Lieutenant-Colonel Francis George Leach "Gort" Chester DSO, OBE (14 June 1899 – 18 August 1946) was a British soldier who led several Z Special Unit operations in Borneo during World War II.

He graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and during the First World War he served in King Edward's Horse, a cavalry regiment of the British Army, in 1917.

[1] Chester was a rubber planter at the Lokawee Estate near Jesselton in the West Coast area of North Borneo for twenty years before the Japanese invasion of January 1942.

[2][3][4] He was in Australia when the Far Eastern war broke out;[5] he rejoined the British Army and was appointed second lieutenant on the General List on 1 May 1942,[6] this commission was eventually backdated to 21 June 1941.

Similarly the awards recommended for the other members of the unit were amended from the Military Cross for Lieutenant Lloyd James Woods to appointment as Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) and Military Medals for Warrant Officer II Alexander Chew and Sergeant Frederick Gordon Olsen were amended to another MBE and the British Empire Medal respectively.

[10] Over a year later, in early March 1945, Chester (now holding temporary local rank as a lieutenant-colonel in the Australian Military Forces[12]) commanded Agas I, which landed near Labuk Bay in North Borneo.

This operation incorporated Stallion IV, which aimed to obtain intelligence of enemy movements along the Jesselton-Beaufort part of the North Borneo Railway, the Ranau-Tambunan-Keningau Road, and the hinterland of Kimanis Bay.

Finally, the recommendation states that at the time of the eventual Japanese surrender, forces under Chester's command controlled two-thirds of British North Borneo.