Major Hugh Bertie Campbell Pollard (born London[1] 6 January 1888: died Midhurst district[2] March, 1966) was an author, journalist, adventurer, firearms expert, and a British SOE officer.

[3] At nine years of age he was sent to Westminster School as a day boy, but spent much of his time on his grandfather's estate in Hertfordshire, where he became an expert shot and first developed what became a lifelong interest in hunting and firearms.

[4] His recollections of these adventures were published in 1913 in his memoir (the first of many books) titled "A Busy Time in Mexico - An Unconventional Record of a Mexican Incident".

[3] When World War I broke out Pollard was mobilised as officer of despatch riders in London, and in November 1914 he was seconded to the Intelligence Corps as a staff lieutenant.

These were republished in a number of Irish and English papers before the actual location was identified as Vico Road in Dalkey, a quiet seaside Dublin suburb.

[13] Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Pollard recorded his interpretation of the history of Irish nationalist organisations in Secret Societies of Ireland, Their Rise and Progress.

[14] He alleged that the Lord Mayor of Cork, Tomás Mac Curtain, had been assassinated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), rather than by forces acting for the British Crown.

[15] Pollard was a devout Roman Catholic and a supporter of the conservative side in Spain in the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War.

[4] During lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, Douglas Francis Jerrold, the conservative Roman Catholic editor of the English Review (and also a British intelligence officer), met with the journalist Luis Bolín, London correspondent of the monarchist and right wing newspaper ABC and later Franco's senior press advisor.

Bolin asked Jerrold to find "two blondes and a trustworthy fellow" to carry out the mission, to make the group look like tourists.

[17] Pollard was persuaded by Jerrold and Bolin to join the enterprise and he recruited his daughter Diana and her friend Dorothy Watson to accompany him.

[18][19] The group charted a de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft, piloted by Cecil Bebb, which flew out of Croydon airport, London, at 07.15 on the morning of July 11, 1936, bound for the Canaries.

Pollard and Bebb delivered Franco to Tetuan on July 19, and the General quickly set about organising Spanish Moroccan troops to participate in the coming coup.

[20] After the war, in 1958, Pollard and his companions were personally decorated by General Francisco Franco, who awarded all four the Knights Cross of the Imperial Order of the Yoke and Arrows.

In May 1940 Pollard was involved in a short-lived and unsuccessful plot to restore King Alfonso XIII to the Spanish throne, in order to reduce German and Italian influence over the Franco regime.

[17] Pollard travelled to Estoril, Portugal in 1940 where he was involved in smuggling around three hundred Republican Vickers machine guns, still in their packing crates, back to England.

[23] After the war Pollard retired to the country, leading a quiet life in Clover Cottage in Midhurst, West Sussex.

[17] Douglas Jerrold of The English Review said of Pollard that he "looked and behaved like a German Crown Prince and had a habit of letting off revolvers in any office he happened to visit".