Wrottesley was the only son of Honorary Walter Bennet Wrottesley, 2nd son of Arthur Wrottesley, 3rd Baron Wrottesley, and his wife Kate May Harris, only daughter of Douglas Howard Harris, of Craddock, Cape Colony, South Africa. He married Roshnara Barbara Wingfield-Stratford, only daughter of Captain Esmé Cecil Wingfield-Stratford Distinguished Service Cross, of The Oaks, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, in 1941.
He was educated at Harrow.
He served with distinction in World World War II and, as a captain with the Guards Armoured Division, is mentioned in A Bridge Too Far, the story of the battle for Arnhem. Another account of an incident near the Dutch town of Driel, during Operation Market Garden, reads:
"Whilst he was in the western sector of Driel he heard the sound of armoured cars approaching and naturally assumed them to be German. However using his binoculars he soon identified them as being British, and so immediately ordered that the anti-tank mines be removed from the road.
The four scout vehicles, commanded by Captain Wrottesley of Number.5 Troop, C Squadron, the 2nd Household Cavalry, had been able to break through the German defences north of Nijmegen under the cover of fog, and they encountered the Polish bicycle patrol soon a few hours before arriving at Driel."
Some years later Dick Wrottesley met the officer commanding the German tanks to whom he had given the slip.
Wrottesley married Joyce Marion Wallace, daughter of Frederick Alexander Wallace, in 1949. In her obituary, published in the Daily Telegraph in 2006, it was reported that:
In 1949 Marion met an Old Harrovian, Dick Wrottesley, in the Bag of Nails nightclub.
The heir to Lord Wrottesley reputedly locked her in the lavatory until she had agreed to marry him. The Wrottesley family home, Wrottesley Hall, and estate was broken up when the 5th Baron sold in 1963 and moved to South Africa.
Foreign leading his troop of armoured cars through the German lines, and establishing contact with the Polish Parachute Brigade on the south bank of the River Rhine, Wrottesley won his Military Cross. The German informed Dick"s then wife, Mary, that: "I went to Berlin to get a blast from Hitler, and Dick went to get a medal from the King." He retired from the Army in 1950.
