Augustus Francis Andrew Nicol Thorne is not a name that springs to mind as one of the great popular generals of WW2 but Andrew Thorne’s name should be remembered as the key figure responsible for the implementation in Scotland of FORTITUDE NORTH, the deception plan to cover the D-Day Landings in 1944.

Andrew Thorne, nicknamed “Bulgy”, was born on the 20th September 1885 and educated at Mulgrave, near Whitby, Eton and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He joined the Grenadier Guards in 1904. Ten years later, on the outbreak of the First World War, Captain Thorne was sent to France where he had a very distinguished war record. He fought at Gheluvelt in the First Battle of Ypres in October and November 1914, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1916, with a first bar in early 1918 and a second bar at the end of the War. He was mentioned in Dispatches seven times and commanded the 3rd Grenadiers between September 1916 and September 1918. He ended WW1, aged 33, as a temporary Brigadier General.

After the war Thorne reverted to the rank of Major. In 1919 he was posted to Washington as Assistant Military Attaché in Washington for two years, followed by the Staff Course at Camberley, both as a student and as an instructor, Military Assistant to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Command of the 3rd Battalion Grenadiers and a period of study at the Imperial Defence College.

In 1932 Thorne was appointed as Military Attaché to the British Embassy in Berlin and it was during this three-year period that he got to know Hitler and many of his senior officers personally. Both Hitler and Thorne had been present at Gheluvelt in 1914 and they are known to have discussed their battle experiences together at length. The posting to Berlin was followed by Command of the 1st Infantry Brigade (Guards) and Command of London District.

Here therefore was a man who, on the outbreak of WW2, was uniquely placed and indeed poised to take high command; more than the equal of Alan Brooke, Bernard Montgomery, John Dill and Bill Slim.

Andrew Thorne’s handling of the Territorial 48th (South Midland) Division in France in 1940 merely served to reinforce his distinguished battle record and after Dunkirk he commanded XII Corps with the vital responsibility of organising the defence of Kent and Sussex against the very real threat of invasion.

Then in May 1941, Andrew Thorne was promoted to Scottish Command and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. It was an extraordinary decision given Thorne’s ability, age, training and battle experience but there is also evidence to suggest that in the long term nobody was better prepared than Thorne for the task that lay ahead, not in commanding an army in the field, but in co-ordinating a complex deception plan to convince the Germans that the 4th Allied Army, including substantial, but not real, American formations existed in Scotland in the spring of 1944. Thorne was able to draw on his experience in both Washington and Berlin in the 1930s and his personal knowledge of Hitler’s preoccupation with Norway as a “zone of destiny”, in the implementation of FORTITUDE NORTH which was carried out by means of wireless deception, physical deception and double agents and which is credited with ensuring that large numbers of German troops remained in Norway and were not available for deployment against the invading Allies on the beaches of Normandy.

In 1943 Thorne was tasked with planning the liberation of Norway but it was not until after VE Day, 8th May 1945, that his force of just 30,000, including Crown Prince Olav, set sail to disarm over 350,000 Germans in Norway with the assistance of the Norwegian Resistance.

Andrew Thorne retired in 1946. He returned to active service and worked for a year with the Norwegian Ministry of Defence in 1950-51, before retiring to live near Reading and devoting himself to charity work. He received honours from Poland, France, the United States and Norway. He died on the 25th September 1970 aged 85.