Cyril Watney: SOE veteran RIP

Kyt · Mar 30, 2009

Cyril Watney: SOE veteran | Times Online Obituary

Cyril Watney was recruited into the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) for his knowledge of French and France, having been born there, and his expertise as a radio operator acquired with the Royal Corps of Signals before being commissioned into the Middlesex Regiment in 1943.

Together with Major George Hiller, he was to be responsible for one of the most successful — and lasting — acts of industrial sabotage in France during the war.

On the night of January 7, 1944, Major George Hiller and Captain Cyril Watney were dropped by parachute to set up SOE’s Footman circuit in the Lot and find out what the local French Resistance could do to assist in sabotaging the Retier factory at

Figeac, east of Cahors, that was turning out variable-pitch propellers for the Luftwaffe.

One of their first contacts was a foreman at the factory who confirmed that some 300 propellers were being produced each week. Further, he had made a plan to wreck the factory — given a few fuses and explosive charges.

Hiller and Watney made up the demolitions, and by the end of January the Retier factory was out of action and remained so until the end of the war.

The pair had also been instructed to track down an elusive member of the French Resistance operating under the name of “Colonel Véni” and known to have a large following but, as a dedicated socialist, suspected of supporting the communist element of the Resistance that was planning to seize power in France after the liberation.

Véni was eventually located and, moving his radio from place to place in a requisitioned van to avoid detection, Watney called for airdrops of weapons to arm his followers, Hiller having extracted a guarantee that they would support de Gaulle — a promise later honoured more in the word than the deed (Véni’s group made little attempt to interfere with the move north of the 2nd SS Panzer Das Reich Division to Normandy after the Allied invasion in June.)

In July Hiller was wounded during an encounter with the enemy and taken prisoner. Watney took over command of the circuit and carried out a daring and successful action to rescue his chief, breaking through a German road block with a handful of Resistance volunteers.

After Hiller had been evacuated to a hospital under Resistance control, Watney organised an attack on a German supply column passing through the Lot. He was later awarded the Military Cross for these actions.

During Hiller’s absence in hospital, he managed to hold the various Resistance groups in the vicinity together, among other ventures arranging for acts of sabotage farther south, around Toulouse, for which he was awarded the Croix de Guerre.

Cyril Arthur Watney was born in 1922 in Calais where his father was engaged in the lace business. The family moved to Nottingham in the depression of the early Thirties, and Watney went to school there before going to Cambridge to take a degree in electric and magnetic sciences.

After demobilisation in 1945 he worked as an interpreter for Whitbread Brewers and later in the same capacity in Canada for the Canadian Government.

He was twice married and is survived by his second wife, Peggy (née Vaughan), a stepson and stepdaughter from his first marriage and two stepsons from his second.

Cyril A. Watney, MC, SOE veteran, was born on September 29, 1922. He died on January 23, 2009, aged 86
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liverpool annie · Mar 30, 2009

His records have just opened ...

The National Archives | The Catalogue | Full Details | HS 9/1561/6

RIP Cyril Arthur Watney

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Cyril Watney: SOE veteran RIP

Kyt Άρης

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