Donald Boyd, born in 1895, was training as a journalist with the Leeds Mercury when war broke out in 1914. He served on the Western Front as a Royal Artillery officer from 1915 to 1918 and was awarded the Military Cross for recovering two guns during the Great Retreat of March 1918. After the war he joined the Manchester Guardian, reporting on the Irish War of Independence and Soviet Russia. In 1936 he joined the BBC and reported from the USA during the Second World War. Retiring in 1955, he lived in Cornwall until his death in 1973.