| Biography | Sir RICHARD OBRIEN, MC and Bar, DSO, once a personal assistant to Field Marshal Montgomery, died on 11 December 2009. He was the only child of a Derbyshire doctor, and came to Clare from Oundle in 1938, and read Law. His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of war and, in 1941, he was commissioned into the Sherwood Foresters.
He took part in the Battle of El Alamein as a platoon leader, and in the early hours of 2 November 1942 his company was halted at the edge of a minefield, and came under heavy artillery fire. Several mortar bombs fell close to his truck. His platoon sergeant was killed, several of his men were hit, and Richard himself was wounded by bomb splinters in his thigh, neck and arm. He lost a lot of blood but, having evacuated the wounded men, refused to go back to have his own wounds dressed and led the rest of the platoon, in their trucks, through the enemy minefield.
By first light, he was too weak to stand unaided but continued to give orders from his vehicle. A medical officer, who was brought to him, dressed his wounds but found that he still had splinters in his thigh. Richard begged to be allowed to remain with his men, but was ordered by a senior officer to get himself to an ambulance. He was awarded the first of his immediate Military Crosses.
Richard OBrien served in Iraq in 1943, and in 1944 he was in the campaign in Italy, and there are more stories of courage and determination of the highest order. That was the citation for the Bar to his MC.
The battalion of Sherwood Foresters suffered such heavy losses in Italy that it disbanded, and Richard joined the regiment of the Royal Leicestershires. In further fighting in Italy, he was awarded the DSO. Shortly before the end of the war, he was appointed as a personal assistant to Field Marshal Montgomery; they got on well together, and maintained a friendship after the war. It was Richard OBrien who presented the terms of surrender to German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, who initially kept him waiting. Keitel thought he should have had an emissary from the Allied C-in-C, Eisenhower, but he didnt get this wish.
Richard continued to serve in Germany with Monty for 18 months. At one time he was taken to 10 Downing St and met Clement Attlee. Among other discussions, the Prime Minister told Richard of his involvement with Boys Clubs before the war. When Richard retired from the Army, with the rank of major, he remembered this, and spent two years as a development officer with the National Association of Boys Clubs. He then began a career in engineering, in which he was a success, and by 1961 had risen to a post as director and general manager of a prominent engineering firm.
Richard OBrien was now building a reputation as a superb negotiator in industry, and used this talent in a succession of troubled industrial situations. In 1976 he was appointed chairman of the Manpower Services Commission, and he guided important advances in skills training and access to employment for 16- to 18-year olds.
In 1979, Mrs Thatcher confirmed his appointment as the first chairman of the Crown Appointments Commission to appoint an Archbishop of Canterbury. Richard recommended Robert Runcie as the replacement for Donald Coggan, on the retirement of the latter in 1980. The Commissions report Faith in the City, (in 1985) triggered an extensive public and media debate about the inner cities, relations between church and state, and the perceived growing divide between rich and poor. Richard ensured that every claim in the report was backed by evidence.
A lifelong Anglican of moderate progressive sympathies, Richard combined his industrial interests with work on numerous church committees. |