Popski's Private Army

Popski's Private Army, officially No. 1 Demolition Squadron, PPA, was a unit of British Special Forces founded in Cairo in 1942 by Lieutenant Colonel (then Major) Vladimir Peniakoff DSO MC. Popski's Private Army was one of several raiding units formed in the Western Desert during the Second World War. They also served in Italy before they were disbanded in September 1945.

History
Popski’s Private Army was founded by Major Vladimir Peniakoff in Cairo in October 1942, becoming operational on 10 December 1942, as an 8th Army Special Forces unit at the suggestion of Lieutenant-Colonel John Hackett. Its official name was No. 1 Demolition Squadron, PPA and it was formed specifically to attack Field-Marshal Rommel’s fuel supplies, in support of General Montgomery’s offensive at El Alamein.

After the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) and the Special Air Service (SAS), PPA was the last and smallest of the three main irregular raiding, reconnaissance and intelligence units formed during the North African Campaign. Major Peniakoff had just been awarded a Military Cross for his intelligence reporting and petrol dump raiding while leading the Libyan Arab Force Commando for three months behind enemy lines, and for an operation while attached to the LRDG. There were further laurels to come.

Popski’s nickname referred to a Daily Mirror cartoon character, and was given to him by Captain Bill Kennedy Shaw, the LRDG’s Intelligence Officer, because his signallers had problems with “Peniakoff”. The unit’s cover name came from Hackett’s exasperation at Popski’s delay in coming up with something suitable: “You had better find a name quick or we shall call you Popski’s Private Army”. “I’ll take it” said Popski.

Vladimir Peniakoff was born in 1897 in Belgium of Russian Jewish intellectual parents. He was privately educated in Belgium and went up to St John's College, Cambridge, becoming an ardent Anglophile, influenced by Bertrand Russell. Only four terms later though he signed up as a French gunner during World War I but was invalided out in 1918 after 12 months in hospital.

North Africa
After the war, Peniakoff qualified as an engineer in Grenoble. He worked in his father’s chemical factory in Belgium, then in 1924 moved to Egypt to run a sugar refinery. With plenty of leisure time throughout the next 15 years, he climbed in the Italian Alps and learned to fly light aircraft around the Middle East. He explored the Eastern and Western Deserts, relying only on his own resources, learning desert navigation, meeting and talking history with Arab tribesmen. He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, married and had two daughters.

When the Second World War broke out and after his rejection by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, a reluctant British Army was persuaded to take on this podgy but persistent middle-aged Belgian. Assigned to mundane garrison duties as an Arabic-speaking junior officer in the Libyan Arab Force (LAF), Popski plotted his escape and formed the Libyan Arab Force Commando (LAFC) – a small group of British and Libyan soldiers who operated behind the lines in the Jebel Akhdar area of Cyrenaica.

After returning to Cairo in the middle of 1942 only to discover that his LAFC had been disbanded while he was away, Popski was invited to join an LRDG raid in the area he had just left, learning much about their ways, lost the little finger on his left hand to an Italian bullet, and won a Military Cross (MC). It was shortly after this that PPA was formed: the smallest independent unit of the British Army at 23 All Ranks. The original officers of PPA were three friends who had served together in the Libyan Arab Force: Popski, Robert Park Yunnie and Jean Caneri.

Events proceeded rapidly as the Germans and Italians were chased out of North Africa almost before PPA really got going. A joint LRDG-PPA patrol discovered the gap in the mountains that let Montgomery's armour outflank Rommel’s Mareth Line defences, and PPA was among the first elements of 8th Army, pushing West, to meet the British 1st Army and American 2nd Corps, pushing East, in Tunisia in early 1943. Many PPA raiding and reconnaissance operations were carried out around the time of the Kasserine Pass fighting, including taking the surrender of 600 Italians, alongside British and American forces.

The summer of 1943 was spent in Algeria and Tunisia recruiting and training new volunteers from the LRDG, SAS, Commandos and Royal Armoured Corps for the fight in Italy, bringing the unit’s size up to about 35 all ranks, with two fighting patrols and a small HQ. For a short while PPA experimented with using 1st Airborne Division’s gliders to deliver them and their jeeps behind the Axis lines in Sicily, but their part in that operation was cancelled at the last minute.

Italy
In September 1943 an advance patrol of PPA sailed to Taranto and headed inland. Popski immediately pulled off a major intelligence scoop by cleverly discovering the weakness of the German 1st Parachute Division opposing 1st Airborne. As a result of this success Popski was allowed to increase the size of PPA to 80 all ranks, but throughout the Italian Campaign about 100 men were actually deployed at any one time.

PPA was unusual in that all recruits, including officers, reverted to lowest rank on joining – Private or Lieutenant. The unit was run quite informally: there was no saluting and no drill, officers and men messed together, every man was expected to know what to do and get on with it, and there was only one punishment for failure of any kind: immediate Return To Unit. It was also efficient, having an unusually small HQ.

Three fighting patrols, each of 18 men in six jeeps, and one Tactical HQ patrol of four jeeps were formed and given great autonomy. Each jeep was armed with .50in and .30in machine guns, giving the patrols immense firepower for their size. The men trained hard for amphibious, mountain and parachute operations, demolition and counter-demolition, reconnaissance and intelligence gathering.

They were deployed in many rôles, often clandestine, and for several months even operated as regular front line troops, holding a sector of the Allied front line that was badly depleted after the withdrawal of forces for the D-Day landings in Normandy, nipping around in their jeeps to fool the Germans into believing that they were opposed by much larger units.

Several operations used DUKWs or small landing craft called RCLs (manned by 7 Royal Engineers who inevitably became known as “Popski’s Private Navy”) to sail up the Adriatic and get behind the German front line, chaperoned by the Royal Navy’s Coastal Forces.

Throughout the bitter winter weather and fighting of 1944 and 1945 PPA undertook their operations ahead of regular forces, in support of British, Canadian, Indian and Polish armoured, infantry and Commando units. They located targets for the Allied Air Force, chased Germans out of rear-areas, saved bridges, captured many prisoners and guns, and accepted the surrender of the entire German garrison at Chioggia.

At various times PPA worked alongside other secret units such as the LRDG, SAS, No. 1 Special Force (SOE), Phantom, ‘A’ Force and Office of Strategic Services. Along the way they adopted many strays, including Russian, Italian and German POWs, Italian regulars and partisans, both royalist and communist.

Popski was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in November 1944, during joint operations (as “Porterforce”) with the 27th Lancers and Italian partisans of the 28th Garibaldi Brigade, to liberate Ravenna, but shortly afterwards lost his left hand to a German rifle-grenade.

Popski’s Private Army finished the war with a flourish: sailing some of their jeeps on RCLs to St. Mark's Square in Venice where they drove round and round just for the hell of it, the only wheeled vehicles ever to have been there. The unit was disbanded four months later on 14 September 1945, after hunting for Himmler, disarming Italian partisans and discouraging Josip Broz Tito’s partisans from encroaching on Austrian and Italian territory.

By this time PPA personnel had gained between them a DSO, a Distinguished Conduct Medal, 6 MCs, 10 MMs, and 14 Mentions in Despatches; HM King George VI had personally requested an account of the unit’s exploits.

Post-war
Popski was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and became the British-Russian liaison officer in Vienna before demobilisation, naturalisation and achieving fame as a British writer and broadcaster.

He died in London in 1951 of a brain tumour, having lived long enough to see his book Private Army become a best-seller. Popski is buried in Wixoe Church cemetery in Suffolk alongside his second wife Pamela Firth.

Select bibliography
''This list includes the first edition of each of 'the big five' books on PPA, starting with Popski's own bestseller. Since the early editions are hard to find, a recent edition is also listed for each book: where these have been retitled, the changed title is listed.''


 * Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Peniakoff DSO MC
 * --- Private Army. Jonathan Cape. 2nd Edition, foreword by General Sir John Hackett, minor revisions, 1951.
 * --- Popski's Private Army. Cassell Military Paperbacks, 2004. ISBN 0-304-36143-7.
 * Translated into Swedish (1951), German (1951), Italian (1951), French (1953), Hebrew (1954), Spanish (1955), Serbo-Croat (1957).
 * Translated into Swedish (1951), German (1951), Italian (1951), French (1953), Hebrew (1954), Spanish (1955), Serbo-Croat (1957).


 * Captain Robert Park Yunnie MC, Popski's second in command, leader of "B" patrol
 * --- Fighting with Popski's Private Army. Greenhill Books, 2002. ISBN 1-85367-500-8.
 * --- Fighting with Popski's Private Army. Greenhill Books, 2002. ISBN 1-85367-500-8.


 * Corporal Ben Owen, Yunnie's gunner
 * --- Astrolabe Publishing, 2006. Available from the Friends of Popski's Private Army.
 * --- Astrolabe Publishing, 2006. Available from the Friends of Popski's Private Army.


 * Lieutenant-Colonel John Willett, friend of Popski, intelligence officer in 8th Army


 * Signalman Les White, signaller in "S" Patrol.


 * Captain John Campbell, leader of "S" Patrol.