Barry was born on 13 March 1922 in St Marylebone, London to David and Florence nee Rice. David and Florence had seven children with five living past childhood. David’s name was originally Davis Renovitch and he legally changed his name in 1919 after he had served in the Army in WW1.

In 1921, David and Florence were the landlords of the Victory public house at 4 Brendon Street, Marylebone in London which they ran until 1934. In 1939, the family were living in Littlehampton, West Sussex where David worked as a licensed caterer. In 1939, when Barry was seventeen, he married twenty-one-year-old Daisy Rice in Paddington, London and they had two children, John born in 1940 and Joyce born in 1941. Barry worked as a paint sprayer before he enlisted into the Navy.

Barry was a gunner on the ship King Lud which was enroute from New York to Bombay with military personnel and government stores. The ship’s manifest shows Barry sailed from Greenock to New York arriving there on 2 April 1942. Two months later the ship was attacked in the Mozambique Channel by torpedoes fired by Japanese submarine I-20 killing all onboard.