Popski's Private Army - North Africa

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.