Gretton Foster – SOE in Burma/China Borders

I heard William Boyd the author on the radio the other day commenting that in real life you do meet people with the most extraordinary names – it’s true. I think of Midnight in Peking and wonder could I ever have made up Edward Theodore Chalmers Werner, Gladys Nina Ravenshaw, Wentworth Baldwin Prentice and a ex-London copper called Dick Dennis? I doubt it.

Gretton Foster is a good name and worth knowing too – sadly he just passed away at 94 but he was officially Lieutenant-Colonel Gretton Foster, an SOE Officer in Burma, DSO and MC. He fought remorselssly in the region and after the Japanese surrender worked Kachins on the Chinese-Tibetan border (prior to China’s invasion of Tibet obviously).

Anyway, he’s not been forgotten – the Daily Telegraph did an obituary of this remarkable man.