Frederick Niven Gerds was killed by gas poisoning whilst engaged in Tunnelling operations at the Front as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, his death being reported from General Headquarters on June 2nd, 1915. He was 26 years of age and had been in the Royal Engineers rather less than a month. Previous to returning to England in April he had served in the Rhodesia Volunteer Force.
After spending three years at Repton School and taking the London Matriculation, Mr. Gerds went to the Royal School of Mines in 1906, and gained the Associateship in Mining in 1909. He was then awarded a Post-graduate Course by the Institution which was taken at the Rose Deep, Ltd., Johannesburg, and for which he received the Institution Certificate. Upon the termination of the course he was given the post of surveyor on a section of the mine, and in June, 1911, took charge of the assaying, surveying and sampling departments, also acting for a time as temporary mine captain. In 1910 he obtained the Transvaal Government Mine Surveyor’s Certificate. He left the Rose Deep at the end of the year to join the staff of the London and Rhodesia Mining and Land Co., Ltd., and was successively employed on their subsidiary companies as surveyor to the Hay Gold Mine, Surveyor and assayer to the Cam and Motor Mine, and manager of the Radnor Mine, remaining in the last position until he left South Africa in March, 1915, to join the Forces.
Mr. Gerds was elected a Student of-the Institution in 1909, and was about to be transferred to Associateship at the time of his decease.
Vol. 24, Trans IMM 1914-15, pp.506-7
