Roger Leney
Roger Anthony Leney MM was a British radio operator with the Royal Armoured Corps during the Second World War.
Second World War
After finishing Special Operations Executive signals training school in September 1943, he was part of a three-man team parachuted into occupied France in June 1944. The mission was primarily to establish contact with and provide weaponry to the French Resistance via airdrop. Leney was the radio operator of his team, whose other members were the English-speaking Captain Geoffrey Hallowes and the French-speaking Lieutenant Henri Charles Giese. The team landed in Haute Loire after dark on the night of 24 August 1944. The teams were known as "Jedburghs".On arrival, they were to operate under the instructions of an SOE member codenamed "Diane", an American woman who had lost part of her left leg in a non-war related shooting accident, hence known locally as "La dame qui boite". This was actually Virginia Hall, who encountered Leney's team near her base at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. He remained with her to make radio contact with SOE headquarters, while Hallowes and Giese sought out local resistance fighters. Leney established successful radio contact with SOE/HQ and some thirty containers of arms were dropped to equip the FFI to engage detachments of withdrawing German troops.