Background
At the time of his birth, his father Charles was the commander of a local army garrison, having been wounded in 1915, at the battle of Loos.
At the time of his birth, his father Charles was the commander of a local army garrison, having been wounded in 1915, at the battle of Loos.
Cardozo was brought up in the Loire Valley between 1923 and 1933. In 1949 Cardozo married Simone Bigot - they had two children - one of whom, Colonel Geoffrey Cardozo Administration Member of the Order of the British Empire, is the secretary of the veterans charity, Veterans Aid.
Cardozo"s Portuguese ancestors had become established in the London tobacco trade in the late 17th century.
A century or so later his forebears, (including his father), were merchants for the East India Company in Madras. Cardozo"s mother, Cynthia, was the daughter of Henry Daniell, who ran a china and antiques business in Wigmore Street, London.
Through his trade interests he had helped to organise the Wallace Collection and the Pierpont Morgan Collection. Cardozo joined the British Army"s Supplementary Reserve before the outbreak of war and upon receiving his call up was posted with his regiment, The South Lancashire Regiment to France.
He was evacuated from Dunkirk and on his return to Britain was posted to coastline duties, in anticipation of the expected German invasion.
Whilst on exercises in Scotland, Cardozo was approached by Henry Thackthwaite, a senior SOE officer, who recruited him for operations in France. As a fluent French speaker he was a natural choice for such a posting. In May 1944 his team was parachuted onto Mont Mouchet in France to liaise with the maquis in the Auvergne.
Relations with the maquis were not always easy and they had to cope with a series of vicious German counterattacks on Mont Mouchet and the surrounds.
Cardozo stayed in the army after the war, retiring in 1958, when he worked as a press attaché for American forces in France. Before this he had served in India and later in Palestine with the 6th Airborne Division, and later in Paris where he was an instructor at École de guerre.
He subsequently served as a college commander at Sandhurst. He later moved to Morocco and began working for the Save the Children Fund.
Later still, he worked for De Beers in Sierra Leone.
When he finally retired, he moved back to his childhood home of the Loire Valley.