ROY FARRAN will be remembered in Canada as a farmer, journalist and politician in the province of Alberta where he lived from 1951. His name briefly became a household word in postwar England when he was tried for murder in Palestine, then under British mandate, and acquitted. But it was his wartime fighting record that set him apart as a soldier of exceptional courage, daring and imagination.

Active service began as a troop leader of the 3rd King’s Own Hussars during Sir Archibald Wavell’s Operation Compass against Marshal Graziani’s numerically superior Italian force in Cyrenaica in the winter of 1940. Initially intended as a five-day raid, surprise achieved by Sir Richard O’Connor’s Western Desert Force of two British armoured divisions and the 4th Indian Division provided the opportunity for the first British land victory of the war. Twenty-five thousand prisoners were taken and Cyrenaica cleared of the enemy for the first but not the last time.

Farran was in the thick of it from the beginning but saw something of the sombre side of war in the aftermath. While supervising a burial party, he found an Italian tank in which the entire crew had been decapitated by a single shell. Unable to extract the bodies, he laid a petrol trail to the fuel tank and said a short prayer for forgiveness as he applied a match.

After the first desert battle the 3rd Hussars were shipped to Crete to reinforce Commonwealth troops preparing to defend the island from the German force that had driven them out of Greece. The airborne invasion of the island on May 20, 1941, was probably the most immediately decisive parachute operation of the war. Fighting in support of a New Zealand battalion in western Crete, Farran was wounded in his right arm and both legs and, after crawling out of his wrecked tank, was taken prisoner.

By August he was walking with crutches and plotting his escape from the prison camp hospital on the outskirts of Athens. A fleeting opportunity when a sentry’s attention was distracted allowed him to limp to the wire, wearing only a pair of shorts, wriggle underneath and drop into a nearby ditch. Aided by friendly Greeks, he joined others who had escaped and eventually led a party of four of them and ten Greeks in an attempt to sail from Piraeus to Egypt in a fishing boat. The party had planned on a four-day voyage but a storm drove them off course. Ten days out, with diesel fuel, food and water exhausted, they were picked up by a Royal Navy destroyer just 40 miles north of Alexandria. Farran was awarded his first Military Cross for gallantry in Crete and a second for leading the escaped PoWs to safety.

As a twice-decorated subaltern with two campaigns under his belt he was appointed ADC to Major-General Jock Campbell, VC, in January 1942. As the new commander of 7th Armoured Division, Campbell was the rising star in the campaign against Rommel’s Afrika Corps.

But returning from a tour of the forward area around Gazala in the general’s staff car, Farran lost control on a patch of newly laid clay. He was thrown clear when the car overturned but General Campbell was killed instantly. Farran later confided that — alone in the desert with the other occupants of the car unconscious at the roadside — he had contemplated suicide. He considered himself well treated to be kept on the divisional staff by the new commander.

Confusion during the “Cauldron” battle led to withdrawal of the 8th Army to Alamein in the summer of 1942. Farran was again wounded, this time in a Luftwaffe attack on the divisional headquarters, and evacuated to England. Convinced that he was fit to fight by the time his ship docked, he persistently pulled strings until a medical board upgraded him to category A. He joined a draft for the Middle East hoping to rejoin the 3rd Hussars, but a chance meeting with a friend led him instead to the 2nd SAS Regiment being formed near Algiers.

Farran commanded a squadron of 2nd SAS in the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and then in mobile operations in the open areas between the advancing Allied armies or ahead of them in Italy. The technique of using small groups in Jeeps mounting machineguns to attack enemy communications paid tactical dividends. Ammunition and fuel supply to such groups was dependent on airdrop with the inevitable risk of detection. Farran appeared to bear a charmed life and to serve in his squadron came to be regarded as a form of life insurance policy.

His first stage of Italian operations ended near Pescara, on the Adriatic Coast, in November 1943. 2nd SAS were then withdrawn for operations in northwest Europe and Farran received a second bar to his Military Cross in February 1944. His squadron was flown to Rennes in August 1944. The SAS plan was to operate from forest bases in France in conjunction with the maquis. Air resupply was plentiful and the maquis ready to co-operate. Leaving carnage and destruction in his wake, Farran led his squadron from the Loire through the forests of Darney to Belfort in just under six weeks.

In March 1945 Farran was awarded a DSO for his leadership in France, but by then he had returned to Italy after a fleeting visit to Greece.

Greece was a sentimental journey, made without official sanction, to find and thank the Athenians who had befriended him after his escape from prison camp in 1941. In this he was successful but he was saddened to witness the outbreak of the vicious civil war between communist and government forces as the Germans withdrew.

While in Greece he was alerted to take over an SAS squadron preparing for operations north of Florence. The purpose of “Operation Tombola” was to invigorate the Italian partisans in Reggio. This he certainly achieved. Farran was ordered to control the enterprise from the safety of Florence but on the night, he “accidently” fell from the aircraft at the head of the first stick.