Lieutenant Leonard (”Len”) Reynolds OBE DSC

LIEUTENANT LEONARD REYNOLDS

                        With four books to his credit, Len Reynolds is widely recognised as the definitive historian of Coastal Forces wartime operations, particularly in the Mediterranean, complementing Peter Scott’s well-known The Battle of the Narrow Seas, which dealt with the Channel and North Sea.   Reynolds himself, after earning the DSC in a gallant wartime career, held a number of distinguished posts in public service for which he was appointed OBE.

                        The son of a police sergeant, the young Reynolds was educated at Wallington County Grammar School, enlisting in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1942 aged 19 and sent to Motor Gunboat 658 as a midshipman.    He had the unique distinction of serving in the same Motor Gunboat throughout the war, finally, at the age of 21, as her captain.  His arrival in the Mediterranean coincided with Allied successes in North Africa. Based at Malta, MGB 658 supported Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.  Involved in fourteen operations in nineteen days against German E-Boats and under constant air attack, the crew rapidly became hardened veterans and ready for the intense campaign along the Italian coast, playing a significant part in the invasion of Elba by Free French forces under the celebrated General de Lattre de Tassigny.  It was following this operation, while on patrol in the Piombino Channel, that MGB 658 was badly hit by an Italian destroyer, shells ripping up the after deck, killing everyone on the bridge, wounding five others and killing the Able Seaman sharing Reynold’s gunnery control position. ‘He took a shell which killed him, and saved my life – but his blood and splinters from the wooden door knocked me over and I was sure I had been wounded’.  MGB 658 made it slowly back to Bastia for medical help.

                        Now captaining MGB 658, Reynolds was deployed to the Adriatic under the control of Commander (later Rear-Admiral Sir) Morgan Morgan-Giles (obituary May 14) and based at Vis, the only Dalmatian island not held by the Germans, where destroyers and MGBs aided Tito’s Yugoslav partisans by harassing coastal supply convoys.  Mines were a great danger and Reynolds lost several friends. During his time, the four officers and 30 ratings in MGB 658 were awarded five DSCs, eight Mentions in Despatches and five DSMs – having sunk or severely damaged 26 enemy craft.

            After leaving the RNVR, he became engrossed in researching Coastal Forces history     and wrote the now definitive books: Dog Boats at War, Home Waters MTBs and   MGBs at War, and MTBs at War (with H.F. Cooper and a forward by Morgan-Giles), and his own memoirs, published in 1955. (The title ’Dog Boats’ springs from the  wartime alphabet describing the Fairmile ‘D’ gunboat).

                        Reynolds took up teaching at his old school, also attending Birkbeck College, London as a part-time student, where, in 1956, he was awarded a 1^st Class Honours degree in Geography. He moved on to become Head of Department at Chatham House, Ramsgate, before taking up Headships at Kendal Grammar School in 1960 and Maidenhead Grammar School in 1965, retiring in 1981.  He was chairman of the Berkshire Association of Secondary Heads for many years.

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            Having joined the Scouts aged 8, he became a member of the Chief Scout’s Advance Party in the 1960s, modernising the movement. Locally, he was a scout master or supporter of 11^th Wallington, 4^th Broadstairs, 1^st Kendal and 18^th Maidenhead troops.  In 1980 he was awarded the Silver Wolf, in 1981 the OBE for services to Scouting, and in 2012 the Chief Scout’s 70 Years Service award while still County Vice President.

            As a magistrate he was a member of the Thames Valley Police Authority, particularly working to gain national funding for the Greenham Common operation. He was appointed a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire in 1978 after his service as a JP and as Chairman of the Maidenhead Bench, working closely with the Courts Committee in Reading.

What must have been continuously entertaining was his service as the ‘headmaster’, one of the statutory worthies forming the Admiralty Interview Board, the body that selects young people for officer training in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.  He made a notably wise and experienced contribution to this process for over thirty years.  At one point his son Peter, a Royal Marines officer, was also on the Board, a unique combination.

            Other public activities included trusteeships of the Prince Philip fund for Windsor and Maidenhead and the Maidenhead Arts Council, churchwarden of St Luke’s, Maidenhead and vice-president of the Maidenhead Rugby Club

Noted for his genial ability to encourage and bring out the best in others, Len Reynolds is survived by his wife for 67 years, Winifred Darbyshire, and their son and daughter.

Lieutenant Leonard Reynolds OBE DSC RNVR, Coastal Forces captain and schoolmaster, was born on June 26, 1923.  He died on April 18 aged 89.