Guardsman Hugh Macdonald

In Biggles Follows On, Guardsman Hugh Macdonald was a British soldier and childhood friend of Guardsman Ian Ross. Like many other soldiers training at Caterham, Macdonald had been approached by Erich von Stalhein and persuaded to desert to join an "international brigade" which offered better pay and conditions. Ross had urged Macdonald not to listen but Macdonald had said that he had joined the army to fight, not to be "ticked off all the time by a sergeant-major." After deserting, Macdonald was sent for a time to Berlin to make propaganda broadcasts and was then shipped out, with Ross to Kratsen in Manchuria to do the same, this time with his messages being aired to United Nations troops fighting in Korea. Macdonald was shot while trying to escape, just a few days before Biggles mounted a raid on the base to rescue Ross. Macdonald blamed himself for getting Ross into the trap in which he had fallen himself. He wasn't to know that Ross was a stool-pigeon inserted by Biggles to expose the details of the operation.