Lieutenant-Colonel Augustine Cyril Lyne Chudleigh, MBE, 1894-5/7/1984.

What more British name could there be than Augustine Cyril Lyne Chudleigh?  This was my thought when I found it on a stone in a cemetery in Nelson.  The date of his death put him beyond my self-imposed rule of not telling a story which included a death that a possible reader might have witnessed.  But there might be something in one of the other names.

I looked for Captain Douglass Chudleigh, and did not find much - except that he had been a member of the Special Operations Executive - a top secret organisation set up in 1940 by Winston Churchill to conduct and support operations behind enemy lines.  An online forum named "WW2 talk" revealed this short biography to Douglass: 

Educated at Cranleigh School, Douglass Chudleigh was serving in Palestine in 1939 in The Royal Yorkshire Hussars. He was commissioned into The Leicestershire Regiment on 19.10.1941 and served 2nd Bn in Libya, and at Tobruk, Ceylon, and India. Selected for service in Force 133 (SOE), he returned to the Middle East. He parachuted into Yugoslavia to join the forces of General Mihailovitch and after 10 months behind German lines he returned and parachuted into Northern Italy during the occupation. He next parachuted into Norway for a specific operation which he completed in a month. While on leave in England on his return he proceeded in a glider with 6thAirborne Division for the Rhine Crossing. He was in Austria on a special mission in May 1945 and after VE Day he proceeded to Ceylon where he was waiting to be dropped into Japanese-occupied territory when VJ Day occurred. Returning to Europe he was soon detailed by the War Office for intelligence and counter-espionage work in Germany. He died in an accident in Germany on 26.8.1946. He is buried at Munster War Cemetery, Germany. He was the elder son of Lt Col A C L Chudleigh MBE of the Regiment.

Further research on Douglass finds that he graduated from Cranleigh in 1936 and that his death was the result of a road accident.

Then there was the matter of the Member of the Order of the British Empire awarded to Augustine.  The few details I was able to find showed that the Order was awarded to Lieutenant Chudleigh for his work with the British Military Mission to Greece in the war.  This was the group which liaised with Greek forces during the successful German invasion of 1941.

And that, as far as I can find, is all.  I'm sure that there are some sealed files somewhere in Britain with more.  Perhaps the Colonel confided in someone, sometime.  Maybe I will never know.

Wakapuaka Cemetery, Nelson.