His cousin David Thomas Richards (1883-1932) enlisted in the South Wales Borderers on 29 June 1898 and served in the Boer War.
[2] Remarkably, Richards saw action in virtually all of the major British campaigns on the Western Front without suffering any notable injury.
[4] Unable to return to the coal mines following the war because of this decline in his physical health, Richards was obliged to earn his living from numerous temporary jobs.
It differs in many ways from memoirs written by officers who joined the army specifically to serve in the war, and has been called "a brilliant insight into the life of a soldier in the early stages of the twentieth century".
[2] Old Soldiers Never Die was written with the unaccredited assistance of fellow Royal Welch Fusilier Robert Graves, who advised on grammar, style and punctuation.
Private Frank Richards aka "Big Dick" features in Captain J. C. Dunn's The War The Infantry Knew 1914-1919.