Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Peniakoff D.S.O., M.C.

Image: © Adrian S Pye Taken: 15 Oct 2008

Vladimir Peniakoff was better known as 'Popski'. He was born in Belgium to a family of Russian Jews. He studied at St. John's Cambridge before emigrating to Egypt in 1924 where he worked as an engineer. While there he learned to sail, fly and learn the ways of the desert becoming a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He spoke English, Russian, Italian, French, German as well as Arabic. At the start of WW2 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and put on the General List serving with the Libyan Arab Force. With the sanction of the army, Popski as he was then known formed his own elite fighting force. By befriending and enlisting desert Arabs, he was able to penetrate deep into German territory without being detected - over the next year 'Popski's Private Army' carried out a series of raids behind the German lines in a similar fashion to The Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). In 1942 he was awarded the Military Cross. Two and a half years later the Distinguished Service Order. Soon after he was made a Belgian Officier de l'Ordre de la Couronne avec Palme and awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre 1940 avec Palme. His autobiographical book Popski's Private Army became a best seller but within a year after it was published he was diagnosed with a fatal brain tumour and died aged 54. He is buried in Wixoe churchyard. http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2128188

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