Boy that POW network really is something. The scum that they have exposed makes me cringe. Some of those characters couldn't spell to save their skins. Easy to spot, they were the ones that drooled.
On the other side of the coin, our retired partner died just over a year back. I had worked with him for 10yrs, always knew him as the Col. Excellent Architect who only once mentioned the war (WWII) when we were arguing one lunch time about the morality of Hiroshima. He piped up, would you rather have to parachute into Japan, I really wouldn't? That and he had been rumoured to be SAS was all we ever knew,,,
Here is his Eulogy care of the British Telegraph:
Colonel Ken Harvey, who has died aged 80, won a DSO for his part in a daring raid on a German corps headquarters behind enemy lines in Italy in 1945.
In the spring of that year Operation Tombola was launched to harass German troops in their withdrawal. One of the targets was the enemy 51st Corps HQ, based at two villas near Albinea, south of Réggio Nell'Emilia, and protected by Spandau machine-gun posts sited at strategic points.
The raid by SAS commandos, Italian partisans and escaped Russian prisoners was launched to the sound of Highland Laddie, played by a piper in a slit trench.
Harvey, a lieutenant attached to 3 Squadron, 2nd SAS, commanded by Major Roy Farran, was ordered to attack the Villa Calvi.
After approaching unseen in the moonlight on March 26, Harvey led 10 British parachutists against the villa. First, he killed two German sentries on the lawn; then his men unit burst into the villa after blowing in the front door with a bazooka bomb.
Four more Germans were killed on the ground floor, but others fought back gallantly, sweeping the grounds with machine-gun fire and rolling grenades down the spiral staircase. Confronted in the darkness by a German with a Schmeisser sub-machine gun, Harvey ducked but failed to extinguish his torch. Fortunately a sergeant reacted quickly and fired over his shoulder.
The ground floor was taken - but when Harvey realised that he could not force the staircase in the 20 minutes allowed him, he lit a big fire in the operations room with the aid of petrol and explosives. The wounded were evacuated, and the Germans on the first floor were pinned down by bazooka and machine-gun fire until the villa was well ablaze.
The whole area was now in a state of high alarm, with Harvey and his men coming under intense fire as they withdrew. He guided his party, which included two wounded men, through heavy concentrations of enemy troops back to the safety of the mountains.
It was discovered afterwards that the 51st Corps chief of staff was among the enemy casualties; also, a German general was killed in a raid on the second villa. Harvey was awarded the DSO, the citation stating that he had inflicted grievous damage on the German Army from Bologna to Massa on the coast.
The son of a shopkeeper, Kenneth Gordon Harvey was born on December 7 1924 at Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, and educated at Milton Junior and Senior schools, where he was acknowledged to be bright but not academic.
On leaving school, he spent nine months with the Rhodesian Railways, then enlisted as soon as he could. In 1943 he joined the King's Royal Rifle Corps as a private, and served in Egypt and Palestine. He was commissioned into the Seaforth Highlanders and, after a chance meeting with Farran, volunteered to join the SAS.
During Operation Tombola, he escorted seven American airmen, who had been shot down during a raid on Bologna, through the German lines to link up with the Allied forces, and then returned to his unit in enemy-occupied territory.
He was troubled by the suffering of the SAS wounded who could not be given proper treatment and were often transported on ladders. So he raided a German hospital, and commandeered a Mercedes ambulance and an Opel staff car complete with its driver. He subsequently sold the car in Florence on the black market, and spent the proceeds on a three-day party after his return to England.
After the war ended, Harvey was demobilised and returned to Africa, going up to Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, to read Architecture. His time with the Seaforths had given him a great affection for the bagpipes and Highland dances; while an undergraduate he enrolled in the Transvaal Scottish.
Harvey returned to Bulawayo in 1951 as a partner in a firm of architects, but never completely settled into civilian life. He subsequently joined the 2nd Battalion, Royal Rhodesia Regiment, and took command in 1962 in the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
Harvey saw active service in Nyasaland (now Malawi) in 1959, when he helped to suppress riots which had broken out in protest at the colony being linked to Northern and Southern Rhodesia to form the Central African Federation.
He commanded Operation Wetdawn, a sweep of villages known to harbour African nationalists. This nipped a possible rebellion in the bud, and Harvey was appointed MBE (military) for "loyal and meritorious service". Subsequently he served as honorary colonel of the Rhodesian SAS.
A modest, friendly man, Harvey continued working as an architect after Rhodesia gained its independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. He established a large practice and designed many of the office buildings in Harare and Bulawayo.
Harvey was deputy chairman of the Central Africa Power Corporation for many years. As chairman of the Zimbabwe Legion, he worked hard to help ex-servicemen, particularly those whose savings were destroyed by hyperinflation. In his spare time he was a keen philatelist.
Despite the onset of cancer, he was most reluctant to leave the country, but was eventually persuaded to move to a retirement home in Cape Town. There he struck up a friendship with another resident, Ian Smith, the former Rhodesian prime minister.
Ken Harvey died on December 3. He married, in 1951, Luna Klopper, who predeceased him; he is survived by their three daughters.
