Dudfield was born in Gisborne in 1912. He worked for A. and T. Burt until World War II, when he became a soldier and served in the Middle East, Italy and the Pacific. After the war, he worked for the Department of Health, first in Auckland and then in Tokomaru Bay. As a New Zealand Army Captain with Kayforce, he led an advance party to the Korean War, but was withdrawn to contest the 1951 snap election for the Gisborne electorate.[1]
He won the Gisborne electorate from Labour's Reginald Keeling in the 1951 election, but lost to Keeling in the next election in 1954.[2] He told Parliament in 1952 that he doubted Communist claims that United Nations forces were using germ warfare in Korea.[3] In 1953, Dudfield was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal.[4]
After his time in Parliament, he worked as a health inspector in Rotorua and then in Tawa.[1] In 1955, he married Mona Lindsay at the Presbyterian Church in St Albans, Christchurch.[5] Dudfield died on 19 July 1987 in Tawa,[6] and his wife died on 14 November 2010.[7]