He later became a schoolteacher and crossword compiler for The Daily Telegraph newspaper and in 1944 was interrogated on suspicion of espionage in the run-up to the D-Day landings.
[1] Dawe was born in Brentford in west London and was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School, before going up to Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge.
[6] He did, however, make one appearance for the England national amateur football team when he played against Ireland in Belfast in October 1912.
[8] During World War I, Dawe was commissioned as a second lieutenant for service with the Forest School Officer Training Corps on 20 February 1915,[9] transferring to the Hampshire Regiment "local reserve" on 9 May 1916.
[15] In 1944, several codenames related to the D-Day plans, such as "Utah" and "Mulberry", appeared as solutions in Dawe's crosswords in The Daily Telegraph.
The inclusion of the codewords was initially suspected by the British Secret Services to be a form of espionage, but it was determined that Dawe had got the words from boys at the school, who had overheard them from soldiers.