Rea Leakey

Through his great-grandfather James Shirley Leakey (1824–1871), one of the eleven children of the portrait painter James Leakey, he is related to the missionary Henry Leakey, so to paleoanthropologists Louis Leakey and Richard Leakey.

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.

Major-General Arundell Rea Leakey, (30 December 1915 – 6 October 1999) was an officer in the British Army.

He served in the Royal Tank Regiment in the Second World War, in North Africa, Italy and France.

Leakey was born in Nairobi, Kenya on 30 December 1915.

His father, Arundell Gray Leakey, was the son of Reverend John Arundell Leakey, a clergyman in England.

His sister Agnes Leakey (1917–2007) (later Agnes Hofmeyr) worked for reconciliation in Kenya.

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.

Leakey's mother Elizabeth died in 1926, when he was 10 years old.

He was educated at boarding school in Kenya, and then at Weymouth College in England.

After attending the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, he became a second lieutenant in the Royal Tank Corps in 1936.

Leakey served with the 1st Battalion in Egypt, where he helped with the invention of the Coles Universal Sun Compass.

He was promoted to lieutenant in January 1939.

Leakey was serving on the staff of the 4th Armoured Brigade when the Second World War broke out in September 1939.

Leakey rejoined his unit, renamed the 1st Royal Tank Regiment, fighting in a Mark VI tank.

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.

After German forces arrived in North Africa, Leakey's regiment was sent to form part of the garrison at Tobruk in April 1941.

He was awarded a Bar to the Military Cross for actions of 9 August 1941, while serving with the Australians: he is believed to be the only captain in the British Army serving as a lance corporal in the Australian army to win the MC.

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.

Before he left, he returned to visit his regiment near Tobruk towards the end of May 1942.

He found himself embroiled in the opening stage of Battle of Gazala, and he was nearly captured by General Rommel (the commander of the 7th Armoured Division Frank Messervy was captured briefly).

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.

He eventually went to Persia in July 1942, after Rommel's advance stalled near El Alamein.

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.

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.

His older brother Nigel Leakey was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross in 1945, for his actions in Ethiopia in 1941.

Leakey learned to fly while serving as a Air Intelligence Liaison Officer with No. 451 Squadron RAAF, and was then asked to join the 252nd Indian Armoured Brigade in Persia.

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.

He volunteered for service in the Far East but the war ended before he arrived.

His father Gray Leakey and step-mother Mary were murdered by the Mau Mau in Kenya in 1954.

He later served in Korea, in the Arab Legion, and commanded a brigade in the British Army of the Rhine in the 1960s.

He served as Director-General of Fighting Vehicles and finally as the commander of British troops in Malta and Libya.

His exploits were later recounted by The Victor comic in the 1960s.

Leakey was then sent to the Staff College in Haifa.

He retired in 1966, and became Director of the Wolfson Foundation.

An autobiography, Leakey's Luck, was published in 1999.

After returning to England, he landed in Normandy with the 5th Royal Tank Regiment, and fought in Operation Jupiter near Maltot, dominated by Hill 112, then at Le Havre, and with the 1st Czechoslovak Armoured Brigade at the Siege of Dunkirk, winning a Czechoslovak War Cross.

His older brother Nigel Leakey was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross in the Second World War, and a cousin Joshua Leakey was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2015.

One of his sons is Lieutenant General David Leakey.

Another relative Joshua Leakey was awarded the Victoria Cross in 2015, for his actions in Afghanistan in 2013.