Major Dick Rubinstein

MAJOR Dick Rubinstein, a wartime hero who earned the Military Cross and the Croix de Guerre for organising guerrilla resistance in France and Burma, has died aged 83.
He lead the Special Operations Executive Jedburgh Team that was parachuted safely, despite ground fire, into Brittany on the night of August 6, 1944, bearing five million francs for the French Resistance.
The following weeks were spent with the SAS and the Forces Français de L’Interieur helping to land gliders loaded with arms and hiding in an oyster farm between operations. The mission was a success, and resulted in most of the region being cleared of German forces by the end of the month.
The Jeds returned to France on September 15 parachuting into eastern France close to the Swiss border, there to gather intelligence on enemy movements and to help repel the German troops.
He was mentioned in dispatches, and awarded the Croix de Guerre.
In December 1944, he and two colleagues were parachuted into northern Burma to gather intelligence on Japanese supply lines and to stoke the resistance movement among the local Kachins, who were sympathetic to the Allied forces.
Again it would be a successful mission, with the guerrilla groups organised by Rubinstein taking a heavy toll on the enemy. He had similar success in an operation in April 100 miles to the east. The 200 guerrilla fighters he raised carried out ambushes on Japanese troops and captured weaponry. After two months, he lead his team south to Toungoo to join forces holding back the Japanese advance on Siam.
His conduct in Burma earned him the Military Cross.
Richard Arthur Rubinstein was born in Baker Street on August 29, 1921. His father, a milliner, sent him to Hampstead’s University College School.
Already in the Territorial Army since the age of 16, he enlisted in the Royal Engineers as the war broke out. He was soon made a captain in charge of chains of searchlights at the height of the Luftwaffe’s bombing offensives. After converting from Judaism to Church of England, he married Gay in 1943, with whom he had been friends since their childhood. Shortly after the wedding he volunteered for the SOE, and began training in Peterborough before his first mission to France.
On his return to England from service, and following a brief stint running a POW camp in Devon, he returned to civilian life to read mechanical engineering at Imperial College, taking up a place he had deferred since 1939. After graduating with a first, he moved to Merseyside to work at ICI as a workshop manager. In 1956, now with two sons, he moved back to the south to work as an engineer at De Haviland and Hawker Siddeley.
Retiring in 1986, he and Gay enjoyed spending holidays on a boat they kept moored in the Beaulieu River.
He worked with University College School, serving on many Old Gowers’ committees and the School Council, and Hampstead Parish Church and serving on the Parochial Church Council.
He died on February 23, and is survived by his wife and his two sons.

JONATHAN ALLEN