Shackleton wrote: Mackintosh and Hayward owed their lives on that journey to the unremitting care and strenuous endeavours of Joyce, Wild, and Richards, who, also scurvy-stricken but fitter than their comrades, dragged them through the deep snow and blizzards on the sledges.
[3] On their struggle to return to McMurdo Sound after laying the final depots, Richards, as a 22-year-old, shouldered a share of the leadership when Mackintosh started to falter, and when critical decisions had to be made.
On the trek out to Mount Hope Richards made the decision to take bearings on back cairns to give them a direction to steer by on their return journey.
It was he (with Joyce and Hayward) who had the strength of mind to make a move after being tent bound for six days, to find a food depot and return to rescue Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild.
[4] The young man's thoughts, on 28 February 1916, when he Joyce and Hayward were searching for the tent of Mackintosh, Spencer-Smith and Wild, during a blizzard, leap out from a diary note he made then: 7pm.
Richards observed the deaths of Arnold Spencer-Smith, Victor Hayward and Mackintosh during the journey back from the Beardmore, and was thereafter confined to his bunk for several weeks, suffering from exhaustion and depression.
After acting as a government adviser on optical apparatus during World War II he returned to Ballarat in 1948, as Principal of the College, retiring in 1958.