Gordon Riding, a stone cutter, was born in Lancaster and came to Adelaide in 1912. He married shortly after his arrival, and spent some time working in Murray Bridge. When living in Adelaide he had played two seasons with the Magill soccer club, an up-and-coming Second Division side. When Riding moved to Murray Bridge they declined and were not revived after the war.
He enlisted in the AIF in February 1915 and spent four months with the 27th Battalion at Gallipoli, surviving unharmed. Transferring to the 2nd Pioneers in France he was soon in action at the fierce Battle of Pozieres. Gordon Riding was a courageous man who had been awarded a Humane Society medal for saving a person from drowning in a frozen river in England.
At Pozieres in August 1916 he would be awarded the Military Medal, “for bravery and self sacrifice”. He fell seriously ill with pleurisy and pneumonia not long afterwards, and was sent back to Australia where he was discharged as medically unfit in June 1917.
Riding suffered from poor health for the rest of his life, and he died in 1936 aged 49, his death attributed to war service.