Educated at Eton College, he was commissioned into the Irish Guards and gained the rank of Lieutenant.
Serving with the 3rd Battalion, Ned landed at Arromanches, Normandy, on the 23rd of June, 17 days after D-Day when Allied forces launched a combined naval, air and land assault on Nazi-occupied France. During July his battalion made advances on the enemy gaining Courteil in early August before moving to Sourdeval on the 9th where they were subject to heavy shelling and mortaring.
On the 11th, with the bulk of the allied fire power retained for an attack on Chênedollé, Ned along with men from his battalion created a smoke screen. According to military records, the men were splendid, advancing despite the severe opposition, and nothing further could be done to support them owing to the proximity of the opposing posts.
Ned was buried at Tilly-sur-Seulles war cemetery. Tragically nine days later his elder brother, Captain Charles Hope, the 7th Marquess of Lansdowne, serving with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, Royal Armoured Corps, was killed in action in Italy and the family’s situation was changed forever.
A memorial service was held at Christ Church Derry Hill on the 29th of August. Ned’s mother and sister’s dedicated a memorial in the family Mausoleum, which visitors can see during the Spring when the Bowood Woodland Gardens are open.
Ned was universally popular. According to one of his regimental colleagues no one could ever imagine him to possess the guts he had.
Writing to a contemporary who had sent a letter of condolence, Lady Lansdowne commented, ‘Perhaps I miss his laugh, and his jokes almost more than anything. When he did imitations, I used to say he must keep in practice so that he could do them for Charlie, his brother, after the war. He never stopped making plans for after the war, dreams that will never be fulfilled now. As I look back over the years of his life, his short life, it is all memories of the happiness that he gave us – nothing but happiness.’
On the 6th of June this year, which marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Normandy landings, the Reverend Caspar Bush, Team Rector of the Marden Vale Benefice, addressed an audience at the Bowood Chapel and spoke of the five local men (including Ned) named on the Calne War Memorial who died during the Normandy Campaign. The other four men were: Private Dennis Angell, Lance Corporal Ernest Burgess, Bandsman Dennis Dew, and Lieutenant Herbert Pegler.
He remarked: ‘Their names today can stand for the thousands of others from near and far who put their lives on the line that day, and never came home’.
Near the village of Ver-sur-Mer in Normandy, the British Normandy Memorial bears the names of 22,442 individuals British and those of other nationalities who were serving in British units who died while taking part in D-Day and the Battle of Normandy.
The inscription on the Memorial reads: They died so that Europe might be free.
