Richard Hugh Barry

Barry was born in London, the only son and elder child of Army officer Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred Percival Barry and Helen Charlotte, née Stephens. His paternal great-grandfather was the architect Sir Charles Barry. He was educated at Winchester College, where he was a commoner, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned into the Somerset Light Infantry, his father's regiment, in 1929.^[1]

He joined the Special Operations Executive in 1941, first as the head of the operations department. Attached to the planning staff of Dwight D. Eisenhower in November 1942, he was recalled to the SOE in 1943 as Colin Gubbins's chief of staff.^[1]

After the war, Barry was posted to Stockholm as military attaché in 1946, before becoming Deputy Chief of Staff, Western Europe Land Forces in 1948.