Bob McFarlane, one of the last surviving members of the S.O.E. – Special Operations Executive – in WWII, died at his home in Kelso on 30th January 2017 at the age of 93. Bob had given two talks in recent years about his experiences – to the LRS on 24 Feb 2014 and at the MoC / LRS on 24 Sept 2014. (Click for reports).
Bob’s good friend, André Saunders GM3VLB writes:
‘As many MoC members know, Bob was never a ham himself, but as a radio operator behind enemy lines with Churchill’s Special Operations Executive in WWII, he got to know the famous B2 ‘spy set’ intimately, using relatively high-speed, coded CW, beginning as a 19-year old when he parachuted, at night, into the then Yugoslavia where he remained, with the partisans, till the end of the war in Europe. Following further jungle training in what was then Ceylon, he then had to dodge the Japanese in the Malayan jungle, before being sent to Hiroshima, just after the A-bomb. Those who attended his joint LRS/MoC talk in Sept 2014, will remember him, as we do, as a modest, still military-like gentleman and indeed gentle man’.
Bob’s funeral at Melrose Crematorium on 14th February 2017 was attended by several LRS members –
Alan GM3PSP, Prof Tom Stevenson, Pete GM4BYF, Peter GM4DTH, André GM3VLB (& XYL Veronica who took this photograph).
During the funeral service, André GM3VLB delivered a eulogy to Bob. Click Eulogy to read.
André’s eulogy was published as a VIP Obituary in the Scotsman on 18th February 2017. (Click).