Sydney Hudson

Christopher Sydney Hudson (1 August 1910 – 7 April 2005) was a British alpine skier and an agent of the British clandestine Special Operations Executive during World War II. He competed in the men's combined event at the 1936 Winter Olympics. Hudson worked in France and Southeast Asia as an SOE agent. The purpose of SOE was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in Axis occupied countries. SOE agents allied themselves with resistance groups and supplied them with weapons and equipment.

Hudson undertook two missions to France, occupied by Nazi Germany, for SOE. In his first mission in 1942, he was soon captured and spent fifteen months imprisoned. He escaped and returned to Britain and was dispatched a second time to France, serving with distinction before and after the D-Day invasion on 6 June 1944. After the reconquest of France by the Allies, SOE sent him to Southeast Asia with Force 136 where he worked mostly in Thailand and Laos fomenting resistance to the Japanese occupation and, after the war, repatriating both Allied soldiers captured by the Japanese and Japanese soldiers. He worked in a defeated Germany from 1947 to 1953 for international agencies involved in reconstruction and rehabilitation.

Returning to Britain, Hudson became a successful businessman. He helped establish the Social Democratic Party in Scotland in the early 1980s.

Early life Sydney "Soapy" Hudson was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, the son of Theodore and Ella Hudson. His father was a businessman and a British Vice-Consul in Switzerland. Hudson grew up in Montreux. Hudson was a talented skier, golfer, and tennis player. As a young man, he skied in Switzerland in the winter and played golf at the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club in Britain in the warmer months. In 1933, Hudson became the British ski champion, and was named the vice-captain of the British Olympic team. In 1938, he married Joan who was also a member of the British ski team. The couple had a daughter, named Jennifer, born 23 September 1942. He was in the chemical business in Switzerland; but, in August 1939, a few days before World War II began, he returned to Great Britain.

Biographer Ayed described Hudson as tall, blue-eyed, and handsome. He had a "wry humour and a laconic approach to life."

For his work with SOE, Hudson was honoured twice with a Distinguished Service Order, plus a Croix de Guerre.

After the war Hudson returned to Switzerland in 1946, but, dissatisfied his job with the family chemical company, he joined the Control Commission for Germany and worked in Berlin and with German miners until 1951. He then went to work with the U.S. High Commissioner for Germany for two more years. He returned to England in mid-1953.

Hudson divorced his wife Joan in 1952 and married Ruth Risse, a German who was one-half Jewish, in May 1954.

Hudson worked for Shell International, before moving to Scotland at the end of the 1960s to work for the Bank of Scotland. He also worked for the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and became a chairman of CBI Scotland. He helped to establish the Social Democratic Party in Scotland in the early 1980s. In 2003, Hudson wrote the book Undercover Operator about his time in the SOE. He died in Livingston, West Lothian, Scotland, in April 2005 at the age of 94.