Major Philip Henry Lawless MC (9 October 1891 – 10 March 1945) was a British author, journalist, rugby player, soldier and war correspondent.
[3][4] Lawless was well over six feet tall and was described by Michael Moynihan as "a burly, jovial man whose air of a hunting-shooting-fishing English squire went down well with the Yanks.
After the First World War he played in three rugby teams representing Great Britain, against New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, as well as for Richmond F.C., Middlesex, Surrey, Devon, the British Army, for the Barbarians against Leicester in 1920, 1922 and 1924, and against the East Midlands in 1922.
After the outbreak of the Second World War, he accompanied the Royal Air Force in France, between September 1939 and May 1940, as The Daily Telegraph's correspondent.
[8][9] He was killed by shell fire in action in Remagen, Germany, whilst covering the taking of one of the last surviving bridges over the River Rhine in March 1945.