915. Frank’s colleague Private G. Miller wrote a letter to Frank’s oldest brother William, in it he apologises for initially writing to Frank’s sister with news of his death and then goes on to describe the circumstances under which Frank was killed.

One of Frank’s older brothers Harold also served in France as Bandsman in the 1st Suffolk Regiment and was wounded twice but survived the War.

Frank’s “Register of Effects” records that along with his mother Eliza, he had bequeathed his army pay to be divided equally amongst his siblings and they each received 16s 7d.

Frank is Remembered with Honour at Le Touret Memorial, Pas de Calais, France on Panel 3 and 4.

He was 21 years old when he was killed.

Frank was eligible for the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Allied Victory Medal.