The following appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 10 November 2024.
Leslie Needham, who has died aged 102, was one of the last surviving members of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) set up by Churchill with a mission to “set Europe ablaze” by supporting resistance networks in occupied Europe. Needham served initially as a cipher operator based at the SOE headquarters in Algiers dealing with communications with the Italian Partigiani resistance to Mussolini and his German allies in Italy.
After the invasion of Italy, the SOE moved forward to Monopoli on the Adriatic, at the top of the “heel of the boot” and 30 miles south-east of Bari, providing a radio link with Tito’s Partisans who were fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia. The SOE team liaising with Tito was led by Fitzroy Maclean and included Churchill’s son Randolph. “I would regularly take messages between Churchill and Tito,” Needham recalled. “The messages were always very similar – Tito asking for supplies and Churchill replying that there were other fronts to consider.
“But one evening a curious-looking message came through which had only five words on it and said ‘for the Prime Minister’s eyes only’. It read: ‘Happy birthday Dad. Love Randolph’.” Once the war in Europe came to a close, Needham volunteered to remain with the SOE and go to the Far East where SOE was now fighting the Japanese. Within weeks, however, the atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the war came to an end.
Leslie Needham was born in 1922 on New Year’s Day in the south London suburb of Honor Oak Park. His father Joseph was an antiquarian bookseller, but died in 1931, leaving his wife with three children and an income of only 25 shillings (£1.25) a week. She found work as a charlady for neighbours and took in washing and ironing. Leslie took a paper round and a Saturday job as a butcher’s boy to help his mother make ends meet.
He was educated at Crofton Park Central School and Haberdashers’ Aske’s in Hatcham, but left school at the age of 15 against his mother’s wishes to take a job in the Stock Exchange as a stockbroker’s ledger clerk.
When war broke out, he joined the Stock Exchange Cadet Company and in 1941 joined the Essex Regiment but after being medically downgraded for a foot complaint he transferred into the Royal Signals and was posted to North Africa where the British First Army, commanded by Lt-Gen Kenneth Anderson, was advancing on Tunis. The position they were to occupy, however, had recently been vacated by a Royal Artillery unit which had left discarded explosives lying around. Some of the explosives detonated, leaving Needham with very serious burns and wounds. His mother received the news that he had been severely wounded at the same time that she was informed that her older son, Eric, a fighter pilot, had been killed. “Several days later, I awoke in an American hospital,” recalled Needham. “A padre was praying by my side saying: ‘If this man be taken from us …’ I quickly assessed the position and decided I was not going anywhere.” It was while recuperating that he was recruited into SOE.
At the end of the war, Needham was offered a job with the Standard Bank by another Old Askean he had met playing rugby, and worked his way up to a senior position, managing the bank’s pension fund and meeting the bank’s directors. One of them, a merchant banker with Robert Fleming & Co, offered Needham a job with Flemings, managing two investment funds. Six years later, he took up a partnership at Pember & Boyle, a large gilt-edged broking company.
In 1977, Needham became a Freeman of the City of London and joined the newly created Company of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. A keen sportsman, alongside rugby and tennis, he also played cricket for Standard Bank and golf, serving as captain, and subsequently for 13 years president, of Langley Park Golf Club. When he stopped playing rugby in the 1950s, he became a referee, with one of his fellow referees being Denis Thatcher.
In 2005 he attended a luncheon given by the then Queen at Buckingham Palace to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, and in 2020 a dinner given by Princess Anne at St James’s Palace to mark the 75th anniversary.
Leslie Needham married Vera Avery in 1949. She predeceased him, and he is survived by their son and daughter.
Leslie Needham, born January 1 1922, died September 28 2024
