9th-12th-Lancers - Year 2003 - Page 0066
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| Regiment | 9th/12th Lancers |
|---|---|
| Year | 2003 |
| Transcription |
64 REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE 9TH/12TH ROYAL LANCERS (PRINCE OF WALES’S) In 1944, he volunteered for Force 136 in the Far East. Based in Ceylon, he provided reconnaissance in the Arakan area of Burma, being landed by submarine to spend time behind the Japanese lines looking for suitable invasion beaches. After the war, with a regular commission, and back with the 12th Lancers, he was appointed Adjutant in Egypt; it was, however, a position of limited tenure as administration was not his strong point! So he went to Barnard Castle, married Adela and thence to Kenya to command an armoured car squadron and enjoy some race riding. His final posting was to Malaya. Dick made many friends in the regiment and was proud to be followed into the 9th/l 2th by his son Piers. His grandson Edward hopes to join in 2006. Dick and Adela returned to Yorkshire in 1953 before emigrating to Australia with their four children where they farmed fifty thousand acres of rough grazing land at Marengo, near Armidale and established a Santa Gertrudis cattle stud. Adela died of can- cer at Marengo in 1974 having been nursed by Dick who contin- ued to run the property at the same time. Dick came back to England and in 1979 married Sue whose first husband Simon Plunket, also a 12th Lancer, died in 1968. They lived in Yorkshire for the last twenty years running sheep and single suckler cows on a small farm and Dick thoroughly enjoyed stewarding at Catterick, Redcar and other northern courses. He died in September 2003 following a stroke twenty months previ- ously. Dick often told his children how lucky he had been to have two such happy marriages He was a complex character, an easy going facade covering a sensitive but tough mental and physical per- son. A sharp and calculating mind could quickly assess a situa- tion or personality and his ingenuity solved many a problem. Above all Dick was loved by so many for his essential honesty, decency and ever (EVER) present sense of humour. Major JR Henderson CVO OBE Johnny Henderson, who died on Tuesday 16th December aged 83, was a long-serv- ing ADC to Field Marshal Montgomery, and later a popular and respected figure on the Turf and in the City. Henderson was a 22 year old Captain in the 12th Royal Lancers when he was cho- sen to join Monty’s staff in the North African desert in November 1942. After a few days he had doubts, and asked to be returned to his regiment; he was told to stay until a replacement could be found, and to accompany Montgomery to Cairo for the thanksgiving service for the victory at El Alamein. While there, Henderson took time to visit the zoo with a friend, who offered Johnny’s hat to an elephant 7 which promptly chewed it up, spitting out the Lancer’s badge. Henderson, bare- headed, had to lurk in the distance at the guard of honour for their departure back to the desert next morning. When Monty asked why, Henderson explained that his hat had been eaten by an elephant, “Ifyou feel as bad as that,” came the reply, “you had better go inside and lie down.” Somehow the incident cemented their relationship, and Henderson stayed in post through the Italian campaign and the advance from the Normandy landings to the German surrender, and for a year when Montgomery was CIGs in London. The role of ADC proved a good deal more congenial than Monty’s martinet reputation had led Henderson to expect. The great commander liked to be surrounded by lively young officers, treated them generously, and expected them to speak frankly to him. A degree of jocularity was generally encouraged 7 though Monty was not amused to be told, in France, that Henderson had been plying him with flasks of hot coffee in order to win a bet as to how often he would relieve himself during the day. Among Henderson’s many other duties was to find King George VI a seat for his thunderbox 7 preferably one which had not been freshly painted, it was intimated 7 during the royal visit to the desert. He also had to entertain Winston Churchill late into the night while Montgomery stuck to his rigid habit of retiring to bed shortly after 9 pm. A less welcome assignment was to fly in the glass nose of the Flying Fortress which was Monty’s preferred means of transport during the Sicilian campaign, not least as a form of one-upman- ship over his American rival General George Patton. Landing at Palermo to visit Patton’s HQ, they found the runway significantly too short for the lumbering plane, leaving the pilot no option but to swing around at the last moment and crash side- ways into a hangar. It was, said Henderson, “the most frighten- ing thing that ever happened to me”. But he remained devoted to Montgomery throughout their time together, and was in friendly contact with him until the Field Marshal’s death in 1976. In the racing world, Johnny Henderson was well known as an owner, a former amateur jockey and as the father of the leading National Hunt trainer Nicky Henderson. But his great contri- bution to the sport was as the financial brain behind the creation of Racecourse Holdings Trust, a non profit making body which stepped in to save a number of struggling courses in an era before broadcasting revenues made them more viable. The venture had its origins at Cheltenham where, in response to a threatened take-over by property developers, Henderson brought together a group of investors to buy the racecourse for £240,000 in 1963. RHT was set up the following year, and a decade later Henderson and his fellow subscribers gave their shares in it to the Jockey Club at a nominal price, ensuring that all RHT’s revenues would be ploughed back into racing. Over the years RHT became the owner of Wincanton, Nottingham, Warwick, Market Rasen, Haydock, Newmarket and also Aintree, where Henderson joined the pantheon of racing fig- ures who can claim over the years to have rescued the Grand National. From 1973 to 1985 he was also a trustee of Ascot, which was still suffering the financial burden of its 1960s redevelopment. Henderson initiated a sinking fund which became the founda- tion for the rebuilding due to begin shortly, and had been look- ing forward to attending this week’s race meeting. John Ronald Henderson, always known as Johnny, was born on 6th May 1920. His grandfather Harry was the younger brother and right hand man of Alexander Henderson, the first Lord Faringdon, who made a fortune financing railways across Argentinia and Spain. Johnny was brought up by his mother 7 a Garrard, of the jew- ellery family 7 after his father abandoned them, and was also much influenced by his housemaster’s wife at Eton, the celebrat- ed Grizel Hartley, whose letters he later helped to publish. He went on to read History at Trinity College, Cambridge. After leaving the Army as a Major in 1946, Henderson joined Cazenove & Co, the blue-blooded stockbroking house into which a family firm, Greenwood Henderson, had been merged in 1932. He became a partner in 1954, bringing to the business not only his valuable range of social contacts but a very shrewd judgement of investments and people; the firm’s historian described him as “deceptively hard-working”. |
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