George Rudolf Hanbury Fielding George ( Rudolf Hanbury ) Fielding DSO ( 3 July 1915 – 23 January 2005 ) was a Major in the Special Operations Executive ( SOE ) during the Second World War . Early life . Through his great , great , great grandfather , Henry Fielding , the Novelist and Chief Magistrate of Westminster , George Fielding was a scion , through patrilineal descent , of the Earls of Denbigh and Desmond . Fielding was born in Twyford , Hampshire , three weeks before his father , Major George Hanbury Fielding of the Sherwood Foresters , was killed at Gallipoli . His mother , Evelyn Carlota ( née Jewell ) , took him to live in Château d ' Oex in Switzerland ; she returned to England in 1939 . Fielding was educated at Twyford School , Shrewsbury School and later at Freiburg University where he studied the German that was invaluable to his later military career . During the late 1930s he worked as a trapper on the Canadian Arctic Circle and then moved to the Argentine , first as assistant to a farm manager on an estancia and later as a cattle - buyer in Rosario for Swifts of Chicago . In 1938 , anticipating the outbreak of the Second World War , Fielding returned to England , and was commissioned into the 3rd The King ' s Own Hussars . His squadron was posted to fight in the Battle of Crete , where he was wounded in the arm and then charged with marching his fellow walking - wounded overland to the coast for evacuation by the Royal Navy . He was mentioned in dispatches . He then served with 3rd Hussars in the North Africa Campaign during which he answered the call for volunteers to join the Special Operations Executive . Austrian SOE mission , August 1944 . In August 1944 , with German forces retreating to the Gothic Line on the Italian mainland , Fielding was tasked to lead a three - strong SOE group into Austria ’ s East Tyrol and Carinthia , to help and encourage sabotage on German communication lines . The group was parachute d behind enemy lines near Tramonti in North Eastern Italy on 12 – 13 August , hoping to gain support from Italian partisans . Although the communist Garibaldi partisans showed reluctance , the Osoppo partisans at Forni Avoltri , south of Austria , were willing to help and to hide them . He sent one of his group to reconnoitre within Carinthia but the report back showed that there was little willingness to take up resistant through fear of Gestapo reprisal . Despite lacking identity papers , Fielding decided to reconnoitre the upper Gail Valley and Carinthia personally and came to the same conclusion . The Germans had learned of the presence of Fielding , and other SOE groups , and offered a reward for his capture . To keep the support of the partisans , he promised supply of arms and provisions by air , a promise that was impossible to keep through lack of suitable dropping zone s . This air support , with promised supply drops , was aborted at the last minute , leading Fielding in his frustration to send an angry message to the Bari - based Balkan Air Force asking them to show more of the " spirit of the Battle of Britain and less of the Bottle of Bari " . The lack of success of the mission led to an order to evacuate from Italy and to be picked - up in Slovenia , a march of . The group , which by then had been augmented by remnants from other SOE operations , was betrayed and ambushed but escaped to Slovenia with loss of mules and equipment and a wounded arm for Fielding . Valuable information had been gathered by Fielding ’ s mission and 6 , 000 German troops had been diverted to capture him . For this , in 1945 he was awarded the DSO for courage , resourcefulness , and outstanding leadership . Later life . After the War Fielding took to farming in the West of Ireland for nine years before returning to Château d ' Oex , where he had lived as a boy with his mother , taking up painting and running a sporting travel agency ; he died there in 2005 . He married Beatrice Georgina Pope in 1940 ( d . 1997 ) and was survived by their son , Martin George Rudolf ( b . 2 December 1945 ) Captain , The Queen ' s Own Hussars , MRICS and their daughter , Sarah Georgina ( b . 10 May 1947 ) , who married Lt . - Col . Hon . Guy Bainbridge Norrie , the son of Lt . - Gen . Charles Willoughby Moke Norrie , 1st Baron Norrie , and Patricia Merryweather Bainbridge