Dudley Clarke

Brigadier Dudley Wrangel Clarke CB, CBE was an officer in the British Army, known as a pioneer of military deception operations during the Second World War. His ideas for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and double agents helped define Allied deception strategy during the war, for which he has been referred to as the greatest British deceiver of WW2. Clarke was also instrumental in the founding of three famous military units, namely the British Commandos, the Special Air Service and the US Rangers.

Clarke was born in Johannesburg onApril 1899 . His father, Ernest Clarke, grew up in Kingston upon Hull and moved to South Africa in the late 19th century, where he became embroiled in the Jameson Raid. Ernest managed to avoid prison for his part in the raid and, via a coconspirator, obtained a job at a gold mining company. Once settled, Ernest married Madeline Gardiner, and a short while later, Dudley was born. During the Second Boer War, the Clarke family was trapped in the siege of Ladysmith. Although an infant at the time of the siege, Clarke later tried to claim a campaign medal. Soon afterwards, the family returned to England, moving to Watford, where Clarkes brother, the screenwriter T. P. B. Clarke, was born in 1907.

Source: Wikipedia