Captain Hamish Pelham-Burn was one of the Second World War's Renaissance men,and displayed his lethal talents variously as a soldier,fighter pilot and behind-the-lines saboteur with SOE.In March 1944 SOE ordered Pelham-Burn to return to England from Camp STS 103,Canada,where he had been instructing potential agents in sabotage.He reported to the Baker Street HQ and was asked whether he was prepared to lead a small demolition team which would be dropped into France with the objective of destroying a radar installation.He agreed to go only if he could have the two Canadian sergeants,Andy McClure and Jack Clayton, with whom he had worked at the camp.In the early hours of the morning, three days before D-Day, they were dropped by a Wellington into rough, rolling Brittany country with rocky outcrops, with Pelham-Burn carrying detonators in a cotton-wool-lined box taped to his chest. After burying their parachutes in the bracken, they moved as fast and silently as possible to within 200 yards of their objective, where a hut with a single window and a sentry stood before the mast.Pelham-Burn cut the telephone line. Clayton dealt with the sentry. The charges were taped to the mast and the time pencils set with a 20-minute delay. The whole operation had taken four minutes.As they were creeping away,there was a flash of light followed by a great explosion: one of the pencils had detonated prematurely.Germans ran out of the hut firing in all directions.A dispatch rider on a motorcycle started off down the road, and Pelham-Burn had to shoot him despite the fact that this revealed their position.The two sergeants picked off the rest of the Germans with single, well-aimed shots.The mast was a pile of charred and twisted girders.Pelham-Burn led the way to a small farm that was to be their "safe house".For the next five days, the three men hid in the hay in a small cupboard-like extension of the barn.They were then picked up by Lysander.Pelham-Burn recommended his two colleagues for Military Medals.As for his own wartime feats of derring-do,many seem destined to remain unknown,details having mysteriously disappeared from his service file.Charles Hamish Pelham-Burn was born at Nairn,in the Highlands,and was brought up at Killiecrankie,Perthshire,and then at Kilmory Castle,Argyll.He never married.