leslie meerut3

This is one of four surviving photos that Leslie Warren sent home to his family in 1942 after arriving at the SOE’s Advanced Operations School signals wing in Meerut. Having been evacuated from Penang and escaped from Batavia to Ceylon in a fishing boat after the Fall of Singapore, he was signed on with the Royal Engineers while in Colombo, but immediately posted to Meerut. His telegraphs home simply refer to Meerut. Leslie writes that he can't reveal what he was doing, only that it was more important than being at the front. While in Hong Kong, Leslie had served in the Signals Corps with the Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Force.