Gerald Hamilton Wicks
Major Gerald Hamilton Wicks (c1865-1921)
1922 Obituary [1]
Major GERALD HAMILTON WICKS, O.B.E., R.E., died on 21st August 1921, aged fifty-six years.
He was apprenticed to Messrs. Fawcett, Preston and Co., of Liverpool, and quite early in his career left England to supervize the erection and running of sugar factories in South America, where he remained till just after the outbreak of the Great War.
His twenty-seven years in Latin-America were spent mostly in the sugar industry, with the only notable exception of a period as assistant engineer on the location and construction of the Rental-Rosario de Larina extension of the Central Northern Railway of the Argentine.
Joining the Trench Warfare Department in 1915, he became Superintendent of the Pyrotechnic Division of Chemical Warfare, when, jointly with others, he produced many new types of signals, flares, etc., for both land and aerial use, and was awarded the O.B.E. (Military), besides being mentioned three times in Dispatchs.
In 1918 he was granted a Brevet Majority in the Royal Engineers.
Elected a Member of this Institution in 1903, he was also an Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.