Courtenay and Masha yesterday with cards from the Queen and Norway’s king (Image: Masha Llloyd /SWNS.COM)
A MODEST war hero turned 100 yesterday with salutes from two royal families for an astounding life that sounds like a film script. Former Navy officer Charles Courtenay Lloyd can look back on an incredible career in which he helped liberate a country, trained Cold War spies and mastered 10 languages. He was also once presented with a medal by a foreign king, married a princess and went on to inspire thousands of schoolchildren as a teacher.
Yet the unassuming son of a clergyman, who celebrated his birthday at his home in Spain with his family, has never boasted of his achievements.
And when asked about his life he replied simply: "I've had quite an enjoyable one."
The centenarian, known to all as Courtenay, was born in Staffordshire in 1919 to Rev Canon John Collins Lloyd and accomplished pianist Dorothy Gertrude Scull.
In 1928 his family moved to a new parish in Bristol and he attended Clifton College with younger brother Raymond, who later died of polio. A school report from 1935 described Courtenay as "perfectly reliable" and good at Latin but "dreamy".
Despite the Great Depression he landed a job through one of his father's parishioners at the Imperial Tobacco Company in Bristol.
His duties included having to collect international news items about the company, a role that sparked his passion for languages and geography. He took night classes and earned a place at Selwyn College, Cambridge, but his studies were halted by war.
In 1940 he joined the Navy and rose from ordinary seaman to lieutenant, spending part of the war in Scotland.
Then a ship he was serving aboard was sent to Norway to help free that country from the Nazis. Not only did Courtenay learn to speak Norwegian, but for his outstanding services during the liberation he was awarded the Liberty Medal by King Haakon VII.
The hero as a ‘dreamy’ schoolboy in the 1930s (Image: Masha Lloyd /SWNS.COM)
Courtenay in uniform as a
