Captain of a British gun boat during the war who later wrote compelling books about Coastal Forces operations in the Mediterranean
Len Reynolds is recognised as the definitive historian of Coastal Forces wartime operations, particularly in the Mediterranean. His four books complement Peter Scott’s well-known The Battle of the Narrow Seas, which dealt with the Channel and North Sea. After winning the DSC for his service on a gun boat during the war, Reynolds held several posts in public service.
Born in 1923, the son of a police sergeant, he was educated at Wallington County Grammar School. Enlisting in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1942, he was sent to a motor gunboat, MGB 658, as a midshipman. He served in her throughout the war, finally, at the age of 21, as her captain.
Based at Malta, MGB 658 supported the invasion of Sicily. Involved in 14 operations in 19 days against German E-Boats and under constant air attack, the crew rapidly became hardened and ready for the intense campaign along the Italian coast, playing a significant part in the invasion of the Tuscan island of Elba by Free French forces under General de Lattre de Tassigny.
After this operation, while on patrol in the Piombino Channel, MGB 658 was attacked by an Italian destroyer, shells ripping up the after deck, killing everyone on the bridge, wounding five others and killing the seaman sharing Reynolds’s gunnery control position. “He took a shell which killed him, and saved my life — but his blood and splinters from the wooden door knocked me over and I was sure I had been wounded.” MGB 658 made it slowly back to Bastia.
Now captaining MGB 658, Reynolds was deployed to the Adriatic under the control of Commander (later RearAdmiral Sir) Morgan Morgan-Giles (obituary, May 14) and based at Vis, the only Dalmatian island not held by the Germans, where destroyers and MGBs aided Tito’s partisans by harassing coastal supply convoys. Mines were a great danger and Reynolds lost several friends. During his time, the four officers and 30 ratings in MGB 658 were awarded five DSCs, eight mentions in dispatches and five DSMs, having sunk or severely damaged 26 enemy craft.
After leaving the RNVR, Reynolds started researching Coastal Forces history. He published Dog Boats at War, Home Waters MTBs and MGBs at War, and MTBs at War (with H. F. Cooper and a foreword by Morgan-Giles), and his own memoirs in 1955.
Meanwhile, he took up teaching at his old school, also attending Birkbeck College, London, where in 1956 he took a first in geography. He later became headmaster at Kendal Grammar School in 1960 and Maidenhead Grammar School in 1965, retiring in 1981.
A Scout from the age of 8, he became a member of the Chief Scout’s Advance Party, helping to modernise the movement. In 1980 he was awarded the Silver Wolf, in 1981 appointed OBE, and in 2012 received the Chief Scout’s 70 Years Service award.
He also served as the “headmaster” of the Admiralty Interview Board for 30 years. He was one of the statutory worthies on the body that selects young people for officer training in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.
He is survived by his wife of 67 years, Winifred, and their son and daughter.
Leonard Reynolds, OBE, DSC, Coastal Forces captain and historian, was born on June 26, 1923. He died on April 18, 2013, aged 89
Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the Warsaw Pact who presided over a comprehensive increase in the strength of the Soviet military
Viktor Kulikov was a highly decorated Red Army veteran who became the tough-talking head of the Soviet Armed Forces in one of the most dangerous periods of the Cold War.
As a junior officer he had commanded armoured units on the Eastern Front in 1941-45, and he was appointed Chief of General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1971. It was a critical time — Nato forces on the Central Front in Germany were beset by a sense of weakness as the Vietnam War was taking its toll of US military confidence. Kulikov presided over re-equipping and reconfiguring the Soviet armed forces which left them arguably more powerful in relation to the West’s armies than at any time since the end of the Second World War.
In 1977 Kulikov was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Warsaw Pact — a post which he held until 1989 and the dying days of the Soviet Union when he was relieved by Mikhail Gorbachev. Long before then, cracks had begun to appear in the fabric of the Warsaw Pact military and political arrangements, notably in respect of Poland in the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) era from 1980 (although as early as 1968 Romania had declined to join in a Soviet-led occupation of Czechoslovakia to suppress the reformist, democratic tendencies of the “Prague Spring”).
As head of Warsaw Pact forces Kulikov was in a key position during what has become one of the most controversial episodes in Polish-Soviet relations of the period: the declaration of martial law in Poland by the country’s leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, in December 1981.
Jaruzelski always maintained that in the crisis of 1981, with the independent trade union Solidarnosc and its political allies threatening by their demands for liberty the country’s sovereignty and its allegiance as a member of the Warsaw Pact, his imposition of martial law had been decisive in forestalling a Soviet invasion.
It was a version of events calculated to portray the Polish communist leader not as a Soviet puppet but as a patriot who had saved Poland from the horrors of a Soviet invasion and the complete subjugation of national identity that would have followed it.
This comforting scenario was accepted in many quarters in the West, leading to a lenient view of Jaruzelski. Indeed, during the period of tension Kulikov had paid frequent visits to Soviet units in the border area where powerful forces were assembled.
But in 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance published a correspondence between Jaruzelski and Kulikov which put a very different slant on matters. It suggested that far from having taken such an initiative, Jaruzelski had appealed to the Soviet high command to send troops into Poland if his martial law ploy failed, to prop up his government, hoping at the same time to “look good” as the hapless but well-meaning victim of events who had only his country’s wellbeing at heart.
Kulikov always maintained that the Soviet Union, even under the paranoid leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, had never intended to invade Poland at that time. On the evidence, Polish prosecutors were inclined to side with the Soviet marshal, and in 2006 they prepared charges against Jaruzelski over the martial law issue, the indictment describing the Polish leader and his cabinet as an “armed criminal group”. Thousands of Polish dissidents were arrested and more than 100 people were killed over the 18-month period of the martial law crackdown. Poor health has since prevented Jaruzelski’s being brought to trial.
Viktor Georgievich Kulikov was born in 1921 into a peasant family in the village of Verkhnyaya Lyubovsha in the Orel region of Russia. He joined the Red Army, training at the Grozny military school as a career officer in 1939. When war came with the invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany in 1941 he was assigned to tanks and served throughout on the Eastern Front, winning the Order of the Red Banner in 1943 and 1944 and the Order of the Patriotic War in 1943 and 1945.
In the postwar period he rose rapidly through the Soviet military hierarchy, gaining his first major appointment as commander of the Kiev military district in 1967, from which he was moved to the important post of commander of the Group of Soviet forces in Germany two years later. In 1971 as Soviet Deputy Defence Minister he was appointed Chief of the General Staff.
He was regarded at that stage of his career as one of the new generation of officers who recognised that the Soviet military machine needed younger officers, particularly those with a technical background, to give sophistication and flexibility to the Red Army’s methods.
In his years in the post he greatly increased the effectiveness of Soviet forces and their supporting tactical air power, modernising both equipment and communications.
An influential figure and an extreme hardliner, Kulikov was allowed to make what amounted virtually to diplomatic threats to the “enemy”, the US, through such channels as the columns of the Army newspaper, Red Star. Once he had become C-in-C of all the Warsaw Pact forces he made it clear that any Western use of cruise or Pershing missiles would be to risk all-out nuclear war.
In the different climate of glasnost and perestroika ushered in by Mikhail Gorbachev from the mid-1980s, such bellicosity was deemed inappropriate. The erstwhile “Young Turk” was now sounding like a dinosaur and Gorbachev retired him in January 1989.
Among his many decorations and honours Kulikov was the recipient of four Orders of Lenin between 1971 and 1988, was made a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1981, and in the post-Soviet era was admitted to the Order of Honour for his “services to strengthen national defence” and his work on the “patriotic education of young people”. He served as a member of the Russian parliament (Duma) from 1989 to 2003.
He is survived by his wife, Maria, and by two daughters.
Marshal Viktor Kulikov, Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the Warsaw Pact, 1977-89, was born on July 5, 1921. He died on May 28, 2013, aged 91
>Admiral Sir John Bush
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Naval officer who was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross three times and was involved in key battles in the Mediterranean
Known by his subordinates as “The Burning Bush” , Admiral Sir John Bush illustrated the rule that such nicknames only endure when they are earned, as his most definitely was. As Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff and Commander-in-Chief, Western Fleet during the late 1960s he was renowned for driving energy, forcefully expressed impatience with obstacles to progress and intolerance of failures to perform to his own high standards. A true “salt horse”, he had served the entire war in destroyers and had been decorated three times with the Distinguished Service Cross while he was still a lieutenant.
Born in 1914, John Fitzroy Duyland Bush entered the Navy in 1933 from Clifton College. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was second-in-command of the Tribal class destroyer Nubian in which he was involved in a number of the important actions of the Mediterranean campaign. He was awarded his first DSC in August l94l for skill and enterprise during a high-speed night action off the Libyan coast in which a force of four British destroyers annihilated an Italian convoy of five freighters and three destroyers for the loss of one of their number, Mohawk. His gallantry and fortitude during the unsuccessful battle to defend Crete earned him a second DSC. Nubian was among those ships damaged by German air attacks beyond local repair and withdrawn from the theatre.
Still a lieutenant, Bush was next given command of the Hunt class destroyer Belvoir and was awarded a third DSC for his part in the Aegean campaign which followed the armistice with Italy in September 1943. Churchill (in American eyes repeating his 1915 Dardanelles obsession) perceived an opportunity to open up the Aegean and the Black Sea to convoys for Russia, thus easing the difficulties of supply round the North Cape, by a seizure of those Greek islands previously held by Italian garrisons. But there was a crucial failure to take the regional lynchpin, Rhodes, and the subsequent capture of the islands of Cos, Leros and Samos and the support of the Allied garrisons thereon proved costly and ineffective. Overwhelming German air superiority was the deciding factor in a struggle in which the islands and the campaign were lost.
Under Bush’s command Belvoir acquitted herself with distinction, conducting shore bombardments and attacking Axis coastal shipping, mainly at night and under constant threat of air attack. On one occasion she was hit by a bomb from a Stuka which fortunately failed to explode; this was lifted overboard by the strongest man in the ship’s company who earned himself a medal thereby.
As a lieutenant-commander, Bush subsequently commanded the destroyers Zephyr and Chevron and was mentioned in dispatches for his part in escorting Mediterranean convoys.
Among his postwar sea appointments was command of the destroyer Cadiz and in 1955-56 Captain 6th Frigate Squadron. From 1959 to 1961 he was Director of the Naval Plans Division in the Admiralty.
As a rear-admiral he oversaw the operational efficiency of the Mediterranean escort flotillas until January 1963 when he became commander of the British naval staff and naval attaché in Washington. He returned to the Ministry of Defence to become Vice-Chief of Naval Staff, participating in the bruising arguments which finally led to the extended two-volume Defence White Paper which was published on February 22, 1966, and which signaled the demise of the large fixed-wing aircraft carrier from the Royal Navy.
In 1967 Bush was appointed to the new post of Commander in Chief Western Fleet, a title reflecting the run-down of the Mediterranean station and the establishment of control of all western naval forces from a headquarters at Northwood, Middlesex.
Retiring in 1970, he was for three years a director of a Washington-based company dealing in international security matters.
His wife Ruth, whom he married in 1938 (they were married for 74 years), died earlier this year. He is survived by three sons and two daughters.
Admiral Sir John Bush, GCB, CB, DSC and two Bars, wartime destroyer captain and Commander in Chief, Western Fleet, 1967-70, was born on November 1, 1914. He died on May 10, 2013, aged 98
Judge Advocate General who in his early legal career devised a novel defence for one of the Kray twins
James Stuart-Smith held every military judicial appointment from legal assistant to the Judge Advocate General of the Armed Forces. He was the last person holding that office who was promoted through the ranks of the military judiciary. After his retirement the Judge Advocate General became an external appointment.
In his early days in the office of the Judge Advocate General, Stuart-Smith was the junior legal assistant to whom all the small administrative jobs were delegated. He was involved with such things as who should pay bills from Ede and Ravenscroft for judicial robes; what the equivalent military rank was for each grade of military judiciary; and whether staff cars containing judge advocates should have starred plates and flags. By the end of his career he was a trusted adviser to the Secretary of State and he oversaw a system often dealing with the most serious crimes.
James Stuart-Smith was born in Brighton in 1919. His father owned livery stables and was the first manager of the Southdown bus company. James attended Brighton College and then went to the London Hospital as a medical student. On the outbreak of the Second World War he joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and saw active service in Italy, Egypt and Palestine. He was promoted lieutenant colonel in 1946, aged 27. A successful military career beckoned but he opted instead for the law. He was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1948 and practised as a barrister from 1948 to 1955.
Early in his legal career he defended one of the Kray twins (not yet as notorious as they would become) who was alleged to have been acting alone in a criminal enterprise. He persuaded the jury that, since no one could say conclusively whether the crime had been committed by the defendant or by his identical twin, it could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty. Acquittal duly ensued.
After seven years of independent practice, Stuart-Smith joined the office of the Judge Advocate General as a legal assistant in 1955 and quickly came to the notice of the then Judge Advocate General, Sir Frederick Gentle, QC. Gentle felt that both his approach and his extensive knowledge of the Army equipped him well for the duties of a judge advocate. Stuart-Smith was appointed Deputy Judge Advocate in 1957 and Assistant Judge Advocate General in 1968, serving overseas as the senior judge advocate in the Middle East command from 1964 to 1965 and in Germany from 1976 to 1979. He became the Vice Judge Advocate General in 1981. On his promotion to Judge Advocate General in 1986 he was appointed CB and in 1988 Queen’s Counsel Emeritus. He retired in 1991 at the age of 72, having served as a military judge for 36 years.
In the 1990s Stuart-Smith successfully campaigned for a Second World War memorial at his old school to include the name of a prewar German pupil called Guhl, who had returned to his homeland in 1939 and been killed on active service.
In 1957 he married Jean Groundsell who predeceased him. He is survived by a son and daughter.
James Stuart-Smith, CB, Judge Advocate General, was born on September 13, 1919. He died on May 15, 2013, aged 93
Skipper of the destroyer Glamorgan in the thick of the Falklands conflict
From Chief Cadet Captain at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, to captaincy of the guided-missile destroyer Glamorgan in the 1982 Falklands conflict, Mike Barrow, a man with a rugby forward’s build and a wide smile, was universally admired for his integrity, insistence on high standards, professional thoroughness and “firm but fair” leadership style. In conditions of extreme stress while under Argentine attack off the Falkland Islands, Barrow’s composure and calmness were notably reassuring to his people. “The captain is a tower of strength, he always looks so calm and collected,” recorded a shipmate.
On the second day of the Falklands campaign, Glamorgan, with the frigates Arrow and Alacrity, was instructed to bombard Port Stanley airfield. They were attacked with bombs by the Argentine Air Force, which, luckily, missed. Thereafter a demanding pattern comprised bombardments by night, a rush away at dawn to form the protective screen around the vital aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes, and several special operations. Among these last was gunfire support for the bold attack by the Special Air Service, which destroyed ten aircraft on Pebble Island airstrip in East Falkland, and a spoofing operation designed to mislead Argentine land forces about the venue for the invasion.
On June 12, two days before the Argentine surrender, Glamorgan was hit at dawn by a land-based Exocet missile fired from near Port Harriet. A previously unsuccessful firing had warned the British about this tactic and lines defining the danger area were drawn on charts. In order to give further gunfire support to 45 Commando Royal Marines in their difficult attack on the Two Sisters feature, Barrow had held on a little longer than planned. The Exocet just reached Glamorgan as she turned evasively away, hitting the corner of the flight deck and hanger, destroying the helicopter, starting a large fire and killing 13 men.
One of these was the captain’s secretary and Flight Deck Officer, Lieutenant David Tinker whose father subsequently published his son’s poignant poetry and letters, decrying the waste and wickedness of war. His book A Message From the Falklands (Penguin) was widely read.
Barrow was awarded the DSO.
The son of a naval captain, his early career followed a conventional pattern with service mainly in destroyers in various parts of the world but including a tour in the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1954-56 and subsequently a post as Flag Lieutenant to the Commodore, Hong Kong.
He then had an unusual number of commands; the minesweepers Caunton and Laleston and the frigates Mohawk, Torquay and Diomede and then second-in-command at Dartmouth. Promoted to captain in 1974, he was deputy director of recruiting in the Admiralty and assistant chief of staff (operations) to the Nato commander Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe.
Having been an ADC to the Queen and a Gentleman Usher to her Majesty he was appointed CVO in 2002.
He is survived by his wife, Judith, and their two sons and daughter.
Captain Michael Barrow, CVO, DSO, sailor, was born on May 21, 1932. He died on April 28, 2013, aged 80
Officer in de Gaulle’s Free French forces who fought in a number of campaigns and was twice in opposition to his countrymen
The death of General Pierre Langlois recalls two Second World War campaigns in which the Free French forces of General Charles de Gaulle fought those of the Vichy French. Langlois took part in both as a junior officer and also in operations against Axis forces in the Western Desert and the German Army in France, the latter winning him the accolade of Compagnon de la Libération.
A career officer and graduate of St-Cyr, Pierre Langlois was spared involvement in the Battle of France following the German onslaught in May 1940, as he was serving in the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion (13th DBLE) with the Anglo-French force in Norway.
The Allies’ motives for landing in Norway were mixed. Although ostensibly intended as a move in support of the Finns resisting Soviet invasion, Britain also planned to block the export of Swedish iron ore through Narvik to Germany, while France sought to switch the threat from her eastern frontier to Scandinavia. Germany moved first and occupied Oslo and the main ports.
Langlois was a company officer with the 13th DBLE when its two battalions crossed Rombaks Fjord in a move to drive the Germans out of Narvik. Striking hard at the centre of the enemy positions, the operation initially looked promising, but when Luftwaffe attacks forced the naval vessels providing air and gunfire support to withdraw, the legionnaires were in serious trouble. Then, with the collapse of French and British resistance in France, Paris and London decided to cancel the Norway operation and order a withdrawal.
Extraction of the Allied ground and naval forces from various points on the Norwegian coast was conducted under the difficult circumstances of German local air supremacy. Langlois reached England in June, his arrival coinciding with the fall of France. He unhesitatingly threw in his lot with de Gaulle’s Free French, as did almost half of the 2,000 men of 13th DBLE.
Langlois next took part in the Allied operation intended to persuade the Vichy French forces in the port of Dakar on the Atlantic coast of Senegal to switch their allegiance to de Gaulle. It was a sound strategic aim but operations came perilously close to farce. Evelyn Waugh, who took part with the 101st Royal Marines Brigade, whimsically recounted the Battle of Dakar of September 1940 in his Men at Arms (1952).
The commander of the British task force, which included two battleships, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal and 8,000 British and Free French troops, had instructions to negotiate a peaceful occupation. When the French Governor declined, shellfire was exchanged, warships were damaged and lives lost. De Gaulle, observing from one of the troopships, decided against Frenchmen killing Frenchmen and accepted a less than glorious withdrawal.
Better fortune favoured Langlois when he accompanied the 13th DBLE to Eritrea in March 1941 when British, French and Indian troops defeated substantial Italian forces attempting to gain control of the territory. This had barely been achieved when the 13th DBLE was ordered to join the British and Free French invasion of Vichy-controlled Syria, perceived susceptible to a German thrust through the Caucasus following Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union.
As at Dakar, it was hoped that the Vichy French garrison in Syria and Lebanon would not resist the predominantly British Commonwealth invading force, but a substantial Free French element under General Gentilhomme was added to help to establish confidence. The inclusion of the 13th DBLE, however, posed a risk of Legionnaires fighting Legionnaires as four battalions of the 6th Regiment of the Foreign Legion featured in the Vichy order-of-battle.
The Vichy High Commissioner for the Levant, M. Henri Dentz, made plain he would not allow a walkover and bitter fighting followed. The mature and experienced Foreign Legionnaires on both sides gave good accounts of themselves. Langlois was wounded for a second time before Allied pressure prevailed and an armistice was signed on July 12. This allowed British occupation of Lebanon and Syria, while the French troops who had decided against joining de Gaulle were shipped home to France.
In October 1942, Langlois fought in the battle of Alamein with the 2nd Free French Brigade and later through Tunisia to the end of the war in Africa. In August 1944 he served with the 1st Free French division when it was assigned to the US 7th Army for the invasion of southern France. Langlois, by then a company commander, saw action in the pursuit of German forces withdrawing up the Rhône valley, in the Vosges, Alsace and finally in the Massif de l’Authion. He completed the war with a fine fighting record but his active service was not over.
The war in Indo-China erupted even before the Japanese surrender in South-East Asia and the 13th DBLE was sent to join the campaign against the Viet Minh, as the rebels were then known. He was serving on the staff in Indo-China in May 1954 and so avoided capture when the 13th DBLE positions at Dien Bien Phu were overrun.
Subsequently, he commanded the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Regiment of the Legion, served on the staff in Algeria, was promoted brigadier-general in 1966 and major-general four years later. As a lieutenant-general he was the military governor of Metz and also served as a member of the Council of Defence in Paris. On retiring from the Army in 1977 he was appointed to the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.
He is survived by his wife, Colette, and two daughters.
Lieutenant-General Pierre Langlois, French soldier, was born on March 16, 1917. He died on May 16, 2013, aged 96
Zdenek Skarvada
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Courageous Czech airman who fought the Nazis above Britain but was later persecuted in his homeland
As the Royal Air Force struggled to defend Britain in the early years of the Second World War, it could count on an exceptional group of battle-hardened and highly courageous pilots exiled from Poland and Czechoslovakia. Zdenek Skarvada was one of the last of them. Trained in the Czechoslovak Air Force, he fled his country as the Germans invaded in March 1939, and joined the Polish Air Force to fight German and Soviet forces as Poland was invaded at the start of the Second World War. Among his close flying companions was Josef Frantisek, another Czech who became one of the top RAF aces in the Battle of Britain.
Skarvada, who was detained for a time by Soviet forces, made his way to Britain and the RAF by a circuitous route via Odessa, Istanbul, Port Said and Bombay, eventually arriving in Liverpool in 1940. He was too late for the Battle of Britain, but was soon flying Hurricanes and then Spitfires on coastal patrols with RAF 310 squadron.
In 1942 he was forced to bale out into the sea after engine trouble near the Isles of Scilly and was picked up by a German vessel and taken to the Continent, where he spent the rest of the war in PoW camps. His situation was perilous, as the Nazis had at one stage proposed that those from German-occupied countries who took up arms against them should be treated as traitors and shot for treason if captured.
Fortunately this threat was in most cases not carried out. Skarvada survived the war, including a spell in the notorious Stalag Luft III (scene of The Great Escape). He also survived a punishing “death march” at the end of the war as the camps were evacuated and prisoners were force-marched long distances with very little food. He was liberated by US forces near Schwerin.
Skarvada was born in 1917 in Olesnice in Moravia in what was then the moribund Austro-Hungarian empire. He had always been passionate about flying and, aged 17, he joined a military flying academy, qualifying as a pilot in 1937. This was a deeply frustrating time for Skarvada and his comrades, however. Czechoslovak armed forces were mobilised in 1938 and then stood down when the Munich Agreement compelled Czechoslovakia to cede vital territory to Germany. And in March 1939 the Nazis occupied the Czech lands without resistance from Czechoslovak forces. It was left to individuals to decide to escape their occupied homeland and fight Nazism from abroad.
After the defeat of Nazism Skarvada, promoted to captain in the Czechoslovak Air Force, began to train a new generation of fighter pilots. However, his assumption that “everything would be peaceful” in a restored democratic state proved very wrong when the Communist Party seized power in Prague in 1948. Those who had served with British forces were regarded by the communists as tainted by association with the “imperialist West”. Skarvada was demoted, dismissed from his Air Force training role, had his flat confiscated and was forced to work for 20 years as a miner. He reflected that he was fortunately “just the sort of nature that can bear even hard blows”. He needed anyway to provide for his wife and two sons.
There was limited rehabilitation for former RAF pilots in the 1960s as Stalinist attitudes faded. But the former pilots still had to meet more or less clandestinely during the communist regime. Only after the revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989 could their role begin to be acknowledged. Skarvada was eventually honoured for his wartime service with promotion to the rank of brigadier-general by Czech President Vaclav Havel in 2000.
It was a bittersweet time for Skarvada and his surviving colleagues who had endured so much in decades of communist persecution. “Forty years can never be put back,” he said. “My boys weren’t able to do what they wanted, my wife wasn’t able to do what she wanted, I wasn’t able to do what I wanted, but anyhow, we survived.”
But he took great pleasure in educating younger generations about the Czech pilots’ wartime role. He worked with the makers of an international film about the pilots, Dark Blue World, and published an autobiography linked to his wartime experiences and bale-out entitled Keep Floating! He was still flying planes into his eighties.
Zdenek Skarvada, Czech and RAF airman, was born on November 8, 1917. He died on May 11, 2013, aged 95
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British soldier who helped to stimulate the wartime resistance movement in Italy
Until the armistice of September 1943 by which Italy changed sides in the Second World War, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) had regarded Italy as barren soil for stimulation of subversion and sabotage. The emergence of anti-fascist groups in the northern part of the country, still being skilfully contested by the withdrawing German Army, changed the situation dramatically. By the end of the campaign in April 1945, the Resistance groups rivalled those of France.
In the final few months leading up to the Eighth Army’s break-in to the valley of the Po, Allied concern focused on encouraging the partisans in preventing the enemy carrying out “scorched earth” policies that would impede both the Allies’ advance and the recovery of the economy of the north. In the north east, hostility between communist and nationalist partisan groups rendered cohesion difficult; in the Ligurian north west where Robert Bentley eventually arrived, the situation was dominated by the German 34th Infantry division with no commitments other than to carry out rastrellamenti (murderous raids, mass arrests and house-to-house searches) against the partisans.
No 1 Special Force controlling SOE operations in the peninsula first instructed Bentley to join Lieutenant-Colonel Peter McMullen’s “Saki” mission in Liguria from southern France, where SOE had a firm foothold. Forced back by the Alpine winter, Bentley had to settle for the obvious risks of taking his sub-mission in by sea, landing at his fourth attempt near Bordighera on the south-east facing coast of the Gulf of Genoa.
This placed him a significant distance from the partisan leader with whom he planned to make contact: one “Curto”, a known communist and an effective leader operating along the Franco-Italian border but desperately short of weapons. It was Bentley’s first priority to find Curto and arm his guerillas either by sea or air drop.
Reaching Curto’s area of operations gave Bentley serious difficulties, owing to the close attention the 34th Division paid to the beach areas and immediate hinterland. The expected guide was not at the landing place, a nearby safe house proved to be known to the enemy, and his party was obliged to crawl or scuttle past checkpoints wearing borrowed civilian overcoats led by guides he was able to recruit by his force of personality.
The Ligurian people were generally keen to help but the reprisals and burning of villages during the German rastrellamenti had made them extremely cautious. Having landed on January 6, 1945, it was not until February that Bentley was able to link up with Curto and his partisans and March before he managed to arrange the first drop of arms. Even then the partisans were piteously short of food and medicines, in consequence their morale was at best precarious. Keeping alive dominated their thoughts rather than harassing the enemy.
Recognising that airdrops in the hills were easily detected by the enemy and the time taken to collect the parachute containers involved the partisans in serious risk of capture and death, Bentley resolved to attempt resupply by sea. Two coast landings had to be abandoned owing to failure to establish contact between ship and shore and only one was accomplished after Bentley had made his way back through the German checkpoints to supervise the landing personally.
Better weather in the mountains favoured return to air resupply and sufficient arms had been dropped to the Ligurian partisans for them to make a positive effort to coincide with the Eighth Army’s advance into the Po Valley in April.
As the overall German collapse intensified, the 34th Division moved north-eastwards towards the Brenner Pass with such speed that the partisans had to move quickly to take advantage. Genoa and the main towns were occupied after only sporadic fighting and Bentley was able to report back to No 1 Special Force HQ, “Great welcome everywhere and anti-scorch (earth) most successful.”
The only embarrassments he also felt obliged to report were the activities of French troops who had landed in the south of France with the US 7th Army and crossed the Franco-Italian frontier intent on exacting revenge for the Italian advance on Nice in 1940.
The citation for Bentley’s Military Cross praised his determination, outstanding leadership and courage. Before joining SOE in 1944, he had served with the Eighth Army in North Africa and was commissioned into the General Service Corps. A gifted linguist, on demobilisation in 1946 he read Science at the University of California before starting work with the Bank of America.
Subsequently, he joined Pacific National before eventually returning to England to join the Manufacturers Bank of which he became a vice-president. On his retirement he lived in Provence until finally returning to England in 1994.
In 1970 he married Susan Balderson who survives him. There were no children.
Captain Robert Bentley, MC, SOE veteran of the Italian campaign, was born on December 20, 1922. He died on March 3, 2013, aged 90