Who was Evelyn Waugh's commanding officer in WWII commandos?

Answer 1

Well, here, at least, is the commanding officer at the facility he trained at:

"Squadron Leader Louis Strange DSO MC DFC was appointed as commanding officer and he arrived at Ringway on 21 June on the official formation of the CLS. He was joined by S/L Jack Benham as chief instructor. Major John Rock was to be the senior army officer at the School. Other RAF personnel arrived within the next few days."
Odette Churchill, Violette Szabo, Evelyn Waugh and agents from many countries trained here. Some made special requests such as to be dropped in Lord Egerton’s trees in order to simulate their planned clandestine arrival in wooded country in occupied Europe. Their missions were extremely risky, and many were captured and shot as spies, including Violette. "

And here's at least one of his commanding officers: Robert Laycock:

"Layforce had been sent into Crete via Sphakia when it was still hoped that large-scale reinforcements could be brought into Crete from Egypt to turn the tide of the battle. The battalion-sized force was split up, with a 200 man detachment under the unit's commander, Robert Laycock, stationed at Souda to cover the retreat of the heavier units. Laycock's men, augmented by three of the remaining British tanks, were joined by the men of the 20th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery, who had been assigned to guard the Souda docks and refused to believe that a general evacuation had been ordered. After a day's fierce fighting, Laycock decided to retreat under cover of night to nearby Beritiana. He was joined there by Captain Royal and the Māoris, who took up separate defensive positions and eventually made their fighting retreat. Laycock and his force, however, were cut-off by superior German forces near the village of Babali Khani. Pummeled from the air by dive-bombers, Layforce Detachment was unable to get away. Laycock and his brigade major, novelist Evelyn Waugh were able to escape by crashing through German lines in a tank. Most of the other men of the detachment and their comrades from the 20th were fated to be either killed or captured."

"Lieutenant-Colonel Robert E. Laycock, commanding Flipper, had been confident that his force could hold the enemy off until last light, when they could withdraw to the beach for evacuation by Torbay, - a submarine of the Royal Navy's 1st Submarine Flotilla. As he examined the wound in Pryor's thigh, though, he did not seem so certain. There was a lot of blood, and Laycock knew it was probable that a main artery had been hit. 'Damn it!' he said. 'That's no good. We'd better bugger off!'

Bob 'Lucky' Laycock was thirty-three years old, and known as a 'tough nut' - with his wide apart eyes and boxer's nose, he had a perpetual 'punchy' look. Married with five children, he had attended Eton and Sandhurst, and was one of the British Army's wunderkind - later the model for Evelyn Waugh's character Lt. Colonel Tommy Blackhouse, in his novel Officers & Gentlemen. He had been commissioned in the elite Royal Horse Guards, but had done time at a desk in the War Office before being invited, in 1940, to form and head 8 Commando - one of the world's first modern special forces units. Though he had not been in action before that year, he was believed to be a man of initiative, imagination and daring, and to possess what his wife, Angie, called a 'rare combination of upper-class nonchalant panache and professional efficiency'. Within 3 years he would become Director of Combined Operations, and at thirty-six, the British Army's youngest major general."