http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/news/2008/03/29/db2901.xml
Dougie Wright (on the right) meeting Major-General Francis Sugden: he once bit a guard dog back
Sergeant Dougie Wright
Sergeant Dougie Wright, who has died aged 88, earned a Military Medal and a legendary reputation as a fighting soldier with Lord Jellicoe's 1st Special Boat Squadron in the Greek islands.
In April 1944 he distinguished himself in a close-quarter attack on an enemy post on Ios, which resulted in no SBS losses but five enemy casualties. He was also involved in two dramatic attacks on a radio station on Amorgos. In the first he found himself under the command of Anders Lassen, a Dane (later to win a posthumous VC) who hated Germans and usually killed them; but on this occasion Lassen did a deal with a captured wireless operator by which he took the man's dog as well as the station's code books, while Wright took the German's Greek mistress.
When the second attack was made, the station had been reinforced to be the Germans' local headquarters. Wright, a left-hander who had taught himself to become an expert with a Bren gun, was given the crucial task of providing cover.
He positioned himself with 20 magazines of ammunition on a flat rooftop to await the signal to fire: a Greek officer throwing a grenade through the station's middle window. Although nearly 300 yards away, Wright opened up with such accuracy that the enemy became too demoralised to respond. Six of them were brought down as they fled the building, and he later counted five more.
The resulting success of these actions was "to a very great extent due to the work of this NCO", according to his citation.
Wright consolidated his reputation for conduct of the highest order during further operations on Naxos between May 16 and May 26 when, weak from a serious relapse of malaria, he refused help carrying his heavy equipment during a 15-mile march over mountainous country.
It was due to his determination that the patrol was spared an extra day's waiting in an area heavily patrolled by the enemy, the citation concluded.
Douglas Wright was born on March 11 1919 at Macclesfield, Cheshire, one of nine children; his father had been in the Pioneer Corps during the Great War. Young Dougie worked for a baker, as a butcher's boy and on a farm before enlisting in the Grenadiers in 1938; he was posted to the King's Company, where the shortest man was 6ft 3in tall. During the Dunkirk retreat he recalled coming under fire as the Grenadiers arrived on the beaches and were ordered to march to attention. They wondered "what the hell was going on" until the "eyes right" was given, and General Alexander returned their salute. Then "some silly bugger forgot to give the halt," Wright recalled, "so we ended up in a foot of water."
Following service in North Africa, Wright volunteered for the SAS, then joined the SBS. He took part in raids on Sardinia, Crete and Yugoslavia as well as on the Greek islands, where he was said to have strangled nine Germans with his bare hands. No written evidence for this exists. As an in-pensioner at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, he had no family photographs on the wall of his bunk, only the bayonet he had carried at Dunkirk. Once, when the pensioners were (unusually) recalling how many enemy they had each personally dispatched, Wright brought the discussion to an abrupt end by saying: "Sank a troopship once."
After the war he was discharged because of his malaria, but re-enlisted in the Grenadiers 10 years later to serve on Malta and then Cyprus, where he became the pioneer sergeant. While trying to procure some badly needed cement for a tennis court, he was searching company stores out of hours when a guard dog went for his throat. "Having worked with farm animals, I wasn't having that," Wright recalled, "so I bit the bastard back." The dog yelped, and ran off.
Later, back with the battalion in London, he took a mentally deranged soldier to Millbank Hospital, where Wright ended up swearing at a psychiatrist whose white coat concealed that he was a brigadier. This earned Wright a severe reprimand, and lost him his Long Service and Good Conduct Medal. But he went on to see further service in the Cameroons, Germany and Sharjah, being finally discharged in 1970 after more than 21 years' service.
He then worked as a butcher and a security man before joining the prison service. Entering the Royal Hospital in 1995, he reverted to out-pension for family reasons in 1997 but returned the following year.
Dougie Wright, who died on February 27, was twice married and divorced, and is survived by three children from each of his marriages.
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