Lofty Large

Early life Large was born in Oxfordshire, the first child of Joseph Large and his wife Emily (née Pratley). His sister, Janet, was nine years his junior. In 1939, the family moved to a cottage outside the village of Guiting Power in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. As a child his father taught him how to shoot game; he later said of this experience, "little did I realise I would spend a lot of time, many years later [in the SAS], being trained in exactly that type of instinctive shooting".

Large would later dedicate his first book to "the best parents a man could ask for".

Growing up during the Second World War, and having watched British and American soldiers on field exercises in the Cotswold Hills, Large said that he had always wanted to be a soldier. He also joined the Army Cadet Force.

Army career Large joined the British Army as a "band boy" at the age of 15. Unable to join his county regiment (the Gloucestershire Regiment) because of a lack of vacancies, he instead joined the Wiltshire Regiment, with whom he served for five years in England, Germany and Hong Kong. During this time he was given the nickname "Lofty", having reached his adult height of 6 feet inches (1.975m).

Korean War In March 1951, along with half a dozen other newly badged Glosters, Large was sent to B Company's position in the low hills above the Imjin River. The Glosters, as part of the 29th Brigade, were defending routes through the valley that could potentially be used by the Chinese in a southbound offensive towards Seoul. On 22 April 1951, they engaged with Chinese troops in the Battle of Imjin. By the morning of 24 April, B Company had fought off seven assaults before they were able to rejoin the remainder of their battalion on what became known as Gloster Hill. By this time the battalion was vastly outnumbered, low on ammunition and cut off from United Nations lines. He spent two years in the camp and celebrated his 21st birthday there. Throughout his incarceration he had two bullets and at least 18 pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body. To help Large cope with the chronic pain of his untreated injuries, an American POW introduced him to marijuana, which grew wild in the area. Although he found it to be a highly effective – and enjoyable – painkiller, he was somewhat alarmed by its psychoactive effects and subsequently tried to limit his use of the drug. Like many of his fellow prisoners, Large also suffered from beri-beri and dysentery.

In March 1953, a Chinese doctor operated on Large and removed a tracer round from his ribs as a preliminary to his being released as part of an exchange of wounded prisoners. Having weighed in March 1951, he had dropped to by the time of his release. He also still had very limited movement in his atrophied and wasted left arm and was later told that if he had been treated by a British doctor at the time of his injury his arm would probably have been amputated.

Large was one of a batch of 22 exchanged British POWs whose release and subsequent return to Britain became front-page news: The Guardian newspaper reported that the group had been unaware of the death of King George VI (which had occurred over a year earlier), but were now looking forward to the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Interviewed after his release, Large described the war as "useless" and said that he believed the communist's claims that the US had engaged in germ warfare.

For its defence of Gloster Hill in the Battle of Imjin, the 1st Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. The citation is conferred on units of the armed forces of the United States and of allied nations, and was awarded to the Glosters for "exceptionally outstanding performance of duty and extraordinary heroism in action against the armed enemy ... Every yard of ground they surrendered was covered with enemy dead, until the last gallant soldier of the fighting battalion was over-powered by the final surge of the enemy masses."

Large's first operation with the SAS was in Malaya, hunting the pro-independence guerrillas of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) during the Malayan Emergency. By the time of Large's involvement there was little communist activity and, despite months of jungle patrols and encounters with leeches, scorpions, civet cats and tigers, he never had any contact with MNLA guerrillas.

While suppressing a rebellion in Oman in 1958, Large infamously lost his temper with a recalcitrant donkey.

Several weeks later, in January 1959, Large was part of the "A" and "D" Squadron assault on the Jebel Akhdar. This entailed a overnight ascent of the south side of the jebel, with each soldier carrying up to of kit. Having completed the ascent the SAS were able to surprise and defeat the rebels, who had previously held the plateau as a virtually impregnable stronghold.

During the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation in Borneo, Large took part in Operation Claret. As the leader of a four-man SAS patrol, he spent up to two weeks at a time hidden in the jungle on deniable incursions into Indonesia, performing reconnaissance or ambushing Indonesian forces.

Parachuting was an important part of SAS training and operations, but it was not an experience that Large enjoyed: He suffered from a fear of heights and his considerable bulk meant that he descended far too quickly to have any chance of a comfortable landing. Despite this, he eventually qualified as a parachute instructor, although the footnote on his course report read, "not suited to parachuting – either in size or inclination."

In his memoirs Large recalls that the last shots he fired on active duty were warning shots. Fired at long range at the ground a few feet in front of a local woman (it is unclear where the incident took place), they were intended to dissuade her from heading into "certain danger". Despite firing increasingly close to the woman's feet, she continued forward, moving out of sight, only to reappear moments later leading the previously unseen bull which she had been intent on retrieving – "What a player! God help any poor son-in-law she might have."

Large spent the final years of his 27-year Army career as an instructor with 23 SAS Regiment (one of the SAS's two reserve regiments), The inscription reads:

Personal life

Before leaving for Hong Kong with the Wiltshire Regiment in 1951, Large had met Ann, a nanny at the Regiment's depot in Devizes. She wrote to him five times a week during his captivity in Chongsung, although only about 90 of these letters were actually delivered to Large. They eventually married in 1955 and afterwards lived in an Army rental property on the top floor of a farmhouse in Longford, on the outskirts of Gloucester.

When Large volunteered for the SAS in 1957 it was not a unit that was well known outside of military circles – a fact that Large took advantage of by initially telling his wife that the Regiment's job was to air drop supplies to troops in the jungle.

In 1960 the couple moved with the Regiment to Hereford, where they later had two children, Andy and Donna.

Having been ill with leukaemia for three years, Large died aged 76 at St Michael's Hospice, Hereford.