Charles Pocklington Chenevix Trench (29 June 1914 – 26 November 2003) was a British Indian army officer, popular historian and writer.
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Life
Charles Pocklington Chenevix Trench was born in Simla, India, the only son of Sir Richard Chenevix Trench, a member of the Indian Political Service.
Sir Richard was grandson of Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886), Archbishop of Dublin. Charles was a cousin of Anthony Chenevix-Trench, later headmaster of Eton College.
After studying at Winchester College and Magdalen College, Oxford, Charles received a regular Indian Army commission in 1934, joined Hodson's Horse in 1936, and became a fluent Pashto speaker. During the final weeks of 1st Army's advance into Tunisia in 1943, he was attached to the 12th Lancers.
In 1944, whilst attending a course at Benevento, he went to visit another Hodson's Horse officer who was a staff officer in 8th Indian Division. His friend put him on attachment to a Pathan company in the 1st Battalion of the 12th Frontier Force Regiment. Chenevix Trench won the Military Cross for his conduct leading the company in a night attack on the final ridge held by the Germans on the outskirts of Assisi during the push against the Gothic Line in northern Italy. He then returned to Hodson's Horse until 1946 before spending the last eighteen months of British rule in India in the Indian Political Service. 1946 also saw his marriage to Jane Gretton, daughter of an Irish Catholic – this marriage produced two daughters and a son (the son predeceased him) and ended in divorce. He had two more daughters with his second wife Mary Kirkbride, who survived him. A daughter, Georgia Chenevix-Trench, born in Kenya, is a distinguished cancer researcher in Australia.
