Obituary: Duncan Ferguson MBE; overcame some serious hardships to become a successful banker, Mod medal winner and novelist Published on Wednesday 9 May 2012 00:00 Born: 16 February, 1919, in Calcutta. Died: 24 April, 2012, in Edinburgh, aged 93. For a young man who merely drifted into banking, Duncan Ferguson had an extraordinarily successful career. He rose from teenage apprentice at the Bank of Scotland's Carnoustie branch to become joint general manager, responsible for all its business and branches in the west from the Outer Hebrides to Dumfries and Galloway. He'd always been a resourceful, ingenious character with the ability to reap the best from even the most challenging situations - whether that was growing up without his parents, surviving three years as a prisoner of war by learning enough Gaelic to become a Mod medal winner, helping to found a unique boys" club or fulfilling the often onerous duties of his distinguished career. In retirement he went on to write at least six novels - an interest he took up to beat the boredom in various PoW camps - serve the Highlands and Islands Development Board, raise funds for charities including the Scottish Fisheries Museum and earn an MBE. But his start in life could hardly have been more difficult. His father was manager of a Scottish insurance company in Calcutta and his mother, the daughter of an Indian Army officer, died just nine days after his birth. The little boy was sent home to be raised by his father's sisters, two maiden aunts, in Newport on Tay. After leaving Dundee High School he joined the Bank of Scotland in February 1936, drifting into the profession, he said, partly influenced by a family friend and partly because it seemed to be concerned with people "who, in their infinite variety, are always interesting." He had completed his banking exams before conscription was introduced on the eve of the Second World War and in April 1939 he and some friends joined the Territorial Army, enlisting in 526 Company, Royal Army Service Corps (RASC), 51st Highland Division, at Dudhope Castle, Dundee. On the outbreak of war he was sent to Aldershot and then Bulford before being posted to an Officer Cadet Training Unit in Kent. Commissioned in April 1940, he found himself with 903 Company, RASC, and sailed to Cherbourg. They set up company HQ in an empty chateau in a village north of Rouen and began ferrying supplies to the front line. After surviving the fall of France, he returned to Plymouth and was sent in charge of troops, including 66 drivers, to collect 44 three-ton trucks, six staff cars and 27 motorbikes, from Irvine and drive them to the south of England, where he spent the rest of the summer as the Battle of Britain raged in the skies overhead. He was then sent to the Libyan desert and later ordered to Tobruk where, taking refuge in a trench, he and his men were discovered by an enemy tank and taken captive in the summer of 1942. Flown from Benghazi to Italy, he ended up in a PoW camp in Chieti near the Adriatic coast before being transported to Oflag V111F at Mahrisch-Trubau in Czechoslovakia and then on to the notorious Oflag 79 in Germany. Located at Waggum near Braunschweig, Oflag 79, also known as Brunswick, housed more than 2,500 Allied officers. As the war drew to a close conditions deteriorated, particularly in the winter of 1944/45 when the biting cold and meagre rations sapped morale. But from that misery came one of the most inspirational examples of life in PoW camps One man, Major Percy Flood, came up with the idea that the inmates of Oflag 79 should create a memorial to show the world that their time in camp had not been wasted. His vision was that they should start work within the camp to found and endow a Boys" Club. It would be established back home when the war was over for the boys who would be the Men of Tomorrow. On the afternoon of 14 February, 1945 a camp meeting was convened and the idea was supported overwhelmingly, with trustees elected and a fundraising appeal launched. Every inmate was visited and asked for a donation. Ferguson duly pledged cash through an IOU and by the time the Americans liberated the camp on April 12, 1945, the club committee had collected £13,000 in manuscript cheques, IOUs and Bankers Orders on scraps of paper. Ferguson paid the money once repatriated, making him one of the founders of the Brunswick Club which opened in London in 1949. Amazingly all but £5 of the cash promised was paid - the remaining fiver had been pledged by an POW killed in an accident shortly after his repatriation. Demobbed in 1946, Ferguson returned to the bank in Dundee and was appointed to the Inspectors" Department where he met his future wife Dorothy. They married in 1949 at Morningside Hugh Church, Edinburgh, where he was an elder. His career continued to take off and he was promoted from chief inspector to superintendent of branches, and in 1973 was appointed joint general manager at headquarters in St Vincent Street, Glasgow, visiting every of the branches under his control during his tenure. He was also a member of the Council of the Institute of Bankers in Scotland and on the board of the revived British Linen Bank. After retiring in 1979 he spent three years as a part-time member of the HIDB and became a director of several companies before devoting his energy to charity fundraising for Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland and the Scottish Fisheries Museum. He received his OBE in the 1999 New Year Honours list for services to the museum's development fund, having chaired the committee that raised £850,000. His busy retirement also saw him help out in his daughter's florist business, delivering flowers during the peak times of Valentine's, Mother's Day and Christmas, and continue his singing and writing. Having been taught some Gaelic by a padre during his PoW days, he had competed at the Mod on several occasions, winning a duet competition and a learners" silver medal and later was involved, with his wife, in Edinburgh Gaelic Choir. After whiling away the hours writing in prison camps decades before, he then wrote several novels in retirement. Four traced the fortunes of an Angus family here and abroad, three were historical. Two novels, Miles to Dundee and Green Thorn Tree, were published under the name D A Ferguson. He also wrote A Publik Bank, a mix of his experiences and the bank's history, and contributed material for a book marking the Bank of Scotland's tercentenary. An enthusiastic traveller, he had a story to tell about almost any town in Scotland, particularly if he had inspected its bank. He also toured Europe extensively and returned to Germany for the first time, evidently apprehensive at the border, in 1966. Though his wartime experiences in captivity undoubtedly coloured some of his later life, he grew to love the country, latterly spending time each year in Munich and had been due to visit the Black Forest last week. He is survived by his wife Dorothy, daughter Kitty, son Colin, grandchildren Kirsty and Aileen and great grandson Calum.