MAJOR-GENERAL SIR DIGBY RAEBURN

Intelligence officer who was determined to return to combat

HAD he not put his foot down hard, Digby Raeburn would almost certainly have spent the whole of the war in military intelligence. Fluent in German and with a Cam - bridge first in history, he was just the kind of man the hard-pressed intelligence staff was seeking. A passionate skier, he volun - teered for the small force based on the Scots Guards being made ready to go to the aid of Finland, in the Winter War against the Soviet Union early in 1940. When the Finns agreed to an armistice in March, he was sent to Egypt to join 2nd Scots Guards but was snapped up to become an intelligence officer at GHQ in

Cairo. Appointed MBE for his services there in 1941, he was in the desert with headquar - ters Eighth Army for most of 1942, before being pulled back to Cairo as Deputy Director of Military Intelligence at GHQ in the rank of colonel at the age of 28. It was then that he began to protest his need to see some active service with his regi - ment . The obstacle was his knowledge of the part that the breaking of the German Enig - ma code was having on the war. Further, once the enemy had been driven out of North Africa, the Western Allies im - plemented a deception plan to persuade the German High Command that the next blow would fall not on Sicily as obituaries@thetimes .co.uk