Colonel David Sutherland, who has died aged 85, was part of a 12-man Special Boat Service unit which made a daring raid on the occupied Greek island of Rhodes.

At midnight on September 4 1942 the unit was landed by the Greek submarine Papanikolis; they had no radio, and were instructed to live off the land for the next fortnight. With three Royal Marines and two Greeks, Sutherland successfully blew up three Italian aircraft and a fuel dump, as well as starting a dozen fires.

But the enemy then pursued them closely over the barren mountains, and mined the beaches after discovering the SBS's boats hidden in a grotto.

Most of the raiding party were killed; Sutherland and Marine John Duggan had to hide in a cleft of rock without food or water for a day while suffering agonising cramp as one of their pursuers sat smoking only a few feet away.

Finally reaching the shore, Sutherland contacted the submarine Traveller. Although it was five days since they had eaten (a tin of sardines each), the two men swam out to sea to the discouraging sound of engines dying away, unaware that this came from the Italian patrol boat which was hunting them.

When the boat squadron was reformed after the Rhodes operation, Sutherland was one of two surviving officers who had been in 1 SBS. He took part in Operation Albumen on Crete, when 29 German aircraft were destroyed for the loss of one officer, and afterwards escaped with several Cretans who feared German reprisals

Sutherland was awarded the Military Cross and Duggan the Military Medal. In 1953 Lewis Milestone directed They Who Dare, in which Dirk Bogarde played Sutherland; and in 1999 Sutherland wrote his own account, He Who Dares

From Notes taken from various sources, SBS or Special Boat Service was not part of SOE, but without the requirement by SOE for a method of using commando type raids as Operation Jawick was,  it would have not come into being.