Henry Everard

Who was Henry Everard?

Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Breedon Everard DSO was a railway engineer and executive who became for a brief time the Acting President of Rhodesia during the U.D.I. period.

Everard was born in Barnet and educated at Marlborough College and Cambridge University. During the First World War he served in France with the Rifle Brigade, where he was wounded in combat and reached the rank of Captain. He worked as a railway engineer from 1922, but was commissioned again on the outbreak of the Second World War, this time in the Sherwood Foresters; he was taken prisoner by German forces, awarded the Distinguished Service Order, and reached the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. When repatriated after the war he became an executive of British Railways.

In 1953 Everard moved to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia to become General Manager of Rhodesia Railways, which he remained for five years before retiring. He supported the Rhodesian Front and stood in for Clifford Dupont in 1968–69. Following the proclamation of a Republic, Everard was Acting President on several occasions.