Richard Andrew Palethorpe Todd was born in Dublin in 1919, the son of a Royal Army Medical Corps officer who was also a Irish rugby international. After an early childhood in India, he attended Shrewsbury School before forsaking an expected Army career for the stage. After attending the Italia Conti Academy, he acted on the stage and as an extra in films.

Todd enlisted soon after the outbreak of war and entered Sandhurst in late 1940. On 29 January 1941 he was one of 25 cadets injured when D Block of New College was hit by a German bomb.

In his book "Caught in the Act" is the best description on record of the incident:

I had just had a bath and was walking along the corridor to my room, clad in my pyjamas and my towel slung over my shoulder. As I left the bathroom, although no alarm had been sounded, I became aware of the drone of an enemy twin-engine intruder plane, a sound which had become quite familiar. Then I swear I saw it. Clearly printed in my mind is the sight of the bomb as it came through the ceiling only yards in front of me and went through the floor before exploding somewhere below.

It could only have been a fraction of a second before the building all around me was gone upwards and outwards, and I was sailing through the air with the rubble. A second or two later I thumped down on the lawn some 30 or 40 yards from the building, bits of debris raining all around me. I was literally blown through walls that were not there any more. I scrambled to my feet and my limbs seemed to be working perfectly and I felt no pain anywhere. All I could feel was that for some reason I was very wet. I don’t remember how I got back into the building but I knew I must try to get help for those caught in the collapsed end of the wing.

All the electric light had failed so I had to scramble as best I could to the corridor connecting all four blocks. The first cadet to reach me shone a light on my and said

“Oh my God!” and was promptly sick. With the arrival of others and more light I almost had the same reaction. What I had thought to be warm water was in fact blood, trickling from puncture wounds and abrasions all over my face and body.

Two cadets helped me to the nearby College hospital, whose windows had been blown out, where my injuries were patched up. Altogether I had been very lucky. Five young men were killed that night, and a dozen or so had been hurt.’

After early war service in Iceland, Todd was assigned as part of 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion preparing for the invasion of Europe. On D Day, as a Captain, he parachuted into occupied Europe as part of the force sent to capture the Pegasus Bridge. After three months fighting in Normandy, 6th Airborne Division was withdrawn back to the UK to reconstitute, but returned to the continent three months later as emergency reinforcements to halt the German offensive in the Ardennes. Short of transport as they advanced into Germany, Todd, as the MTO, was responsible for gathering a rag tag selection of commandeered vehicles to ferry the troops forward. After VE day, the Division returned to the UK for a few weeks before being sent on counter-insurgency operations in Palestine. Todd finally returned to the UK to be demobbed in 1946.

Returning to acting, Todd was offered a screen contract and starred in For Them That Trespass (1949) before a part in the stage play resulted in a major part, the dying Scottish NCO, in The Hasty Heart alongside Ronald Reagan, for which he received a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination. After appearing in a number of action roles, Todd was signed by 20th Century Fox and starred as Wing Commander Guy Gibson in the 1955 film, The Dambusters. Two years later he starred as another action hero, Lieutenant Commander John Kerens in Yangtze Incident. In 1962, he played Major John Howard in the D Day epic The Longest Day and had the unique experience of re-enacting the capture of Pegasus Bridge, alongside another actor playing the role of Lieutenant Richard Todd. He described it as ‘standing beside myself, talking to myself’. Ian Fleming wanted Todd for the role of James Bond but the scheduling of filming of The Longest Day meant that the starring role in Dr No was offered to Sean Connery.

By the 1970s, Todd’s film career was in decline but he kept himself busy with television appearances in Silent Witness, Dr Who and Heartbeat as well as being the subject of This Is Your Life in 1988. Awarded the OBE for services to entertainment and having appeared in almost fifty films, Richard Todd died in 2009.