Kenneth Scott SOE RIP

Kyt · Nov 12, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5141165.ece

Kenneth Scott was a volunteer for the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE), formed to arm and train partisans in Axis-occupied countries. An SOE group codenamed “Claridges” was parachuted into Serbia in early 1944 to gain access to Bulgaria with the help of Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav communist partisans. Scott was the mission’s sergeant radio operator.

Little was known of the effectiveness of resistance groups in Bulgaria. The pro-German Government had joined the Axis powers in early 1941, but Slav sentiment for Russia had held it back from joining Germany in the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

An opposition leader, George Dimitrov, who had escaped to Palestine, held out hope for action by partisans located near Sofia. Therefore the SOE headquarters in Cairo decided an attempt should be made to establish contact. In January 1944 Major Frank Thompson was dropped into Serbia with a small SOE party to join one led by a Major MostynDavies, who had made his way there from Albania.

In a preliminary expedition into Bulgaria, Mostyn-Davies was captured and shot, while Thompson only narrowly escaped. Accompanied by Scott as his radio operator Thompson then led, in a second expedition, a large group of Bulgarian partisans whom he had armed and trained in the mixed nationalities borderland after Hitler’s move of the Bulgarian border westwards.

The patriotic enthusiasm of the partisans appears to have persuaded Thompson to cross into Bulgaria proper before he was really satisfied with their level of training. His plan was to rendezvous with the Bulgarian partisan Chavdar Brigade based near Sofia, but contact was never established. Thompson’s party was ambushed, many of the partisans killed on the spot and he and Scott were taken prisoner, Scott being wounded in the hand.

The two were interrogated by the Gestapo in the village of Litakovo. Thompson claimed prisoner-of-war status for both of them, but this was rejected on the ground that they had been captured with rebels moving against the “legitimate” Bulgarian Government. Thompson was executed after a show trial, where he impressed even his accusers by his composure. Scott had his wound attended to and on recovering the use of his hand was ordered by the Gestapo to open communication with SOE headquarters in Cairo.

Recognising that execution was the only alternative, he began transmitting, but in the first message omitted a security check and phrased the message to alert Cairo to his capture. Either accidentally or because they were aware of the security check technique, his captors changed the text before despatch. The Gestapo’s hope was to gain information on future Allied strategic intentions from the SOE headquarters in Cairo, but they failed.

Scott was moved to Sofia at the beginning of September 1944 and housed in a Bulgarian jail. On the eve of the Red Army’s declaration of war on Bulgaria on September 5, 1944, as its troops swept through Romania, Scott was informed that he would be shot. The arrival of the Russians under General Fyodor Tolbukhin came just in time to save him from execution. He was released, returned to England and received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his service with SOE.

After demobilisation, Scott worked as an engineer. He returned to Bulgaria in 2000 to meet the few survivors of the 1944 foray into the country and visit the graves of Thompson and the partisans killed in the ambush. He was welcomed as a hero.

He is survived by his wife, Sonia, and their two daughters.

Kenneth Scott, DCM, SOE veteran, was born on March 1, 1920. He died on September 30, 2008, aged 88
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Antipodean Andy · Nov 12, 2008

A man who appears to have made the most out of the chances given to him. RIP.

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Kenneth Scott SOE RIP

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