Possibly Second Lieutenant Richard Hellier Agard Evans in 1916
Richard Hellier Agard Evans, known as Hellier, was born on 19 Jan 1898 in Saxony, Germany, the son of Ernest Agard Evans and Jean Playfair Gow-Gregor. He was a great grandson of Richard Evans and Mary Shaw-Hellier.
He is recorded as being at boarding school in Clifton in Bristol in the 1911 census. His only brother Archibald Agard Evans was born in 1906.
He attended Sandhurst in 1915 and was fast-tracked into the Indian Army. He gained a commission in the Queen Mary’s Own 127 Baluchistan Infantry. During his brief military career he served therefore in the Middle East with the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Forces, away from any conflict with the Germans. The photo, self evidently taken in Egypt, is dated 1916, when he would still only be 18. He took part in the capture of Baghdad. He was killed on 5 Nov 1917 in Tikrit in modern day Iraq and is buried in Basra. Allegedly he went to the aid of a wounded Baluchi signalman and was shot and died instantly. His commanding officer said of him “He was a most keen, capable and energetic young officer and endeared himself to all ranks, British and Indian, by his cheerful disposition and kind nature”
This photo forms part of a collection of family WW1 photos that are being published on this site as part of the WW1 centenary.
Postscript: As the only member of the family to serve in the middle east I had identified this photo as possibly Richard Hellier Agard Evans. It is labelled “Early 1916” and then separately that it is possibly a “photo of Col B Shaw-Hellier” in the hand of Molly Evans. Molly’s Uncle Brad had served in Egypt in the 1880’s but died in 1910. This postulation seems clearly false. It has subsequently come to my attention that Robert Humphrey Marten, another cousin of Molly Evans served in the Imperial Camel Corps in Cairo. This is altogether a more likely explanation – but in the absence of any certainty I will leave the photo here if only for the camel!