Sir William Dugdale, Bt - obituary - Telegraph Dugdale was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards and posted to the 3rd Battalion. 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, two of the Germans pulled Dugdale into the trench and he struggled with them for several minutes before the rest of his platoon arrived and took them prisoner. Later he was with Bill Sidney (Viscount De L'Isle) when he won his 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. Two days before the end of the war he and his company drove past the bodies of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, strung up by their ankles in an Esso petrol station. Sir William Dugdale in 1983 (PA) In 2011 Dugdale published a highly readable memoir, Settling the Bill. In it he recounted how, at the end of the war, he had been escorting the German Field Marshals von Rundstedt and von Kleist by aircraft to Nuremberg when Kleist peered out of the window over Dunkirk and began a long, excited conversation in German. I asked Rundstedt, who spoke very good English, 'What did he say? 'Oh," said Rundstedt, he said, 'I can see the crossroads where I took the decision that lost Germany the war." What was that decision? 'Oh," said Rundstedt, 'he sent his tanks to St Valery instead of driving directly into Dunkirk." " Then, as the aircraft flew into an electric storm, Rundstedt decided he had to go to the lavatory: "He lost his balance and shot down the floor and, as the loo door on the left was open, he shot inside. I undid my seat belt to rescue him and was immediately myself upended, and sailed down the plane. As I got to the end, the other door flew open and the Field Marshal shot out, as I shot in by the left-hand door. Eventually Rundstedt was returned to his seat. "He still hadn't had his pee," Dugdale recorded. After the war Dugdale took over the family estates, regretfully negotiating compensation when Baddesley colliery was nationalised in 1947. He trained as a solicitor and indulged his taste for thrills as an amateur jockey, riding Cloncarrig in the 1952 Grand National. Later that year he married the vivacious Lady Belinda Pleydell-Bouverie, daughter of the 6th Earl of Radnor , after meeting her on a skiing trip. When Dugdale's father announced that race riding was not a suitable sport for a married man, the couple began racehorse breeding, and developed a passion for planes and fast cars (particularly Jensens, Mercedes and Allards). Dugdale was no playboy, however, and was active in local government, leading the ruling Conservative group on Warwickshire County Council and overseeing the development of Chelmsley Wood and the construction of the Collector Road during the Birmingham slum clearances in the 1960s. He was selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Oswestry, but shelved his political ambitions when Belinda died of cancer in 1961, leaving him with four children under eight. Dugdale succeeded in the baronetcy on his father's death in 1965, and two years later married Cylla Mount, the sister of Prime Minister David Cameron's mother Mary. She proved a much-loved stepmother to his children and had two of her own. A lifelong Aston Villa fan, Dugdale became chairman of the club in 1975, overseeing the appointment of the well-respected manager Ron Saunders and the club's resurgence from the Third to the First Division. While negotiating the striker Andy Gray's wage demands, he was baffled when Gray repeatedly went to the window and made tic-tac signals with his fingers to his agent standing below. "The next time Andy got up," he recalled, "I went to the other window and leant out, which brought the signalling to an end. We reached agreement soon after. Dugdale was ousted in 1982 when Doug Ellis, nicknamed "Deadly Doug," returned as chairman and reputedly sent him a tie embroidered with the letters SBE ("Sacked by Ellis"). He was a canny and knowledgeable chairman of Severn Trent Water Authority (1974-83) and of General Utilities (1988-99), and served as both High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Warwickshire. He was appointed CBE in 1982. He is survived by his wife, two sons and four daughters. His elder son, William Matthew Stratford Dugdale, born in 1959, succeeds in the baronetcy. Sir William Dugdale, 2nd Bt, born March 29 1922, died November 13 2014