Desmond Young (British Army officer)

Brigadier Desmond Young OBE, MC (27 December 1891 – 27 June 1966) was an Australian-born British Army officer, newspaper publisher and writer. He travelled widely during his youth, accompanying his father in his work as a maritime salvage expert. He attended the University of Oxford but was asked to leave after he failed to attend a single lecture. Young found work in Malaya as a rubber planter and operated a nightclub in London. Soon after the beginning of the First World War he joined the British Army, serving as an officer in the King's Royal Rifle Corps. He was wounded in action and won a Military Cross in June 1918. After the War Young worked as a newspaper reporter, editor and publisher in the South African Cape Times and the Indian Allahabad Pioneer.

Young joined the British Indian Army in 1941, during the Second World War. He was appointed to command the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade in the North African campaign. Young was captured during the 1942 Battle of Gazala and briefly met the German commander Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Imprisoned in Italy he escaped and ended the war as editor of a pro-Allied newspaper in Switzerland. Young published Rommel: The Desert Fox, a biography of the German general, in 1950 and it was adapted into the 1951 film The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel. The work has been criticised for its overly positive portrayal of Rommel's actions. In 1960 Young published Fountain of the Elephants, a biography of the French adventurer Benoît de Boigne. He also wrote two autobiographies.