Alfred Searls on Hugh Dormer: formed at Ampleforth and killed in the Second World War.
Eighty years ago, a young officer in the Irish Guards was about to undergo an extraordinary test of faith as he parachuted, one moonlit night, into the heart of darkness that was Nazi-occupied Europe, on a secret mission to sabotage a vital enemy installation. Then again, Captain Hugh Dormer was an extraordinary young man.
Born in 1919, Dormer came from one of Britain’s most distinguished recusant families; he was educated at Ampleforth and Christ Church, Oxford. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he suspended his studies and volunteered for the army. He was commissioned into the Irish Guards in 1940, later becoming a tank commander in the Guards Armoured Division.
