Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An O.B.E. group of three awarded to Commander K. L. Barrow, Royal Navy, who was Secretary of Combined Operations Headquarters under Lord Louis Mountbatten before joining the Bletchley Park organisation, and post-war was rewarded for service at G.C.H.Q.

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Civil) Officer’s 2nd type, silver-gilt; Naval General Service 1915-62, 1 clasp, Palestine 1936-1939 (Payr. Lt. Commr. K. L. Barrow, R.N.); Coronation 1953, unnamed, good very fine and better (3) £400-460

O.B.E. London Gazette 1 January 1959. ‘Commander Kenneth Lancelot Barrow, Royal Navy (Retired), Senior Chief Executive Officer, Foreign Office.’

Kenneth Lancelot Barrow was born in 1905, the son of Admiral Sir Arthur Barrow by his second marriage. Admiral Barrow served two terms as Assistant Director of Naval Intelligence, an area of activity that was also to play a significant part in his son’s career (see DNW 27 June 2007, lot 632 for his medals).

Barrow joined the Royal Navy as a Paymaster Cadet in February 1923, perhaps influenced by his elder brother Hubert, who served in the same branch, and by 1940 was Secretary to the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Dudley Pound.

His career followed a steady progression through the twenties and thirties, filling various seagoing posts in the Atlantic, North America & West Indies and East Indies Stations. In 1935 he went to the 1st Submarine Flotilla in the Mediterranean, as Secretary to Great War submarine hero Captain Guy D’Oyly Hughes D.S.O., D.S.C., a man whose fiery temperament would later be highlighted in events surrounding the loss of the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Glorious under his command in 1940. During 1936 the flotilla’s depot ship (H.M.S. Cyclops) spent time at Haifa, qualifying Barrow for the Palestine clasp to the Naval General Service Medal.

Barrow spent the first couple of years of the war serving on the staff of Admiral Sir William James, C-in-C Portsmouth, a time when the city was heavily bombed. In April 1942 he went to the recently formed Combined Operations Headquarters, for duty as Additional Secretary to its Chief (Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten), and afterwards as Secretary of the organisation, in the temporary rank of Paymaster-Captain.

Following this his career took a more clandestine turn, and Navy Lists throughout 1943 give no clue as to his employment. In January 1944 he resurfaces with an appointment to H.M.S. President ‘for Special and Miscellaneous Services’. More recently released Bletchley Park records reveal that he was in fact based at Mansfield College, Oxford, an outstation of the Bletchley organisation, as Deputy Superintendent - and then Superintendent - of code and cipher production for the Government Code and Cipher School (G.C.C.S.).

In June 1946 G.C.C.S. was renamed Government Communications Headquarters (G.C.H.Q.), in which guise it continues to this day. It seems likely Barrow remained with the organisation from its foundation, and after his retirement from the Royal Navy on medical grounds in September 1947.

G.C.H.Q. still comes under the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, which accounts for the discreet gazetting of Barrow’s O.B.E. under the umbrella of that organisation. The roll for the 1953 Coronation Medal is less opaque, showing Commander Barrow under the authority of ‘F.O. G.C.H.Q.’

Commander Barrow died in Gloucestershire on 9 June 1970. A letter from the Ministry of Defence Medals Office confirms that his second world war campaign entitlement (the Defence and War Medals) was not claimed.

With copied gazette extracts, service details and death certificate.