Thread: Roger Leney RIP

Roger Leney | Times Online Obituary

A trained radio operator with the Royal Armoured Corps in England in July 1943, Roger Leney volunteered for — as advertised on squadron orders — “special duties of a hazardous nature”.

The duties became clear after reaching the signals training school of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) at Henley-on-Thames two months later, and the hazards on transfer to Milton Hall, near Peterborough, in February 1944. He was to be a member of a three-man team parachuted into German-occupied France after the start of the Allied invasion of Normandy in June that year.

Together with about 90 similar groups, the team was to establish contact with elements of the French Resistance organisation, arm them by air-drop, and direct sabotage against the enemy in a manner to assist rather then hinder the Allied invasion. The teams, known as “Jedburghs”, each comprised an English-speaking officer, either British or American, a French-speaking officer and a radio operator equipped with a radio transceiver.

Leney’s team, codenamed “Jeremy”, of which he was the radio operator, was commanded by Captain Geoffrey Hallowes (obituary September 27, 2006), with Lieutenant Henri-Charles Giese making up the complement. As the team was to be dropped in Haute Loire, they were flown from Algiers and dropped on the night of August 24, 1944.

On arrival, they were to operate under the instructions of an SOE member codenamed “Diane”. This was an American woman known locally as “La dame qui boite” (the woman who limps), having lost the lower part of her left leg in a shooting accident before the war. She was on the spot to meet the team near her base at at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

Leney stayed with her to make radio contact with SOE headquarters, while Hallowes and Giese sought out the local resistance fighters of the Forces Français de l’Intérieur (FFI), who supported General de Gaulle, at Le Puy-en-Velay. Thanks to Leney’s successfully establishing radio contact with SOE headquarters, 30 containers of arms were dropped to equip enough of the FFI to threaten detachments of German troops expected to withdraw through the region on their way from southern France.

By late September the work of the Jeremy team in Haute Loire was completed. Giese left to join the French Army, while Hallowes and Leney were ordered to Marseilles and then sent to Bari, where they were held on stand-by for a mission in northern Italy. When this failed to materialise, they returned to England to prepare for operations elsewhere.

On March 15, 1945, Leney was parachuted into Burma with a team from Force 136, an arm of SOE operating in South East Asia, as the radio operator for a group raising local Karen guerrillas. After training, the guerrillas were deployed to assist General Slim’s 14th Army in preventing the escape of the Japanese 28th Army across the Irrawaddy into Thailand. The operation, in which Leney took part, codenamed “Character”, proved highly successful, the Karen guerrillas fighting tenaciously in their native hills.

Leney was awarded the Military Medal for his service in Burma and also mentioned in dispatches. In 1946 he received the Croix de Geurre with Silver Star for his work with SOE in occupied France.

After demobilisation, he became engaged in the agricultural engineering industry and, after retirement, acted as a voluntary conservation warden for the National Trust and Dorset Wildlife Trust.

He married, in 1950, Shirley Rollett, who survives him with three sons and a daughter.

Roger Leney, MM, radio operator with the SOE, was born on May 4, 1923. He died on May 4, 2008, his 85th birthday

RIP Mr. Leney