Roy Farran

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Captain Roy Farran (r.) With members of the 2nd SAS in Termoli .

Roy Alexander Farran DSO , MC , Two Bars ( January 2, 1921 - June 1, 2006 ) was a British - Canadian soldier, politician, author and journalist.

Farran was a highly decorated World War II soldier . In 1947 he was suspected of killing a 17-year-old Jewish boy in Palestine. In 1950 he emigrated to Canada and became a respected politician there.

Origin and education

Roy Farran came from a Roman Catholic family; his father was a warrant officer in the Royal Air Force . He attended the Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, India and then the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Great Britain. After graduating from Sandhurst , Farran joined the 3rd Carabiniers (Prince of Wales's Dragoon Guards) as a sub-lieutenant and was transferred to the 51st Training Regiment .

Military career

Second World War

North Africa and Crete

Farran was transferred to the 3rd The King's Own Hussars , who served in the African campaign during World War II , and joined this regiment during Operation Compass , the British offensive against Italian troops from December 1940, he took part in the Battle of Sidi Barrani part. After the end of the operation, the regiment was transferred to Crete . There Farran was involved in skirmishes with German troops as a tank commander, and Farran had some German soldiers who wanted to surrender shot, which he later attributed to the heat of the moment (Eng. Affekttat or more accurately the heat of the battle ). In further skirmishes, one of his subordinates was killed, for which Farran blamed himself; he himself was injured in the arm and legs and taken prisoner by the Germans. During this time he was awarded the Military Cross for bravery.

Escape from captivity

Jock Campbell

After his capture Roy Farran was in a hospital for prisoners of war by Athens flown and was soon able to walk on crutches. After several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to escape and, with the help of Greek civilians, together with three other Australian and British prisoners, set out on a quay across the Mediterranean to Egypt . The crossing was dramatic as the ship got caught in a storm and ran out of gas and drinking water. After ten days, the boat was sighted by the Royal Navy 40 kilometers off Alexandria . Farran received another medal ribbon on his Military Cross. In 1942 he was assigned to Maj. General John Campbell as a wing adjutant . When Farran was supposed to drive to the combat zone in Gazala with Campbell , he lost control of the car that overturned on the way. Campbell was killed and the inmates were passed out; Campbell later reported that he had thought of suicide while waiting to be rescued.

Sicily and Italy

During the withdrawal of the British army towards El-Alamein in the summer of 1942, Roy Farran was injured in an air raid and was brought to Great Britain. However, he did everything in his power to get back to the front as soon as possible, and in February 1943 he was deployed to Algiers , where he was doing parachute training . During the invasion of Sicily , Operation Husky , he commanded a squadron even though he suffered from malaria . In the coming months he was a member of a squadron of the Special Air Service (SAS), 2nd SAS, involved in other operations in Italy. In 1944 he received another ribbon on his Military Cross and returned to Great Britain.

France

Farran stayed in Great Britain until August 1944. Then he was given command of a force that landed behind the German lines in France with an Airspeed Horsa with 20 jeeps on board on August 19 in order to make contact with other British troops. On the way there, the British were attacked by German forces, lost 13 jeeps, and many of Farran's men were killed. Farran took command of another group that sabotaged German facilities. In one month, his men killed around 500 German soldiers, destroyed 95 German vehicles and around 400,000 liters of gasoline. For these actions, Farran was awarded the Distinguished Service Order under the name Patrick McGinty , a pseudonym he had used since he fled German captivity in 1941, in reference to an Irish song of the same name.

Operation raffle

Towards the end of 1944, Roy Farran traveled to Greece to track down the Greeks who had helped him escape from captivity. From December 1944 he was involved in the planning of Operation Tombola , during which he jumped off near Mount Cusna in Reggio Emilia together with 50 paratroopers. Farran was only supposed to accompany the flight, but then, according to his own statements, he fell “accidentally” from the plane and “accidentally” had a parachute and his equipment with him. During the operation, in cooperation with Italian partisans and Russian prisoners of war, around 300 Germans were killed and a number of facilities were destroyed.

The battalion's first target was the local headquarters of the Wehrmacht . Farran was ordered not to attack this headquarters, but he ignored the order because he feared he would lose his credibility in the eyes of the partisans. The German headquarters consisted of several buildings grouped around two villas, Villa Rossi and Villa Calvi in Botteghe d'Albinea . The Germans resisted violently, so that the attackers, pursued by the Germans, had to withdraw. But in the end it was possible to push back the German soldiers. Then there was fighting around the road from Florence to Modena. When Farran arrived in Florence , he was informed that the attack on the headquarters had previously been called off because the Germans were not warned of a planned major attack. Farran feared he would face a court martial for insubordination. Instead, he was awarded the US Legion of Merit .

After the war

After the end of World War II in Europe, Farran went with the 2nd SAS to Norway, where the unit helped disarm the German troops. In 1946 he received the Croix de guerre . He then served with the 3rd Hussars Regiment in Syria and Palestine ; there he narrowly escaped a bomb attack. He was then transferred to Sandhurst as an instructor.

In Palestine

In 1946 or 1947, Roy Farran volunteered for the Palestine Police Force . The British authorities in the Mandate were in a desperate situation: they had to deal with around 6,000 Jewish guerrillas who had successfully fought the Mandate government with sabotage, attacks and street fights, and the morale of the troops who had to formally holed up in their barracks, lay down. Although the British outnumbered these fighters, they were worn down by the skilled tactics of the Jewish fighters. The proclamation of martial law had no positive effects, on the contrary, it resulted in a doubling of the attacks.

Although the British planned to withdraw from Palestine and the civilians had already been evacuated, the Inspector General of the Palestine Police , Nicol Gray , impressed with the actions of the 2nd SAS during the war , instructed Brigadier Bernard Fergusson to set up a new unit, which should try to infiltrate the Jewish groups or to induce rash actions. The members of the Palestine Police reacted with dismay to these plans, and Gray's predecessor, John Rymer-Jones , warned strongly of a "disaster". Fergusson ignored these warnings and hired two former SAS personnel, Roy Farran and Alastair MacGregor, who was part of the MI6 intelligence division . Farran was a peculiar choice because he was known for ignoring orders, had little experience in security and intelligence matters, and, as he himself later admitted, had a drinking problem.

Farran was hired by Fergusson to operate in southern Palestine. Sir Henry Gurney , General Secretary of the Mandate Government, later complained that Farran believed he had carte blanche , which is a free hand, even though he had no police powers. His people were supposed to pretend to be Jews and mingle with the Jewish population, but were mostly immediately recognized as British. None of the men in Farran's unit spoke good Hebrew, but they refused to work with the Criminal Investigation Department and there was little information about the Jewish fighters.

The Rubowitz case

On May 16, 1947, 17-year-old Alexander Rubowitz disappeared while posting posters for the Lechi Jewish resistance group . The Palestine Police believed that Farran's unit had arrested and killed him. Gurney ordered that the case be treated as a normal crime and that Farran and the others involved be brought to justice. The suspicion that Farran was involved in Rubowitz's disappearance arose because a gray floppy hat with its initials sewn into it had been found near the spot where witnesses had seen Rubowitz being dragged into a car. According to a later testimony, Rubowitz was taken to a remote location, tortured to extract information from him, and finally killed by Farran with a stone. Farran said he was tricked and fled to Syria, but Fergusson persuaded him to surrender. Contrary to Fergusson's promises, Farran was arrested and fled to Jordan , but came back when he heard of planned retaliation against British officers.

Farran was charged with the murder of Rubowitz and tried before a court-martial in Jerusalem . Fergusson, whom Farran allegedly confessed to the murder, refused to testify because he allegedly could have incriminated himself. The prosecutor was unable to prove that Rubowitz was dead and that the found hat belonged to Farran, and so the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. Subsequent attempts by the Rubowitz family to reopen the case were unsuccessful, and the boy's body was never found. After the trial, Fergusson was forced to retire and leave Palestine within 36 hours.

Upon his return from Palestine, the Lechi group attempted to kill Farran with a package bomb at his home in Codsall , Staffordshire . The package arrived about a year after the day Rubowitz disappeared, but Roy Farran was not home and his younger brother Rex was killed. The package had been sent by a Lechi group in the UK led by Yaakov Heruti . In 2004 the BBC broadcast the television documentary Empire Warriors , in which Geula Cohen , a former underground fighter and later MP in the Knesset , stated that the package had been addressed by Lechi to R. Farran without knowing of the existence of the younger brother.

Until his death, Farran protested that he was innocent in the death of Alexander Rubowitz.

Life after the military

After retiring from the military, Roy Farran moved to Scotland , where he briefly worked in a quarry. In 1950 he ran unsuccessfully for the British Parliament as a candidate for the Conservative Party in Dudley . In the same year he married his wife Ruth; the couple had two daughters and two sons. After the election, Farran and his wife moved to Calgary , Canada . There he began working as a journalist for the Calgary Herald and later published a weekly magazine, the North Hill News ; he also ran his own farm.

Living in Canada

From 1961 to 1971 Roy Farran held a seat on the Calgary City Council . In 1971 he ran successfully as a candidate for the Progressive Conservatives for the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and was appointed Minister twice: From 1973 to 1975 he was Minister of Telephones and Utilities and from 1975 to 1979 Solicitor General and Minister of Public Security . In 1979 he retired from politics. In the 1980s he was visiting professor at Alberta University and also chaired the Racing Commission for horse racing in Alberta . He set up a foundation in the French Vosges that organizes a Franco-Canadian student exchange; for this he was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1994.

Although he had larynx cancer, had his larynx removed, and could only speak through a prosthesis, he remained active.

Publications

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Obituary for Major Roy Farran on timesonline.co.uk v. June 6, 2006
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g Obituary for Major Roy Farran on telegraph.co.uk v. June 5, 2006
  3. ^ Roy Farran: Winged Dagger. Adventures on Special Service . 1948 ( Memento of the original from July 20, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.my-crete-site.co.uk
  4. ↑ a b c d Obituary Major Roy Farran on guardian.co.uk v. June 12, 2006
  5. ↑ Major General Julian Thompson: The Imperial War Museum: War Behind Enemy Lines, p. 370 "
  6. ^ A b Major General Julian Thompson: The Imperial War Museum: War Behind Enemy Lines. P. 372
  7. ^ Richard J. Aldrich: The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War secret intelligence. Pp. 256-257.
  8. ^ Richard J. Aldrich: The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War secret intelligence. P. 259.
  9. ^ Richard J. Aldrich: The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War secret intelligence. P. 261.
  10. ↑ Nicholas Bethell: The Palestine Triangle. Jews and Arabs in the struggle for the British mandate 1935–1948 . P. 328.
  11. ↑ N. Kardahj: A Measure of. Restraint. The Palestine Police and the End of the British Mandate . MPhil Thesis, 2007
  12. ↑ D. Anderson / David Killingray: Policing and decolonization. Politics, nationalism, and the police, 1917-65 . Pp. 75-77
  13. ^ T. Jones: Postwar counterinsurgency and the SAS, 1945-1952. A special type of warfare . 2001, p. 121
  14. ^ T. Jones: SAS: the first secret wars. The unknown years of combat & counter-insurgency
  15. ^ A b c d e f D. Pryce-Jones: "Trouble in Palesteine" Review of the book Major Farran's Hat: Murder, Scandal and Britain's War Against Jewish Terrorism, 1945-1948 by David Cesarani. In: Literary Review ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.literaryreview.co.uk
  16. ^ Farran, Fergusson may be in UK , Palestine Post , October 8, 1947
  17. ^ No action against Col. Fergusson , Palestine Post , October 16, 1947
  18. ^ Nigel West: The Friends: Britain's Post-War Secret Intelligence Operations. P. 37
  19. ↑ Yossi Melman: The Heruti code . In: Haaretz , January 13, 2005. 
  20. ↑ British War Hero To Be Investigated Again for Murder of Jewish 'Terrorist' on pallorium.com v. March 28, 2009

literature

  • Richard J. Aldrich: The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War secret intelligence . Woodstock, 2001, ISBN 978-0715636077 .
  • Michael Asher: The Regiment: The Real Story of the SAS . Penguin, 2008, ISBN 978-0141026527 .
  • Nicholas Bethell: The Palestine Triangle. Jews and Arabs in the struggle for the British mandate 1935–1948. Frankfurt. Propylaea 1978
  • Peter Harclerode: Wings Of War - Airborne Warfare 1918–1945 . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005, ISBN 0-30436-730-3 .
  • James A. Huston: Out Of The Blue - US Army Airborne Operations In World War II . Purdue University Press, 1998, ISBN 1-55753-148-X .
  • Tim Jones: SAS: The first secret wars: The unknown years of combat & counter-insurgency . IB Tauris, 2005, ISBN 186064676X .
  • Lieutenant-Colonel TBH Otway: The Second World War 1939–1945 Army - Airborne Forces . Imperial War Museum, 1990, ISBN 0-90162-75-77 .
  • Major General Julian Thompson: The Imperial War Museum: War Behind Enemy Lines . Pan Grand, 1999, ISBN 0330367617 .
  • Nigel West: The Friends: Britain's Post-War Secret Intelligence Operations . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.
  • David Cesarani , Major Farran's Hat: Counter-Terrorism, Murder, and Cover-Up in Palestine, 1945-1948 , William Heinemann, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Farran, Roy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Farran, Roy Alexander
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Canadian soldier, politician, author and journalist
DATE OF BIRTH January 2, 1921
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2006