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Sir William Dugdale Bt CBE MC DL
Late Grenadier Guards
by Major P A J Wright OBE
formerly Grenadier Guards
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 Sir William Dugdale, 2nd Baronet, who has died aged 92, was born on 29th March 1922. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford where he joined the Officers Training Corps. He went to Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards and posted to 3rd Battalion. In Tunisia in 1942, the Battalion occupied Grenadier Hill and dominated the area by aggressive night patrols. Dugdale was the first to draw blood in an encounter with five Germans. In 1943 he was awarded a Military Cross for leading his platoon up a Tunisian hillside under intense fire to knock out a German machine gun post. During the assault Dugdale saw three men running towards a trench, and, outstripping his platoon by several yards, he reached it simultaneously with the Germans. Holding one of them down with his foot, he grappled with another, the third having run away. His men then came up and the prisoners were secured. Later he was with Bill Sidney (Viscount De Lisle) when he was awarded the VC at Anzio, and was himself mentioned in despatches for his role in defending the Anzio beachhead in an action in which he was his company’s only surviving officer.
In peacetime, William Dugdale took over the family estates including Baddesley colliery and trained as a solicitor. He rode in the 1952 Grand National and flew small aeroplanes in races around the world. He succeeded to the baronetcy on his father’s death in 1965. In 1975 he became chairman of Aston Villa and saw its resurgence from the third to the first division, culminating in winning the European Cup in 1982. He was chairman of the Severn Trent Water Authority (1974-1983) and of General Utilities (1988-1999). As chairman of the National Water Council he entertained the Trade Unions at Scott’s during the national water strike of 1983, while keeping his promise to Mrs Thatcher that he wouldn’t give in to them. He served as both High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Warwickshire and was appointed CBE in 1982. In 2011 he published his revealing and humorous memoir, Settling the Bill. He married first, in 1952, Lady Belinda Pleydell-Bouverie. She predeceased him, and he married secondly, in 1965, Cylla Mount, who survives him with two sons and four daughters. |
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