George Lane

George Henry Lane, MC (born Gyuri or György Lányi; 18 January 1915 – 19 March 2010) was a British Army officer in the Commandos during World War II, achieving the rank of colonel. He performed a number of missions behind enemy lines. Captured on one such mission, Lane was spared after he had tea with Erwin Rommel, and later escaped. Early life Lane was born in Upper Hungary, with the birth name Gyuri or György Lányi. His family were Jewish; his father, Ernest Lányi, was a wealthy landowner. The family moved to Budapest after the end of the First World War, when his parents' land was allocated to the new state of Czechoslovakia by the Treaty of Versailles. He moved to London in 1935, where he befriended the Dean of Windsor, Albert Baillie. He studied at Christ Church, Oxford and then read English at the University of London, but also trained with the Hungary men's national water polo team, and wrote for a Hungarian newspaper on a freelance basis. Second World War After the outbreak of the Second World War, he volunteered to join the British Army. He was accepted as an officer cadet by the Grenadier Guards, but as an alien was also served with a deportation notice. Connections via Baillie with Anthony Eden, David Margesson and James Thomas removed the threat of deportation, and he served for a year as a sergeant in the Alien Pioneer Corps. He joined SOE, and undertook clandestine missions in occupied Belgium and the Netherlands. After he refused to serve with SOE in Hungary, he transferred first to No. 4 Commando and then the German-speaking X Troop (later 3 Troop) in No. 10 Commando. He was commissioned in 1943.