Norman Watson: SAS operative known as 'The Fox' who distinguished himself in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and France

Norman Watson was one of the youngest men to join the SAS in its earliest form, an elite Second World War commando unit raised by David Stirling of the Scots Guards with only 60 soldiers and five officers dedicated to raids behind enemy lines.

The athletic six-footer from Walkerburn in the Scottish Borders answered the call-up to war as soon as he could, in 1942 and at the age of 17. From his first job as a cloth-mill mechanic he joined the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, before volunteering for the newly formed 5th (Scottish) Battalion the Parachute Regiment then based at Hardwick Hall, Chesterfield, in Derbyshire.

There followed an intensive 12 days of jump-training at Manchester Ringway, then the only parachute school in Britain, and deployment to north Africa, where the teenager's personality and talents prompted another transfer, to Stirling's fledgling fighting force.

After Britain's many reverses in 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was pinning much hope on this small group and its novel tactics in the quest to beat the great German desert commander, Erwin Rommel. By the time the Germans had captured Stirling in January 1943, the young recruit Watson, already admired as a rugby player and swimmer, was gaining a reputation among more grizzled colleagues for eluding capture by the infuriated enemy.

Had the Germans taken Watson, a dreadful new threat issued by Hitler would have hung over the young special forces soldier. On 18 October 1942 the Führer ordered: "From now on all enemies on so-called Commando missions in Europe or Africa challenged by German troops ... are to be slaughtered to the last man .... No pardon is to be granted to them on principle."

Rommel is known to have burnt his copy of that decree, but the young Scot, who was not long out of Peebles High School, risked certain death many times during the Allied advance after the November 1942 victory at El Alamein and the Torch landings in North Africa, through Sicily and Italy in 1943, and, from June 1944, across France and into the heart of the Reich itself.

Details of Watson's part in the SAS's operations are categorised as secret even today, but a moment of revelation after D-Day shows how good luck attended his skill. "It's Norman Watson, the Fox!" a shout went up, as he came upon an Allied patrol on his return from a foray behind German lines in 1944. That cry, from an officer who was a fellow native of Walkerburn, together with Watson's dishevelled appearance, which caused the men to think he was a vagrant, made them hold their fire and saved his life.

Another of the scattered recollections about his undercover career recounts how, on the way to a night drop by parachute to enter and render useless an important German facility in France, Watson was on the point of jumping when the pilot shouted: "Abort!", and by the skin of his teeth Watson managed to cling on inside the fuselage. The landing lights laid out by members of the French Resistance were the wrong colour, an agreed signal to the pilot that the Germans knew of the attempt and were lying in wait.

Watson was also the sole survivor of one of the SAS's signature missions by Jeep – four men and one vehicle dropped into enemy-held territory by parachute – which sometimes brought success in the form of sabotage or the seizure of important German documents. The rest of the party, including a padre, were caught and killed.

Watson, who rarely spoke of his wartime exploits sporting the SAS's buff beret, almost certainly took part in some or all of its raids on petrol dumps and airfields in Crete in July 1943, and in the reconnaissance missions infiltrating German lines south of Saint-Lô between 19 July and 23 August 1944.

Disasters, such as the summary execution of 33 SAS men deep in a forest near Verrières, in Vienne département, also in July 1944, had to be kept to the back of his mind if Watson were not to be deterred from tasks such as cutting railway tracks, as those men had been doing on the Paris-Bordeaux line, in order to disrupt German fuel supplies.

Watson had to fight with weapons no larger than 3in mortars, and report back to base using messenger pigeons or cumbersome hidden wireless trucks. His daring observations of enemy movements helped maintain the Allied advance, and it was he, its "Fox", whom the SAS proudly chose as its representative in the Victory in Europe parade in London on 13 May, 1945, six days after Germany surrendered.

His light touch was called on even after hostilities ceased when in July 1945, having acquired the skills of bomb disposal, he was sent to Norway to make sure no booby traps remained among the U-boat fleet assembled there. From this challenge, too, however, he emerged unscathed. After such bravery he was granted extended leave and sped home to marry Peggy, a Chesterfield girl he had charmed with his prowess on the dance floor at a gathering near his first base at Hardwick Hall three years before.

Watson stayed on to serve in security operations in Palestine until 1948, after which he joined the Forestry Commission, making a career as a ranger in the Scottish Borders until 1990, when he retired and moved with Peggy back to Chesterfield, nevertheless taking every opportunity to acknowledge his Scots roots by wearing his kilt. His wife and four children survive him.

Archibald Norman Watson, SAS operative, sportsman and Forestry Commission ranger: born Walkerburn, Scottish Borders 17 November 1924; married 1945 Peggy (three daughters, one son); died Chesterfield, Derbyshire 5 November 2013.