Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy: The Extraordinary Wartime Exploits of a Naval Special Agent
(Very few men have a more exciting and dramatic story of t...)
Very few men have a more exciting and dramatic story of their wartime activities to tell than Patrick Dalzel-Job. In 1940 using his special knowledge of North Norway's coastline he landed and moved over 10,000 Allied soldiers in local boats without the loss of a single life. Acting against specific orders he evacuated civilians from Narvik just before it was bombed - only the King of Norway's intervention halted his court-martial. Thereafter his many adventures included spying on enemy shipping and operating behind the lines in France and Germany with Ian Fleming's special force unit '30AU'.
Patrick Dalzel-Job was a distinguished British Naval Intelligence Officer and Commando of World War II. He was also an accomplished linguist, author, mariner, navigator, parachutist, diver, and skier.
Background
Dalzel-Job was born on June 1, 1913, in London, the only son of Captain Ernest Dalzel-Job, who was killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. After his father's death, Dalzel-Job and his mother lived in various locations, including Switzerland, and he learned to ski and sail. They returned to the United Kingdom in 1931 where he built his own schooner, the Mary Fortune, which he and his mother spent the next two years sailing around the British coast.
Education
Receiving his education at Beaconsfield School and, later, from private tutors in Switzerland, Dalzel-Job became enthralled early in life with sailing.
As a young man, Dalzel-Job sailed frequently in Nordic waters and traveled as far as the northern coastline of Russia. When World War II broke out, he enlisted in the British Royal Navy and was assigned to help with an expeditionary force in Norway because of his extensive knowledge of the area. In 1940, he helped the Allies recapture the port town of Narvik, Norway. When it became clear that the Germans were going to bomb the city, he evacuated its civilians in direct defiance of his superiors' orders. Dalzel-Job was threatened with a court-martial, but when the King of Norway awarded him the Knight's Cross, first-class, of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav for his heroic act, he was spared any punishment.
Dalzel-Job's later adventures during the war included piloting a mini-submarine and becoming a paratrooper. It was during the last years of the war in Europe that Ian Fleming knew Dalzel-Job, who was then part of Fleming's special intelligence unit, which was charged with finding secret German documents before they were destroyed.
After World War II, Dalzel-Job left the British navy as a lieutenant-commander and served in the Royal Canadian Navy until 1955. He then returned to Scotland to teach nautical studies at Plockton Senior School, where he retired in 1963.
Dalzel-Job, who claimed to have never read a James Bond book or seen one of the movies, was the author of two books: The Settlers (1957), which he wrote under the name Peter Dalzel, and an autobiography written in Norwegian titled Fra Narvik til Normandie ("From Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy"), published in 1996.
(Very few men have a more exciting and dramatic story of t...)
1991
Connections
Dalzel-Job married Bjørg Bangsund on 26 June 1945, in Oslo. Their son, Iain Dalzel-Job, was to serve as a major in the 2nd Battalion, The Scots Guards and commanded G Company (7, 8, and 9 Platoons) in the assault on Mount Tumbledown during the Falklands War.