Ronald Penney
Major General Sir William Ronald Campbell Penney, KBE, CB, DSO, MC (16 May 1896 – 3 December 1964) was a British Army officer who fought in both the First and the Second World Wars.
His most notable role occurred during the latter, when he was General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the 1st Infantry Division during the Battle of Anzio, part of the Italian Campaign, in 1944.
Returning to England, he served briefly as an instructor at the Royal School of Signals from 22 March 1926[13] until 20 January 1927, and attended the Staff College, Camberley, graduating there in late 1928.
[19] Upon being sent to India in 1935, where he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO)[20] on 21 December 1937 and was mentioned in despatches on 18 February 1938 for his part in the Waziristan campaign, he returned to England and attended the Imperial Defence College in 1939, graduating from there later in the year.
The brigade was a Regular Army unit which had fought in France earlier in the year as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and was stationed on the Yorkshire coast on anti-invasion duties in the event of a German invasion.
[12] Auchinleck was preparing for an offensive in North Africa, which was then the only theatre of war in which British and Commonwealth troops were engaged in combat with the Axis powers.
[24] On 4 December, Penney's division departed North Africa for Italy and arrived there three days later, originally to reinforce Montgomery's Eighth Army.
[24] The operation went ahead as planned, with Penney's 1st Division landing in the northern sector of Anzio, catching the Germans completely by surprise.
[24] At the same time, the Allied offensive on the main front at Cassino did not produce the desired result, meaning there could be little, if any, hope of an early link-up between the VI Corps and the rest of the Fifth Army, effectively leaving the former to face the inevitable German onslaught alone.
[29] The Germans were now determined in their attempts to destroy the 3rd Brigade in its exposed position, as part of the first phase of their offensive to drive the VI Corps back into the sea.
The positions held by the 2nd and 24th Brigades were infiltrated by the Germans and the 6th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, suffered very heavy losses, with almost three whole rifle companies being destroyed, the majority of the men being taken prisoner.
Penney's division was by now placed in reserve, and the German attack fell primarily on the 45th Division, but, on 18 February, the 1st Battalion, Loyal Regiment, of the 2nd Brigade, then defending the flyover where the Lateral Road crossed the road and railway and Carroceto, and which so far had suffered relatively light casualties, was involved, repelling many numerous attacks.
[1] By the time Penney resumed his role as GOC, the situation on the Anzio beachhead had changed, transforming from a series of short, sharp platoon or company-size battles, into a stalemate.
Neither the Allies nor the Germans had the strength to sufficiently oust the other side, and although fighting continued, it was on a much smaller scale, and soon degenerated into warfare more reminiscent of the trenches of the Western Front during the Great War.
[30] In November 1944 Penney became Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) at the HQ of Supreme Allied Command South East Asia, under Lord Mountbatten, remaining in this post until the end of the war.
[5][12][2] In this position, he was responsible for the details of the surrender of Japan in September 1945 and provided emergency supplies for the hundreds of thousands of liberated Allied POWs.
[2][12] Although Mark Clark, the American Fifth Army commander, who was notable for his Anglophobia, seems to have thought little of Penney, describing him as "not too formidable a general but a good telephone operator",[34] he was highly regarded by Lucian Truscott and Alexander and most of his subordinates.
