Captain Arthur David Eyton-Jones (8 March 1923 – 1 August 2012) was a British Army officer with the Special Air Service (SAS) during World War II, director of a tea company, landscape gardener and chaplain.

In September 1939, when David was 16 years old, he heard Neville Chamberlain's announcement of the declaration of war with Germany in the drawing room of his great aunt Gertrude Aird's[2][better source needed] mansion, Sheepcote Manor, in Buckinghamshire.

[2] After the outbreak of World War II David was asked to return to Monkton Combe School to take part in Home Guard duties.

[citation needed] In April 1944, following basic and officer cadet training in North Wales, David was commissioned into the Royal Sussex Regiment where he commanded 30 infantrymen.

[3] In the summer of that year he embarked on a troopship 'The Empress of Scotland' for Italy which was part of a convoy from Gourock, near Glasgow, to Naples via Oran, using an indirect fluctuating route to avoid the danger of German U-boat attacks.

[8] Eyton-Jones and Kershaw made a return to their landing site, Case Balocchi locating a guide who took them to Monte Cusna, a 2,500-metre-high (8,200 ft) mountain range.

Unlike the 50 British soldiers, the guide was equipped with skis, sticks and snow goggles, an offer to look for supplies for their unit was refused by Eyton-Jones as he knew they needed too many.

The fire had been incapacitated and there were no logs to burn anyway, so they ate self heating tins of soup and laid their sleeping bags on top of the snow pile, keeping their boots on.

Unable to unfasten their boot laces they walked towards Febbio in order to find Special Operations Executive agent Mike Lees, a member of their team.

He had already left and was on his way to the attack at Botteghe d'Albinea in the hills above Reggio Emilia so Eyton-Jones and Kershaw were compelled to walk five miles back to the village of Quara.

[11] On meeting with Farran and delivering the news about the inappropriate escape route it was decided that due to Eyton-Jones' bad feet he should be in charge of some jeeps mounted with Vickers machine guns.

Air drops had been made to supply weapons for the British, who had joined with a local Italian faction and seventy Russian soldiers, led by Victor Pirogov, a lieutenant in the Red Army who had escaped from a Prisoner of War camp.

One vehicle had become wrapped in the chute while falling and was destroyed, but weapons were provided by further air drops for the British force who linked up with local Italian partisans and the group of escaped Russians.

The crew bailed out and on seeing the parachutes, Eyton-Jones and an Italian Quartermaster known only as 'Barba Nera' (original real name Annibale Alpi), meaning Black Beard, boarded a jeep and drove towards their landing place, rescuing them from a German soldiers in a Volkswagen who were cut off from capturing the Americans by a river.

Barba Nera escorted the recovered soldiers to a farmhouse where they stayed hidden with six other crew members who had found the hideout until the end of the war.

[12] In April 1945, Roy Farran called a meeting for all British officers following a radio message from the Special Operations Executive and Allied Forces Advance Headquarters in Florence.

It was determined that excessive noise was impossible to avoid with such a large group, so the next night, an SAS veteran called Corporal Ford was instructed to move out a smaller party.

After dark, machine guns with ammunition belts loaded with tracer, armour piercing, and high explosive rounds were transported on mules to Monteforco where they aimed at the previously registered compass points.

David gathered the company with those who were left behind and started advancing towards Po valley where the remaining German convoys were observed driving north in retreat.

During this time there were Jewish terror groups active against British troops, but despite the dangerous, hard work, Eyton-Jones made visits to Jerusalem and Bethlehem.