George Millar ( writer ) George Reid Millar DSO MC ( 19 September 1910 – 15 January 2005 ) was a Scottish journalist , soldier , author and farmer . Millar was awarded the Military Cross ( MC ) in early 1944 for escaping from Germany while a prisoner of war and making it back to England , which he wrote about in his 1946 book " Horned Pigeon " . He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order ( DSO ) and the French " Légion d ' Honneur " and the " Croix de Guerre avec Palmes " for his service as an SOE officer in France in 1944 . He recorded his experiences fighting behind the lines with the local Resistance in his 1945 book " Maquis " ; this book , his most well - known , belongs with others written by British servicemen who fought behind enemy lines including " Ill Met by Moonlight " by W . Stanley Moss , " Eastern Approaches " by Fitzroy Maclean and " Seven Pillars of Wisdom " by T . E . Lawrence . Early life . Millar was born at Bog Hall in Baldernock , Stirlingshire , the younger son of Thomas Andrew Millar . Millar ' s father was a self - made architect and builder ; his mother ' s family owned property in Glasgow . His father died when he was 11 years old . Millar , known as " Josh " , was educated at Loretto School . He showed his courage and independence when he joined his boarding school aged 12 when he fought off the bullying of a 17 - year - old student , knocking the older boy unconscious . While at school he was happily initiated into fox hunting which became a lifelong passion . Between school and university he spent some formative months in France . He read architecture at St John ' s College , Cambridge , achieving a first in his prelims but a third in his finals . Journalist . Millar practised as an architect for a short period after graduating , but decided to become a journalist in 1932 , starting with a newspaper in Glasgow . He worked as an ordinary seaman on a freighter for four months and tried his hand at writing film scripts . He moved to " The Daily Telegraph " in 1936 . After managing to befriend an officer on the yacht Nahlin , chartered by King Edward VIII in 1936 to tour the coast of Dalmatia , he breakfasted with the King and the ship ' s captain the next day . He published an account of the meeting , obtaining a scoop which led to the offer of a job at the " Daily Express " , where he came to know Lord Beaverbrook . He married Annette Rose Forsyth ( née Stockwell ) in December 1937 . She was the daughter of Brigadier - General Clifton Inglis Stockwell , and was previously married to Michael Noel Forsyth . Millar joined Alan Moorehead and Geoffrey Cox as Paris correspondents of the " Daily Express " shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War . He covered the Battle of France as a war correspondent with the French Army , and was the last " Express " journalist in Paris before escaping back to England in June 1940 via Bordeaux . His wife drove an ambulance at the front with the Mechanised Transport Corps , and made her own way back to England . Soldier . Millar enlisted in the London Scottish regiment before becoming an officer in the Rifle Brigade . Beaverbrook continued to pay him half his " Express " salary while he was in the army . His second published book " Horned Pigeon " tells of his service in the 1st Battalion the Rifle Brigade in North Africa . As a second lieutenant , he was in command of a scout platoon of Bren gun carrier s and motorcyclists . He had an uncomfortable time with the second in command of his battalion Major Vic Turner . His scout platoon was overrun by the advancing German forces at Gazala in the Libyan desert in June 1942 , and Millar suffered light wounds . For a time he and some of his platoon evaded the Germans but eventually he was captured and briefly brought in front of Erwin Rommel himself . He was handed over to the Italian army who took detained him at the prisoner of war camp Campo 66 in the Padula Monastery in Capua . After a number of escape attempts , and his dealings with the local Italian black market came to light , he was moved to Campo 5 at Gavi , a fortress north of Genoa used as a high - security PoW camp , where , like Colditz , the " escapers " were confined . One of his fellow inmates was David Stirling , who had established the SAS . After the Italian surrender , the Allied prisoners were entrained for Germany in September 1943 . Millar and a companion , Wally Binns , jumped from the train in Germany and made their way from Munich to Strasbourg , where they were separated . Millar continued to Paris and then Lyon . While in the south of France , he was found by the SOE section run by Richard Heslop and Elizabeth Devereux - Rochester . He volunteered to stay in France and fight with the Resistance . When Heslop refused , Millar asked Heslop to recommend him to SOE for the future . Finally , after more than three months on the run , made it across the Pyrenees and over the Spanish border to Barcelona in December 1943 . He was awarded the Military Cross for his escape . Back in London , he found his wife had moved on to a new relationship , and Millar befriended Isabel Beatriz Hardwell , daughter of the diplomat and then still the wife of Charles George Hardwell . He was debriefed by MI5 and MI9 , and then pulled strings to get into F Section of SOE ( his elder brother was in MI6 ) . He was prepared for a return to France by Vera Atkins and Maurice Buckmaster among others . He was promoted to captain , and parachuted into the Besançon area of eastern France a few days before D - Day to establish a sabotage unit codenamed " Chancellor " . His own codename was " Emile " . He quickly made links with the local Resistance , including Georges Molle , and caused disruption to the French railways , hindering the mobility of the German forces and distracting them from the invasion . For this work , he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order ( DSO ) by the British and the " Légion d ' Honneur " and the " Croix de Guerre avec Palmes " by the French . Author . He returned to England three months later when the US Army pushed the Germans out of that part of France . He took a month ' s leave , rented a cottage in the country , and wrote the manuscript of " Maquis " , the nickname of the French Resistance . The book was cleared for publication in 1945 . In an immediate and vivid account , he drew on his journalistic skills to describe life living in the woods with the Maquis , various sabotage missions against the railways and trying to organise the villages before liberation by the Americans . Millar considered this work a failure , but it received good reviews and Charles de Gaulle privately complimented him on it . " Maquis " sold well and was followed by " Horned Pigeon " ( 1946 ) which was based on " prolific notes I had dictated . . . to a shorthand typist , during the month ' s leave following my escape . " The second book " was , if anything , more successful than the first " . Millar and Isabel divorced their previous spouses , and they married in 1946 He bought a Looe lugger " Truant " and sailed with Isabel to Greece on an extended honeymoon . This journey was recorded in " Isabel and the sea " ( 1948 ) . In " Road to Resistance " ( 1979 ) he records that while their boat was in Paris he received a summons from General Charles de Gaulle who had read " Maquis " and had taken the trouble on a trip in the area to detour to the village of Vieilley where Millar had been based . Farmer . After the war , Millar and his wife became cattle farmers at Sydling Court , near Dorchester . Millar continued to write , recording his yachting holidays as travel books . His second wife did not recover consciousness after a car accident in 1989 , and died in 1990 . He retired from the farm to a house in Bridport , and died at Warmwell House in Dorchester in 2005 . He had no children . An annual prize in his honour is awarded at Bridport literary festival . References . General Specific