In 1940 British Somaliland was defended by a small force mainly composed of colonial troops, with the 2nd Battalion the Black Watch (2 BW) held in reserve. Five Italian brigades, stiffened by Black Shirts and supported by aircraft, armour and artillery, forced the main British contingent to withdraw towards Berbera, having fiercely defended the only natural obstacle, a dry wadi known as the Tug Argan.
On August 17 the battalion, equipped with a single anti-tank gun, was at Barkasan and acting as rearguard. After a long day's fighting, ammunition was running short and Rose, then a captain commanding the forward company, found himself at great risk of being cut off.
He decided to counter-attack and led his men down the hill in a fierce bayonet charge. After being wounded in the shoulder, he stuffed his arm into his belt to stop it flopping about and continued to lead the attack.
The Italian forces broke and fled, and many of their native levies were shot down by Black Shirts who had been waiting at their rear. The Highlanders pursued the enemy for a mile and left them so demoralised that they offered no further interference to the battalion's withdrawal under cover of darkness. Rose was awarded his first DSO, at that time an unusual award for a junior officer.
Vice-Admiral Sir Louis Le Bailly
Naval engineer who survived a German torpedo to become a spymaster at the height of the Cold War
Next Le Bailly stood by the cruiser Naiad while she was building on the Tyne, and saw action in the Mediterranean until, on March 11 1942, she was sunk by a German U-boat south of Crete. Le Bailly was in the after engine room when a single torpedo struck and all lights went out; he helped several men to escape but was ever afterwards haunted by the memory of those who had been trapped, owing to design defects, in compartments below the waterline.
Many of the men were burned or injured on the bilge keel as they slid down the side after the order to abandon ship. The sea was rough, and there seemed to be little hope of rescue as the fleet steamed away at high speed. After an hour or so those "a bit panicky or wounded" had been put on the few Carley floats; a stoker's voice came over the water, singing Abide With Me. To Le Bailly the last two lines ("Heaven's morning breaks and earth's vain shadows flee/In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me") seemed appropriate as he trod water, 50 miles from the shore, with his ship on the seabed 600ft below. Fortunately, the destroyer Jervis returned to save all but 77 of Naiad's company of 480.
Brigadier Dennis Rendell
Daredevil escaper who asked a German officer to sign his programme in an Italian opera house
Provost Marshal of the RMP who improved the unpopular image of the Corps and earlier won a Military Cross for gallantry in Tunisia
From the day he transferred to the Royal Military Police in 1954, Dennis Rendell set about raising the profile of the Corps and, in particular, erasing its image as “the bloody redcaps”. As a fighting soldier of proven gallantry and organising ability, he was well suited to this self-appointed task and worked at it tirelessly and effectively until retiring as Provost Marshal and Head of the Corps in 1977.
Beginning modestly enough as commander of the Mounted Section based in Aldershot and a keen horseman — hunting whenever opportunity allowed — he quickly progressed to command of the Provost Company for HQ 1st (British) Corps in Germany in 1956. Responsible for planning the complex traffic control arrangements for supply of the Corps in war, he found time to introduce RMP road courtesy patrols, compete in motorcycle trials and lead his unit cricket team to victory in the formation championships.
His personal reputation as a “copper” established after commanding the Provost Company in Edinburgh, he became Chief Instructor at the RMP Training Centre at Woking, where he rewrote the Corps’ training manual and designed a comprehensive qualification for a promotion structure for non-commissioned officers. His return to HQ 1st (British) Corps as Assistant Provost Marshal and then back to the Training Centre as Commandant confirmed him as a runner for the top job of Provost Marshal, which he attained in 1974 on graduation from Provost Marshal of the British Army of the Rhine.
Dennis Bossey Rendell was born in London, the only son of Ralph Rendell, a director of Schroders Bank, and was educated at St Albans School. Commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1941, he volunteered for Airborne Forces and took part in operations with the 1st Airborne Brigade during the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November-December 1942. After reaching Algiers by sea, the 2nd Parachute Battalion was dropped at Depienne airfield in Tunisia with orders to hold it until the ground forces caught up.
Although the airfield was taken, the prompt arrival of German armour supported by the Luftwaffe decided Lieutenant-Colonel John Frost, the subsequent hero of Arnhem, to withdraw his lightly armed battalion to the hills. Lieutenant Rendell’s platoon was assigned to cover this move and acquitted itself heroically over four days of fighting, albeit with serious casualties. Rendell was wounded, taken prisoner and evacuated to Italy. He was subsequently awarded the Military Cross for his leadership and gallantry in this successful covering action.
He took part in four escape attempts from prison camps in Capua and Chieti in central Italy. Three were prevented, and at Chieti, where a final tunnel was not discovered, he did not have the good fortune of drawing a lot to use it. When German guards took over the Chieti camp after the Italian armistice of September 1943, the inmates were moved to a transit camp at Sulmona prior to being sent to Germany. Rendell escaped from there in the back of a truck visiting the camp, while a friend engaged the guard in conversation. He was wearing a shirt, trousers and boots and had food for only two days, a water bottle and a home-made map of Italy.
On his second day of liberty and already feeling the mountain cold, he was taken by an Italian shepherd to a farm to join a fellow escaper and put in touch with the local Resistance. He discovered that the latter was hiding many escaped prisoners but had no means of feeding or clothing them. With an improvised staff of seven officers and two soldiers who spoke Italian, Rendell formed the ex-prisoners into groups, each under a leader, and identified local anti-fascists around Sulmona who might be persuaded to help with food and clothing.
The immediate problems solved, he recognised money would be essential if his expanding flock was to survive the winter. He therefore decided to lead a reconnaissance party to Rome to seek help from a larger group of former prisoners hiding around there led by Major Sam Derry, who had escaped from the train taking the inmates of the Chieti camp to Germany.
Shortly before quitting Sulmona, his Resistance contacts urged him to attend the annual November fair. This seemed a foolhardy thing to attempt in enemy-occupied territory in the middle of a war but he set off for the fairground on the appointed afternoon with five companions, all wearing Italian civilian clothes.
Arriving separately, the six former prisoners met by chance at a shooting gallery where two Luftwaffe ground crew were demonstrating their lack of skill with a .22 rifle. Smilingly, Rendell took the rifle and hit the target with his first shot, his success being instantly recorded by a camera activated from the target. He took the proffered photograph and left the two Germans to pay for the shots.
As neither he nor any of his organising staff had any identity papers, they chose the goods wagon of a German troop train as the safest means of reaching Rome, but they got out ten miles from the capital and walked in. Major Derry, who was established in a safe house provided by an Irish priest, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, put him in touch with the Embassy to the Vatican. Funds to support his group of former prisoners were then acquired, thanks to the Ambassador’s butler cashing a cheque on Rendell’s English bank, incidentally letting his parents know he was still alive when the bank asked his father to verify the signature.
The former prisoners left at Sulmona were gradually brought in to join Derry’s group around Rome. Attempts to reach the Allied lines to the south were abandoned for the winter, as was the sabotage of German lines of communication (working with the Italian Resistance) when the Germans began executing ten Italians for every German soldier killed. Rendell remained in Rome until the city was taken by the 5th (US) Army in June 1944. He was appointed MBE for services to escaped prisoners of war.
On his return to England he rejoined the 2nd Parachute Battalion and in 1945 took command of the defence company of HQ 5th Parachute Brigade, being sent to India in expectation of involvement in the invasion of Japanese-occupied Malaya. When this was rendered unnecessary by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender, he went with the brigade to Java to help repatriate British and Dutch internees and prisoners of war, formerly held by the Japanese, threatened by Indonesian nationalists opposed to a return of the Dutch.
After a Parachute Brigade staff appointment in London, he rejoined the Middlesex Regiment and accompanied the 1st Battalion from Hong Kong to Korea to form, with the 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and other units, the 27th Infantry Brigade — the first British contribution to the American-led UN Force opposing the North Korean invasion of the South. On leaving Korea in 1951, he served in the Military Operations staff in the War Office until he decided to make a career change by transferring to the Corps of Royal Military Police in 1954.
He was appointed ADC to the Queen in 1975 and advanced to CBE for his services as Provost Marshal in 1977. Having retired from the Army that year, he worked as the chief executive of the RAC’s motorcycle training scheme until illness brought that to a conclusion in 1981. He participated in eight London to Brighton Pioneer Runs on his 1911 P&M machine and in 1990 parachuted into Studland Bay with 13 other Airborne Forces veterans to raise £45,000 for military charities. He also served for five years as chairman of the West Sussex Army Benevolent Fund Committee.
In 1947 he married Mary Armes, who survives him with a son and daughter.
Brigadier Dennis Rendell, CBE, MC, Provost Marshal from 1974 to 1977, was born on October 2, 1920. He died on September 22, 2010 aged 89
Wing Commander 'Butch' Barton
Battle of Britain ace who led his squadron in the most hectic phase of the Luftwaffe's onslaught
Barton opened his account in Malta on June 3, when he shot down an Italian bomber, the squadron's first victory over the island. Five days later he destroyed another bomber, this time at night. At first light, he returned to the scene to search for the Italian crew. Two men were found and rescued.
Under Barton's leadership, 249 Squadron was one of the most successful fighter squadrons on the island. But on July 31 he was lucky to survive when the engine of his Hurricane failed as he took off and he crashed through some sturdy Maltese walls. His injuries included second-degree burns, and he was kept in hospital for several weeks. Yet by September he was back leading the squadron, and was soon involved in a fierce battle with Italian fighters, during which he was credited with shooting down one and damaging another. On November 22 he achieved his final victory when he shot down a Macchi MC202 fighter near Gozo.
Commander 'Tubby' Leonard
Highly decorated Fleet Air Arm helicopter pilot who in 1955 annexed Rockall on behalf of the British Empire
Leonard then learned to fly helicopters and served with 848 Naval Air Squadron during the Malayan Emergency. With its 10 Sikorsky S55s, 848 had arrived in the Far East in January 1953. Sceptics thought it would take six months to convert the helicopters from submarine-hunters to troop-carriers, but the squadron was ready within seven weeks. Its pilots pioneered the use of helicopters in short-range transport roles, and during its deployment in Malaya lifted more than 10,000 troops and 200 casualties.
When a helicopter crashed in an inaccessible paddy field in April 1954, Leonard flew to the scene. The wrecked helicopter had to be dismantled, and he winched it in seven separate lifts, each involving protracted hovering while the load was hooked on. The disassembled vehicle was later put back together and flew again. Leonard was awarded a DFC.
Flight Lieutenant Denis Cayford
Navigator with the Pathfinder Force who nearly made it to freedom in the Great Escape
Soon after arriving in Stalag Luft III, Cayford joined the team of "penguins". In sacks suspended inside their trouser legs, they carried and dispersed the sand excavated from the three tunnels being dug for the Great Escape. He was allocated a place as an escaper and planned to travel across Germany to Bulgaria.
On the night of March 24/25 1944 the escape started. Cayford was well down the tunnel when a German guard discovered the exit after 76 men had escaped. Three managed to return to Britain, but 50 were executed on Hitler's orders.
Cayford and his fellow prisoners were forced to march westwards in the bitter weather of January 1945, and he was finally liberated in May.
Christopher Maude
Soldier decorated for his feats in Normandy who joined the SOE and was parachuted into occupied France to liaise with the Maquis
Having won the Military Cross in France before the Dunkirk evacuation, served with the 1st Parachute Battalion in North Africa, in the invasion of Sicily and in Italy, Christopher Maude volunteered for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) and was parachuted into occupied France in charge of a team to co-ordinate sabotage operations by the French Resistance.
John Christopher Clapham Maude was born in Manchester in 1920. He was educated at Haileybury and commissioned into the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry in 1938. Called up on the outbreak of war, he was sent as a second lieutenant in charge of 43 men, most from the volunteer Militia force, to guard an airfield near Dieppe taken over by the RAF from the French.
Shortly after the onset of the Blitzkrieg in the Low Countries and Northern France, the RAF squadron on the airfield was ordered home, and as the administrative staff in Dieppe prepared for evacuation Maude was given 50 Royal Engineer and Pioneer Corps reinforcements, extra light weapons and ordered to keep the airfield available for aircraft until further notice.
Maude improvised anti-aircraft mountings for the Lewis guns. Twenty to thirty RAF aircraft landed each day requiring refuelling and food for the pilots. Maude had no other contact with the outside world until 2/7th Battalion The Duke of Wellington’s Regiment passed the airfield en route for Dieppe. The commanding officer told him to wait for arrival of the 51st Highland Division, then to render the airfield unusable and withdraw with the Highlanders to St Valéry-en-Caux. Maude burnt 10,000 gallons of fuel, induced a farmer to plough the centre of the strip, covered the rest with carts and mined the entrances.
On withdrawal towards St Valéry, he was warned of the impossibility of the Navy taking troops off from there, so he made for the nearby cliffs, found a path down to the beach and called a ship by flashing a torch. Although wounded during the evacuation he got all his men away, except for several killed when a rope of rifle slings broke as they lowered themselves down the cliff. Most unusually, the citation for his Military Cross was initiated by the C-in-C of the British Expeditionary Force, General Lord Gort.
After joining SOE Maude trained as the leader of a Jedburgh team, one of 94 each comprising two Allied officers, one usually French, and a sergeant radio operator. Unlike other SOE agents, the Jedburghs dropped in uniform after the invasion of Normandy with the task of contacting French Resistance groups, calling for airdrops of arms and explosives and ensuring that the consequent sabotage did not damage facilities the Allied forces might need.
His team, codenamed Nicholas, comprised himself, Lieutenant Henri Penin and Sergeant Maurice Whittle. They were dropped on the night of September 10, 1944, in Haute-Saône. His objective was to contact the Premier Régiment de France, a Vichy unit reported to have joined the Resistance. The drop was accomplished but it was 50km from the last known location of the Premier Régiment. They lost their radio but recovered it with the help of the leader of the local Maquis, who guided Maude’s team to a larger group at Magny-les-Jussey, some 20km away.
Almost immediately a German battalion began an operational sweep through the woods. Maude and Sergeant Whittle escaped with the radio while Penin kept in touch with the Maquis. The team were reunited the following afternoon, and hearing that German units were moving eastwards by every available road Maude reported this to London, with news that the enemy was preparing to concentrate at Luxeuil-les-Bains, 20km farther east.
The Premier Régiment de France was not located, so Maude’s team were instructed to return to England when they were overtaken by the advancing Allies.
Compared with other Jedburgh operations, many of which achieved remarkable success, Maude did not rate his very highly. Even so, he had made resolute efforts in the face of significant danger and was awarded the Croix de Guerre.
In England the Jedburgh teams were briefed to parachute into German PoW camps, ahead of the Allied advance, and lead the prisoners to safety. The swift progress of the war rendered parachuting unnecessary and the teams were flown in. Maude was mentioned in dispatches.
After the war he became a farmer and built up a herd of Friesians. He served for many years as divisional secretary of the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Association for Winslow, Buckinghamshire. With 13 other over 70-year-olds formerly of the Airborne Forces, he made a parachute jump into Studland Bay, Dorset, in 1990, raising £45,000 for military charities.
He married Diana Davenport, also a member of SOE, in 1945. She predeceased him, as did his second wife, Bridget Battersby, whom he married in 1973. He is survived by three daughters of his first marriage.
J. C. C. Maude, MC, farmer and wartime officer of the SOE, was born on May 27, 1920. He died on October 17, 2010, aged 90
Sam Lesser
Sam Lesser was a veteran of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and a journalist for the communist Daily Worker. He was twice wounded while fighting General Franco’s Nationalist forces during the conflict and became a journalist only when deemed unfit for further military service by the Republican Popular Army.
Lesser was among the first British volunteers to fight for the Second Spanish Republic in the civil war and took part in the crucial battle to hold Madrid in the winter of 1936. The Republic organised the defence of the capital at its westernmost edge, fighting in the Casa de Campo park and from the buildings of Complutense University’s new campus.
“In my first battle we had the honour of defending the lecture halls of the university and, in the first engagement, of defending the faculty of philosophy and literature against those whose motto was ‘death to the intellectuals’,” Lesser later said.
Of the initial contingent of 30 volunteers from Britain, only six emerged unscathed from the battle. Madrid, however, did not fall to Franco until the end of the conflict.
Lesser himself was wounded less than two months later, in December 1936, while fighting at Lopera, near Córdoba in southern Spain. He was hit by two bullets — one in the foot and another in the back. He claimed that the bullet in his back had been fired by his unit’s machine gun company. During the same battle, the poet John Cornford, another International Brigades volunteer, was killed.
Born Manassah Lesser in 1915 in the East End of London, Lesser was the eldest of eight children. His parents were Polish immigrants and Orthodox Jews. During the 1930s Lesser witnessed the rise of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and mounting levels of anti-Semitism.
In 1934 Lesser enrolled as an Egyptology student at University College London where he joined the Communist Party and the Officer Training Corps almost simultaneously. He later explained the apparent contradiction by quoting Lenin on the need for the oppressed classes to learn to use arms. All Lesser’s siblings later followed his example and joined the Communist Party.
Instead of embarking on a second-year undergraduate dig in Egypt, Lesser crossed the Pyrenees into Spain on a bus. If stopped, he was told to say that he was Raimundo Casado, a migrant worker returning home from France. Lesser had already taken part in the Battle of Cable Street (1936), in which anti-fascists prevented Mosley’s Blackshirts from marching through the East End.
Lesser joined the International Brigades at their headquarters in Albacete, southeast Spain, before heading to the front. He later recalled the lack of equipment that undermined the Republic’s war effort: “The weapons were very few and the ones that were first distributed were a bad joke — the rifles came from the Austrian Army of 1870.”
After he was wounded, Lesser returned to Britain for convalescence but returned to Spain in the summer of 1937, where, unable to fight, he produced English-language broadcasts in Barcelona and reported for the Daily Worker using the byline Sam Russell.
While working for the Republic in Barcelona, Lesser met Margaret Powell, a British volunteer nurse serving with the Republican Army, whom he married as his second wife in 1950. His first wife was Nell Jones, a Daily Worker switchboard operator, whom he had married in 1943.
The Republic gradually lost the war and ceded ever more territory to the Nationalist offensives. When Barcelona fell to the Francoists in January 1939, Lesser only just managed to escape the city and flee to France with thousands of other refugees. Once across the border, Lesser reported on the terrible conditions that prevailed within French concentration camps for Republican exiles.
During the Second World War, Lesser was again prevented from active service by his wounds and served as an inspector at an aircraft factory. He soon returned to journalism and, until his retirement in 1984, worked as a correspondent for the Daily Worker and its successor the Morning Star. Lesser reported from the Soviet Union, where he befriended the British spy Donald Maclean. He interviewed Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. He was in Chile on the night on which the Army rose up against the Socialist Government of Salvador Allende in 1973, paving the way for Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Lesser also reported from hotspots in China, Vietnam, Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia.
While covering the show trial of the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership in 1952, Lesser became disillusioned with the official Communist line, a feeling that was reinforced when he witnessed the violent street fighting during the Soviet Union’s invasion of Hungary in 1956. In later life, he defined himself as a socialist and supported new Labour.
The Spanish Civil War remained a defining moment for Lesser and he was a founder of the International Brigades Memorial Trust and later its chairman. In 2009 he was granted Spanish citizenship and a passport along with seven other surviving veterans in recognition of his service. “We did what we had to do,” he said.
Lesser’s wife Margaret died in 1990; he is survived by their daughter.
Sam Lesser, Spanish Civil War veteran and journalist, was born on March 19, 1915. He died on October 2, 2010, aged 95
Lieutenant-Commander Anthony Tuke
Naval aviator who was twice decorated for his exceptional wartime service in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean
Anthony Tuke joined the Air Branch of the Royal Navy in 1938 and became known known throughout the Fleet Air Arm as “Steady” Tuke, a sobriquet arising from a flying instructor’s judgement of his early performance. His exceptional service as a naval aviator saw him surviving four and a half years continuously in the front line, clocking up 110 operations, three forced landings and being awarded two DSCs.
On completion of pilot training in April 1940, he joined 826 Squadron which was the first to be equipped with the Fairey Albacore, supposedly a replacement for the antiquated “Stringbag” Swordfish.
Also a biplane and obsolescent at birth, the Albacore incorporated a number of improvements including an enclosed cockpit, but while flying cover for the Dunkirk evacuations and mounting a series of attacks on ports in Belgium, Holland and France was, unsurprisingly, shown to be easy meat for modern German Messerschmitt Bf109 fighters, 826 Squadron losing several aircraft.
While bombing by day the invasion barges at Calais in September, Tuke’s aircraft was heavily damaged by a fighter, his observer and telegraphist air gunner were both badly wounded. He was awarded his first DSC at the age of 19 for these operations.
The squadron joined the carrier Formidable in December and sailed round the Cape to the Suez Canal, her aircraft attacking Italian forces at Mogadishu and Massawa on the way.
In March 1941 Formidable took part in the Battle of Cape Matapan in which the Italians lost three heavy cruisers and two destroyers in night gun actions. Albacores and Swordfish had repeatedly attacked the Italian fleet with torpedoes, hitting the battleship Vittorio Veneto but not stopping her. A Swordfish from Crete initiated Italian losses by immobilising the cruiser Pola. One 826 Squadron Albacore and its crew were lost.
Formidable and 826 Squadron were next involved in bombardment spotting for battleships off Tripoli and covering convoys to and from Greece. In May they supported the vital Operation Tiger convoy to Alexandria carrying tanks and crated Hurricane fighters for the Eighth Army.
During the evacuation of Crete Formidable was attacked by Ju87 Stukas and severely damaged. With no aircraft carriers left in the Eastern Mediterranean, Tuke was deployed into the desert in support of the army until required with a few Swordfish to rejoin the partially repaired Formidable on her voyage to America.
Back in England, he was appointed senior pilot of 819 Squadron and in July 1942 was seconded to Coastal Command for three months of night operations, bombing and mining European ports. The Squadron embarked in the escort carrier Archer in February 1943 and provided anti-Uboat cover for two Atlantic convoys.
Promoted to acting lieutenant-commander (A), Tuke, now 22, was appointed commanding officer of 851 Squadron and took passage to America in the liner Queen Mary. His squadron formed at the US naval air station at Squantum, Massachusetts, with 12 Grumman Avenger torpedo bombers.
In January 1944 these embarked in the American-built escort carrier Shah, allocated to the Eastern Fleet. Having made passage to Colombo via Australia, the carrier was employed on trade protection in the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal.
Tuke was awarded a bar to his DSC for his part in co-operation with the frigate Findhorn and the Indian sloop Godavari in sinking U198 near the Seychelles. This U-boat from La Pallice in France had recently sunk four merchant ships in the Indian Ocean; there were no survivors.
In July Tuke suffered an engine failure and had to ditch, being rescued by a native dug-out catamaran fishing boat. He returned home in November 1944 and joined the deck landing training school as Lieutenant-Commander (Flying), and married the captain’s secretary, Third Officer Frances Harvey WRNS. His final tour was in command of 783 Squadron, a motley collection of aircraft types used for signal and radar training.
Tuke was placed on the retired list “medically unfit due to war service” in September 1948. He worked as group secretary for the Essex branch of the National Farmers Union for 35 years and was a governor of Woodbridge School. He was also a Lay Tax Commissioner from 1980 to 1984.
He is survived by his wife Frances and their two sons.
Lieutenant-Commander Anthony Tuke, DSC and Bar, naval aviator, was born on December 28, 1920. He died on August 15, 2010, aged 89
