John Macnamara

Colonel John Robert Jermain Macnamara (11 October 1905 – 22 December 1944) was a British Conservative Party politician and officer of the British Army who was killed while fighting in Italy during the Second World War. He was the last sitting MP to die in combat. Politics Macnamara was educated at Haileybury where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps. He was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate at the May 1934 by-election in the Upton constituency in West Ham, and at the 1935 general election was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Chelmsford. He was also joint secretary, with the Liberal MP Wilfrid Roberts, of the Basque Children's Committee. Macnamara's personal assistant in 1935–36 was Guy Burgess, later exposed as a Soviet spy. Macnamara was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, some of whose members were pro-Nazi. Burgess gained the confidence of Macnamara and they organized a series of sex tours abroad, especially to Germany where Macnamara had ties with the Hitler Youth. Burgess managed to gain contacts with highly placed homosexuals, like Edouard Pfeiffer, the chief private secretary of Édouard Daladier, French War Minister, an agent of the 2nd Office and of MI6. Macnamara and Burgess were invited on several occasions to pleasure parties at Pfeiffer's or to Parisian nightclubs. Military career On 11 January 1924, he joined the Territorial Army (TA), the part-time reserve element of the British Army, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 3rd (City of London) Battalion, London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers). His service number was 28393.