Major-General Arundell Rea Leakey, CB, DSO, MC & Bar (30 December 1915 – 6 October 1999) was an officer in the British Army.
[1] Leakey's father had served in a Volunteer Battalion of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in the early 1900s, and with the East African Labour Corps during the First World War.
He commanded a troop and then a squadron, and won the Military Cross at Martuba on 21 January 1941, fighting against Italian forces during Operation Compass.
[1][6][7] After German forces arrived in North Africa, Leakey's regiment was sent to form part of the garrison at Tobruk in April 1941.
Despite constant attacks from the German Afrika Korps that was besieging Tobruk, Leakey grew bored of garrison life; although by then a temporary captain, he volunteered to serve as a private soldier with the 2/23rd Australian Infantry Battalion for three months.
He detoured to visit his father in Kenya, and heard that his older brother Nigel Leakey had died in combat at Kolito in Abyssinia (modern Ethiopia) in May 1941, while serving with the King's African Rifles, for which he was later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
Leakey then served as a turret gunner in a Grant tank, before replacing a wounded officer as GSO2 in the headquarters of the 7th Armoured Division.
[1] He transferred back to the 44th Royal Tank Regiment in North Africa, and landed at Taranto after Operation Slapstick as the second-in-command of the 44th RTR, fighting up the east coast of Italy.
He continued to command the 5th RTR (and for a time the 7th Royal Tank Regiment) as Allied forces fought through the Netherlands, and into Germany, until VE Day in May 1945.
[1][12][13] Leakey was promoted to the substantive rank of captain in 1944, and was appointed to the Distinguished Service Order in 1945 for his leadership of 5th RTR.
Promoted to the rank of major general, he was Director-General of Fighting Vehicles from 1964 to 1966, at the time when the Chieftain tank was introduced to service.
[1] After his death in 1999, his papers were donated to the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King's College London.