[2] An unusually tall wicket-keeper, standing at 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m), Oldfield was a skilled keeper, taking 26 catches and making 33 stumpings in his 24 first-class matches.
After a number of successful raids, the SAS depot at Bir Faschia was captured by the Germans, leaving the patrols short on supplies.
Evading capture, Oldfield mined the coastal road, attacked convoys and destroyed more than twenty planes at the airfield at Tuorga.
The following night he returned to the airfield to destroy the remaining two fighters, but the Germans had intercepted a message from the Eighth Army HQ and were lying in wait for Oldfield.
Oldfield was spotted by searchlights at the airfield and chased by several armoured cars, though he managed to evade them throughout the night, despite his own jeep catching fire and stalling at one point.
[1] Following his capture, he was personally interrogated by Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, however he refused to divulge information about SAS operations and was threatened with execution for being a spy.
In August 1943, he was the senior British officer in a POW hospital in Milan when he it was bombed and seriously damaged, with a partially recovered Oldfield leading the efforts that resulted in fifteen men being pulled out alive.