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Fr Sir Hugh Barrett-Lennard, Bt
h/t The Curt Jester Hugh Dacre Barrett-Lennard was born on June 27 1917 into an unconventional family with two mottoes: Pour bien désirer (To wish well) and La bondad para la medra (Goodness through improvement). The baronetcy was created in 1801 for Thomas Barrett-Lennard, an MP and the illegitimate son and testamentary heir of the 17th Lord Dacre. The 2nd baronet was a High Sheriff of Essex who - to his servants' distress - used to put down water for the rats at his house; he dressed so scruffily that, on leaving Brentwood mental hospital where he had been chairing a committee meeting, he was marched back inside by a constable who mistook him for an escaped inmate. Young Hugh's father was a soldier and colonial judge who, on returning from his honeymoon, was said to have forgotten that he was married and tried to climb into bed in his old chambers, now inhabited by another judge. Hugh went to Radley, and converted to Roman Catholicism with his mother in the 1930s before becoming a master at St Philip's prep school, Kensington. He was on the brink of entering the Oratory when war was declared, and joined the London Scottish as a private; he was then commissioned and switched to the Intelligence Corps before transferring to the 2nd Battalion, Essex Regiment. Arriving at brigade headquarters on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in 1944, he recognised the soldier carrying his bags as a waiter who had once spilt soup down the dress of his dinner guest at the Dorchester and had been immediately fired. Before going into action Barrett-Lennard was told by the Catholic padre over a cup of tea: "You may be dead tomorrow, so you had better come to confession." The confession duly took place in a nearby barn. During one early morning patrol as intelligence officer, Barrett-Lennard took his Jeep so deep into enemy lines that he saw the Germans packing up to leave. On being challenged by the local mayor he replied: Je suis l'Armée Britannique. Back at headquarters he reported enemy movements to his superiors, but his driver told everyone else: "Lieutenant Barrett-Lennard is bonkers." Barrett-Lennard - whose casual manner of dress did not win the approval of NCOs - was known in the regiment as "the Dean", and earned widespread admiration for his resolution in going out to rescue the wounded. He himself was shot in the hand by a German who feared that he would be executed when he was interrogated by Barrett-Lennard. Later, in Holland, he was conducting arms practice with some fresh troops when one man dropped a grenade; it exploded, and a piece of shrapnel remained in Barrett-Lennard's head for the rest of his life. Continuing with the regiment over the Rhine, he set up a school for soldiers in Berlin after the armistice and went on retreat at a nearby monastery before returning home to be discharged in the rank of captain with a mention in dispatches. After joining the London Congregation of the Oratory of St Philip Neri, Knightsbridge, in 1946 Barrett-Lennard studied at the Beda college in Rome and was ordained at the basilica of St John Lateran alongside a German whom he had shot at when the man had leapt from his tank near a wood in Normandy. Posted by: mrp 2007-08-04 |
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