Trench Bernard Frederic

(Bearbeiten)

Biografie:
Bernard Frederic Trench
The late Colonel Trench was probably not well-known to most members of the Alpine Club today. Since the end of the last war he had lived at long distances from London and could not come to the Club, to which he had been elected in 1930.
His relatively late election, at the age of fifty, was not due to lack of interest in mountaineering, but to the exigencies of his career in the Royal Marines. His first visit to the Alps was, indeed, in 1897; his second only in 1925. He had, however, during 1922- 24 managed to get some climbing in Mrica (Drakensberg, Mount Cameroon and elsewhere). In the Alps, his favourite regions would seem to have been the Oberland and Arolla; in the winter of 1928 he made a long tour through the Alps over passes.
After attending the Royal Naval College, Greenwich from 1899- 1900, Trench served aboard a number of ships until 1910, when, as will be seen, he had a more unusual experience, of being imprisoned in Germany for spying. During the First World War he served on the Admiralty War Staff Intelligence Division; from 1918- 19 he was Base Intelligence Officer at Queenstown, and from 1919- 22 he was Supervising Intelligence Officer, East In dies Station. After further service at sea, he returned to Intelligence work on the North American and East In dies Station from 1925-1927. He returned to the Admiralty Intelligence Division during the Second World War.
Arthritis crippled him increasingly and during the last twenty years of his life he had to have an electric chair for getting about. Nevertheless, he contrived to keep up his gardening and he took up rug-making as a hobby. His courage in spite of great pain was widely recognised, for he took the liveliest interest in everything and everybody at Halberton, in Devon, where he lived, and his passing was very greatly mourned.
T.S.B.
An old service friend writes:
Bernard Trench was my contemporary, though slightly senior to me in the R. M. We saw little of each other until we met in the Naval Intelligence Division in the First World War. But, in the autumn of 1910, I was studying in Germany and read in the German papers of his arrest, along with Commander Brandon, R.N., by the German police, for alleged spying on German defences among the Frisian Islands. In the course of the trial, as reported in the German press, Trench was asked by prosecuting counsel if he had read The Riddle of the Sands, by Erskine Childers. I remember that he was reported to have replied that he had read it twice. He and Brandon were found guilty and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. They were released after three years, in 1913, as an act of clemency on the occasion of Kaiser Wilhelm II's Jubilee. It was in 1915 that the then Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, brought Commander Brandon and Trench to the Admiralty, to organise the German Section in the N.I.D. This task they performed magnificently to the end of the war.
I got an insight into Trench's character when he told me about his period of confinement (in Glatz Fortress). He took in three German newspapers daily, changing them each quarter, amassed a library of 400 German books, and kept twenty-four canaries in his room . His only grievance was that he had insufficient time to get through his daily routine!
I remember him in the summer of 1925 arriving in Bermuda, to take over an Intelligence job. As his baggage was deposited on the verandah of his bungalow, he produced a card index he needed a particular pair of shoes! But he was no slave to a meticulous arrangement of his life. His quiet sense of humour prevented that; he merely liked to have everything in its place and not too much of anything.
I was fortunate in seeing Trench on several occasions after the end of the Second War, during which we had again met at the Admiralty, where he had done excellent work, and while I was distressed to see that he was becoming more and more handicapped physically, I was amazed at his cheerful courage. A very brave man, he was always modest and unassuming to the point of shyness. His passing is a matter for profound regret.
Quelle: Alpine Journal Volume 73, 1968, Seite 137-138


Gestorben am:
1968