 Twelve days later, on 20 April 1918, Hands received a telegram informing him and Aletta that their eldest son, Captain Reginald Harry Myburgh Hands, had died of wounds received fighting on the Western Front in World War I. Pondering this devastating news, Mayor Hands and his friend and fellow councillor Robert Brydone came up with the idea of the two-minute silence.The practice impressed Sir Percy FitzPatrick, who wrote to Lord Milner about it and the idea was taken up after Armistice Day in London in 1918.Hands was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1919 Birthday Honours for his sterling service to recruiting in South Africa and, as noted in the "South African Lady’s Pictorial" (July 1919, p. 5), "for his services as chairman of the Recruiting Committee, he did splendid work and it is due to him that the impressive Mid-day Pause was introduced."