Colin Hercules Mackenzie, CMG (1898–1986), a soldier, industrialist, and aesthete, was a Special Operations Executive spymaster who led Force 136 throughout the period of its existence during the Second World War.
After Summer Fields and Eton (where he was a King's Scholar), Mackenzie was commissioned into the Scots Guards and was badly wounded at the very end of the First World War, undergoing a series of amputations of his leg in an ultimately successful battle against gangrene.
[2] During the Second World War, at the suggestion of his friend Lord Linlithgow, Mackenzie was appointed to set up a Far Eastern mission for Special Operations Executive, which became known in due course as Force 136.
An official SOE report in 1944 recorded that: No one can visit India without being impressed by Colin Mackenzie; by his exceptional grip on the working and personnel of his group; by his capacity to simplify and without delay go to the root of any problem; and by his remarkable sense of timing and diplomacy.
Not less impressive is the respect which all members of his group, scattered as it is all over India and China, have for his judgement; the faith they have in his capacity to produce the right solution for all problems; and the personal affection in which he is held.By the end of the war, Mackenzie's command had expanded to the extent that he was responsible for 33,000 agents and auxiliaries in South East Asia.