Shortly after World War I started, Ricketts and the Band Boys of the Argylls were sent to the 3rd Battalion (Reserve) in Edinburgh. They stayed there through the whole war. During the war Ricketts wrote several marches dedicated to the British military: "The Great Little Army" (1916), "On The Quarter Deck," "The Middy," "The Voice of the Guns" (1917), and "The Vanished Army (They Never Die)" (1919).