Colonel Sir Ronald Thomas Stewart Macpherson CBE, MC**, TD, DL (4 October 1920 – 6 November 2014) was a highly decorated British Army officer during and after the Second World War.
He was the youngest of seven children of Sir Thomas Stewart Macpherson CIE LLD and Helen, the daughter of the Reverend Archibald Borland Cameron.
His childhood home was Edgebrooke, in East Fettes Avenue, and he attended Edinburgh Academy prep school before Cargilfield, in Barnton.
Macpherson was part of a four-man team sent to reconnoitre beaches in preparation for Operation Flipper, an attempted raid on the headquarters of Erwin Rommel, the famous German Field Marshal.
Interrogated by four army officers and six carabinieri, one asked MacPherson to demonstrate how his Colt Automatic worked, he did so "by putting in a spare magazine [he] still had, and then held the party up with the loaded weapon".
The Red Cross rations they were carrying revealed their true status, and they were sent to a camp in Hohenstein, arriving on 30 September after a five-day train journey with only a small amount of bread to eat and little water.
The four then managed to travel to Sweden via Bromberg and Gdynia; flying back to Kinloss, Scotland on 4 November 1943, two years after he had been captured in Egypt.
Under this operation three-man units were to be dropped into occupied Europe to carry out sabotage and guerrilla warfare, acting as a high-profile focus for the local resistance.
His team members were a French lieutenant, Michel de Bourbon, and a British radio operator, Sergeant Arthur Brown.
[9] The following day they were contacted by two resistance fighters from Bretenoux, who told Macpherson that the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich were advancing towards the Normandy beachhead via the Figeac-Tulle road.
[10][11] They then switched to attacking road and rail routes between Brive and Montauban, eventually completely stopping railway traffic between Cahors and Souillac, Lot on 1 July.
In one attack Macpherson and his men trapped 300 Germans and 100 members of the Milice (Pro-German French forces) in a railway tunnel for several days.
Under the mantle of Agent Quinine, he achieved an operation of some kind virtually every day,[citation needed] his high-profile presence – he brazenly toured the countryside in a black Citroën with a Union Flag pennant on one side and a Croix de Lorraine on the other[12] - infuriating the Nazis to the extent that they placed a 300,000 franc bounty on his head, describing him as "A bandit masquerading as a Scottish officer and extremely dangerous to the citizens of France".
[13] On one occasion when a German staff car was approaching a level crossing Macpherson booby-trapped the barrier arm so it crashed down on the vehicle, decapitating the local commandant and his driver.
[14] As axis forces in the south of France were cut off by the Allied advance, Macpherson negotiated the surrender of two German units, the most notable being FK541.
[note 1][16] Macpherson was informed by another Jedburgh leader Captain Arthur Cox that the Major General wanted to negotiate surrender.
Dressed in full Highland uniform complete with bonnet, he bluffed that he would unleash heavy artillery and call on the RAF if the Germans did not surrender.
[36] A memorial service was held at St Columba's Church of Scotland in Pont Street, Knightsbridge, London, with the eulogy given by Malcolm Rifkind.
Others present included Jeffrey Archer and his wife, Mary Weeden, and Mr & Mrs Alexander Hay of Duns Castle, Berwickshire.