Friends of Popski's Private Army

Welcome to the Friends of Popski's Private Army website, the online part of the PPA Memorial, made possible by the Trooper Pat Blake Memorial Grant.

NEXT PPA REMEMBRANCE EVENT IN THE UK	NEXT PPA REMEMBRANCE EVENT ABROAD
2013 PPA Wixoe Remembrance Event Our first UK PPA Remembrance Event will be on Saturday 18 May at Wixoe Church in Suffolk. This is where Popski and Pamela are buried together, and where we are working to create and install a commemorative plaque to them both. See also the 2013 list of PPA and other Special Forces Events. Read more...	PPA Desert Memorial Stage One of the construction of the PPA Desert Memorial, near the Fayoum Oasis in the Western Desert has now been achieved, but Stage Two - the commemoration and unveiling - continues to be delayed because of political unrest and the resulting lack of diesel for desert (or indeed any other) travel. Read more...
St Leonard's Church, Wixoe, Suffolk (Roy Paterson)	The Fayoum, near the PPA Desert Memorial (Sam Watson)

LATEST REFERENCE ARTICLE	LATEST HISTORY ARTICLE
PPA Citations Finally, for the first time, we bring you the complete set of main PPA citations. This page shows, for each award, the original citation from The National Archives, the original page from the London Gazette and relevant extracts from the PPA War Diary, accompanied by commentary on the context of the award. Read more...	Popski's Astolabe See our latest research article, in two parts, about the origins of Popski's Astrolabe and its Evolution over the years, written by Special Forces historian Roberto Chiarvetto and foPPA Secretary Roy Paterson. In the History/PPA History Section there are several other interesting articles. Read more...
Popski's DSO	Armillary sphere by Girolamo Volpaia, Florence 1564 (Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Florence)

To round off 2012's 70th Anniversary Year of PPA Formation, we thought that you might like to see Popski's Christmas 1942 lunch menu card. This LRDG-PPA noshup was actually held on New Year's day at Zella Oasis, as the units moved North and West from Kufra Oasis to keep up with Montgomery's rapid advance across Cyrenaica and into Tripolitania. As you can see it includes the signatures of many famous names from that time in the desert.

Popski's LRDG-PPA 1942 Christmas lunch menu - front (foPPA Archives, now in IWM)	Popski's LRDG-PPA 1942 Christmas lunch menu - back (foPPA Archives, now in IWM)

Major John Campbell MC* "Bulldozer"	Major Jean Caneri MC "Jan"	Captain Robert Yunnie MC "Capitano Bob"	Lt-Col Vladimir Peniakoff DSO MC "Popski"

Sir Robert Crawford CBE foPPA Patron	Sir Christopher Lee CBE foPPA Patron

This is for PPA veterans and their families, for friends and fans of the remarkable Popski story, young and old, all around the world. Out of 249 verified members of PPA, in 2012 there are now only 8 of them known to be still alive, since the deaths of Lance Corporal Ron Jewell in April, and of Driver Ken Williamson in September 2011.

Many people are under the impression that Popski's book is all there is to see but we tell you here about other books on PPA and where to find them, and reproduce newspaper articles and other documents that have lain hidden in The National Archives, the Imperial War Museum, and various dusty attics for decades.

There is already lots of interesting and informative reference material to see, from foPPA's extensive archives, all richly interwoven with relevant cross-links and as time goes on we'll be adding more and more articles and previously unpublished images and documents – see About this website. Further information is also available on the website of our close research colleagues at the PPA Preservation Society.

Heavily armed PPA jeep in the Pineta di Classe, South of Ravenna. (See Image Credits)

Although there is some information already available on the web about Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Peniakoff DSO MC and his World War Two 8th Army Special Forces unit as they fought across Libya and Tunisa then up Italy and into Austria, we have found that much of it is inaccurate or misleading, from secondary sources or just sloppy writing. This is where to find the facts about "No 1 Demolition Squadron, PPA": collected, collated, compared and confirmed over many years from primary sources.

The purpose of this website then, an integral part of the PPA Memorial, is to :-

• raise funds to support the PPA Memorial, PPA Remembrance Events and foPPA's research
• preserve the memory of PPA's exploits by bringing the Popski story to a wider audience
• provide reliable information about the man and his unit, drawn from primary sources

Friends of Popski's Private Army is the continuation of the post-war PPA Association run by Sergeant Eric Brooks and Captain Bob Yunnie until Popski's death in 1951, and since then Corporal Ben Owen's guardianship of PPA history until his death in 2008. We hope that you enjoy exploring these pages and feel able to support our continuing work in the Allied Special Forces Grove at the National Memorial Arboretum.

Corporal Frank Dobinson of "Popski's Private Navy" with his daughter Velia,
representing PPA at the November 2010 Royal British Legion Cenotaph March-past. (See Image Credits)

Friends of Popski's Private Army supports : –

National Memorial Arboretum	Armed Forces Day	Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal	Allied Special Forces Grove

Guy Harris & Roy Paterson
Copyright © 2013 foPPA
2 Apr 2013