Derek Pounds’s long and active career in the Royal Marines owed something to chance. As a 17-year-old pupil at Reading School in January 1940, he decided to enlist at the local recruiting office. “You’re a well-built lad. You’d better be a Marine,” said a large personage in blue — afterwards recognised as a Colour Sergeant, RM. Pounds, born Edgar George Derek Pounds in 1922, always cited this as an example of perfect personnel selection and career counselling.

Awarded the King’s Badge as the outstanding recruit of his squad — he remains the only King’s Badgeman to have reached general rank — he was drafted to the cruiser Kent and saw service with the Home Fleet as captain of a 4in gun mounting until selected for officer training. Again awarded the sword as top cadet, he joined the cruiser Berwick in April 1944 as a probationary second lieutenant. The cruiser played a role in the covering force for two hard-fought Russian convoys from Britain to Murmansk and back.

Pounds volunteered for commando training and joined 45 Commando at the end of the war. As a company commander for the next six years he saw action in most of the uncomfortable postwar campaigns concerned with issues of British sovereignty and the establishment of a tolerable world order. From early 1946 the commando garrisoned Hong Kong, Pounds’s Marines becoming expert in discovering illegal opium dens, preventing smuggling and preserving the border against incursions by the Chinese National Army.

While training in North Africa in April 1948, 45 Commando was flown at short notice to Haifa to reinforce the evacuation of troops during the closing stages of the British Mandate. This was the month of the infamous massacre by Zionists of Arabs in the village of Dir Yassin. Terrorism by the Irgun group, including attacks on British troops and police, was now complementing the well-judged political pressures exercised worldwide by the Haganah and the Jewish Agency, leading to the acceleration of a messy and dangerous withdrawal process by British troops.

Pounds volunteered to join 41 (Independent) Commando in Korea in August 1950. This was a special operations formation, often using American equipment and battledress. He was put in charge of a small group tasked with beach reconnaissance and a deception plan in support of General MacArthur’s brilliant outflanking amphibious assault at Inchon. His team was known as “Poundsforce” — an accolade given to few. After its landing, Poundsforce assisted in securing Kimpo airfield and for ten days patrolled the hills and fought minor actions.

Later, Pounds took part in a daring raid on the east coast north of the 40th parallel, using landing craft and inflatable boats to destroy railway tunnels and culverts. The force was accompanied by Tom Driberg, Labour MP and a journalist for Reynolds News. Pounds was awarded the US Bronze Star for his gallantry.

Promoted to captain in 1952, he returned to 45 Commando as the adjutant after a tour training young officers. He was awarded a mention in dispatches in 1956 for his contribution to operations in the Troodos mountains of Cyprus during the difficult, frustrating and dangerous campaign against Colonel Grivas’s Greek-sympathising Eoka guerrillas.

His next campaign was the ill-starred attempt by Britain, France and Israel to recover the Suez Canal from President Nasser. A feature of this action was the innovative airborne assault carried out by 45 Commando in helicopters. But the Commando HQ was mistakenly strafed by a Fleet Air Arm Sea Fury, causing 18 casualties. A contemporary wrote of “a moment when either order is restored or you lose it altogether, when training and leadership count for so much. I recall Captain E.G.D. Pounds, realising that his CO and other officers had been badly wounded, and seeing that the CO’s signaller had been mortally wounded by a cannon shell, turning to a Marine and saying, ‘Take the radio set off Marine Fowler, put it on and come with me.’ This made everyone realise this is what you had to do, you had to get on with it.”

After the RAF Staff College and a Ministry of Defence staff tour, Pounds was the amphibious operations officer in Britain’s first commando carrier, the Bulwark, when, with 42 Commando embarked, she played a crucial part in the defence of Kuwait against the threat of invasion by Iraq in 1961, a combined operation of some elegance and deterrent significance.

After a personnel management tour in the UK, Pounds was again in the front line as second-in-command, and subsequently in command of 40 Commando during the prolonged three-and-a-half years of jungle operations in Borneo, suppressing a major revolt against the newly created Federation of Malaysia and the subsequent confrontation with the forces of President Sukarno’s Indonesia. The Marines became extremely skilled in jungle warfare and survival.

Cross-border offensive operations took on Indonesian forces on their own territory and gained the upper hand through sheer dedication to the tactics of fighting in such difficult terrain. The campaign finally achieved its aims in August 1966 after Suharto replaced Sukarno, and put out feelers which resulted in the signing of a peace agreement in Jakarta.

Denis Healey, the Labour defence minister at the time, described the victory in the Borneo campaign as “one of the most efficient uses of military force in the history of the world”. At the very least, it was one of the British forces’ neatest postwar achievements, a major geopolitical victory — the stabilisation of Malaysia — being achieved in a four-year war at the cost of 114 killed and 180 wounded among the Commonwealth troops, Gurkhas, Royal Marines and Army.

Pounds’s original formation, 45 Commando, returned to Britain in 1967 after 22 years of continuous foreign service. Pounds then commanded 43 Commando in Britain until the following year. He was promoted to colonel in 1970 and to major-general in 1974, serving on the Commandant-General’s staff and in command of the RM Commando training centre. As a major-general, he commanded all RM commando forces until his retirement in 1976, being appointed CB.

Pounds’s second career was hardly less remarkable. He became chief executive of the British Friesian Cattle Society in 1976 for 11 years. He reorganised the administrative systems, expanded computerisation and worked with dairy farmers and geneticists to make dairy cattle breeding even more efficient. The society flourished and gained an international reputation. Pounds delivered a number of papers on the cow genetic index and electronic aids to breeding and management. He was assiduous in fighting the British dairyman’s corner in Brussels, and co-operated effectively with other EU dairying institutions, also working to increase export markets.

Trained as a sniper, he was a superb shot with rifle, pistol and machinegun. He represented the Royal Marines at rugby football and hunted regularly in the West Country. He was for five years chairman of the RM Widows’ Pension Fund. From 1993 he was a council member of the Devon County Agricultural Association.

He is survived by his wife Barbara Evans, whom he married in 1944 when she was a WRNS officer, their son and daughter.

Major-General Derek Pounds, CB, commanding general, Royal Marine Commando Forces, 1973-76, was born on October 13, 1922. He died on November 7, 2002, aged 80.