Tommy Macpherson

Special Operations Executive officer and Jedburgh, among the most decorated British officers of his generation. Born on 4 October 1920 in Edinburgh. He was educated at Fettes, captained the school rugby XV, and went into the army from Oxford. He served with No. 11 (Scottish) Commando. In 1941, on a reconnaissance landing in North Africa, he was captured by the Italians. Over two and a half years he escaped four times — from camps in Italy, then from Austria — and made his way through Poland and the Baltic to Sweden, and from there home. In the summer of 1944 he was dropped into France with a Jedburgh team, one of the three-man parties that linked Allied command to the Resistance. In the Lot he operated openly, in a kilt and under his own name. His group worked against the communications on the route of the SS Panzer Division Das Reich as it moved towards the Normandy beachhead: bridges blown, track cut, ambushes laid. A march the division should have completed in three days took it more than a fortnight. He later operated in Italy and then served with an Allied mission watching the situation on the Italian-Yugoslav frontier. He was awarded the Military Cross and two Bars, the French Croix de Guerre, the Legion of Honour and the Italian Silver Medal of Military Valour. He worked in industry after the war and was knighted. He died on 6 November 2014.