LIEUTENANT DENIS OLIVER BARNETT
LEINSTER REGIMENT
16TH AUGUST 1915 AGE 20
BURIED: POPERINGHE NEW MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
Denis Barnett won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford which in the normal course of events he would have taken up in October 1914. Instead of which he enlisted in the Artists Rifles on the outbreak of war and went to France with his regiment in October 1914. In January 1915 he received a commission in the Leinster Regiment and died of wounds received at Hooge that July.
The diary of a fellow officer, Captain Frank Hitchcock, gives the details:
15th August: Barnett got a bullet through the stomach when he was guiding a working party of 1st North Staffords along the Menin Road ...
16th August: Barnett died of his wounds. The Doctor told us that he stuck his wound splendidly and that men who were only hit in the arms and legs were groaning all around him in the dressing station. Barnett had a presentiment that he would get killed, and told us so when we got orders for Hooge ... "
Quoted from Leinster Regiment Journal 10 July 2009
As his inscription makes clear, Barnett was at St Paul's where he was something of a superstar. He played in the 1st XV for three seasons and was Captain of School for two years. An obituary in The Pauline, the school magazine, gives something of his quality:
"Fine brains, powerful physique, complete moral and physical courage, unfailing good humour, charming frankness of manner and absolute straightness ... ".
Denis Oliver Barnett: In Happy Memory: his letters from France and Flanders, October 1914-August 1915 was privately printed in 1915.