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A British war hero said to be the inspiration behind James Bond has died aged 90, the <I>Guardian</I> newspaper reported on Wednesday.
Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job commanded one of the teams led by the creator of 007 character, Ian Fleming, who had joined the Royal Navy for the duration of World War II.
Like 007, Dalzel-Job, whose death was announced in Scotland on Tuesday, sometimes defied authority.
He went against official orders and rescued civilians from the Norwegian town of Narvik just before it was destroyed in a German raid. He avoided a court martial after the King of Norway awarding him a Knights Cross of St Olaf First Class.
He could apparently ski backwards, navigate a midget submarine, and undertake the riskiest parachute jumps.
Dalzel-Job was sent to Norway because he knew its coastline, when he sailed up and down it with his mother and a Norwegian schoolgirl named Bjorg. After the war, he traced and married Bjorg.
Unlike the skirt-chasing 007, he remained faithful to one woman all his life.
"I have only ever loved one woman," he said after Bjorg's death in the 1980s.
His memoir, From Arctic Snow to Dust of Normandy, was published in 1991.