Page 299 - They Also Served

Posted to Cyprus as adjutant with the Dukes, he took every opportunity to patrol against the insurgents, once discovering a group hiding beneath the hearth of a burning fire in a remote cottage. Volunteering for attachment with the Parachute Regiment, Stacpoole took part in the Suez invasion as adjutant of 2 PARA and later served as ADC to GOC Nigerian Forces in 1959. Resigning his commission the following year, he contemplated a career in politics before settling for the life of a Benedictine monk. One of his brother officers wrote in the Dukes’ mess book: ‘Captain Stacpoole has exchanged one red hat for another!’
Stacpoole took the name Alberic after the monastic name of the French martyr Charles de Foucauld, quipping, ‘He was a bad soldier who became a good monk – while I will be a good soldier who will probably be a bad monk!’ Going up to St Benet’s Hall, Oxford, he gained a first-class degree, despite dictating his dissertation after breaking his arm falling off his bicycle. His tutor commented that his essays were ‘like a military campaign – in which every gun must fire once’. Returning to Ampleforth, he taught at the school for twelve years before returning to St Benet’s as acting master and then senior tutor, during which time he completed a doctorate. Called back to Ampleforth in 1990, he became, in addition to his duties as a housemaster, parish priest of Helmsley and Kirkbymoorside.
A prolific author, he wrote a thousand-page tome, The Noble City of York, as well as a book on the Vatican Council. In later life, he was the scourge of The Daily Telegraph obituaries section, with his meticulous corrections of any errors, as well as a writer of numerous letters on religious subjects. Remaining at Ampleforth, and visited by numerous university and military friends, he fulfilled his ambition to live until the London Olympics. Captain Dom Alberic Stacpoole MC OSB died on 30th September 2012.
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