Working with communities in Bahr el-Ghazal, Southern Sudan

Obituary

The Daily Telegraph Wednesday 22nd December, 1999
Ranald Boyle Officer who repeatedly landed agents by night from fast motor boats despite coming under German E-boat fire.
Ranald Boyle, who has died aged 78, won the DSC as a sub lieutenant RNVR serving in a clandestine wartime organisation known as the African Coastal Flotilla. When Boyle joined, late in 1943, the flotilla was operating from Bastia in Corsica, using fast Italian motor boats (available since the armistice in September) and American torpedo boats to carry out secret night missions for MI6, SOE, the American OSS and the French Deuxieme Bureau along the west coast of Italy and the south coast coast of France. As well as landing and picking up agents, saboteurs, fugitives from the Gestapo, escaped PoWs, crashed Allied aircrew and Resistance workers (all known collectively as "Joeys"), the flotilla ferried stores, arms, ammunition, explosives, food and money for the Resistance. From early January 1944, Boyle carried out many such operations. Twice on the Italian coast he was surprised and fired on by Germany E-boats while embarking the Joeys from the dinghy. In June 1944, also off the Italian coast, three German E-boats opened a rapid tracer fire from a range of only 150 yards. There was no chance of recalling the dinghy party, and although Boyle tried later that night and on the following night to recover them, this was one of the rare occasions when a dinghy party was lost.

Ranald Hugh Montgomerie Boyle was born on August 19th, 1921. From Wellington he went up to Exeter College, Oxford. He joined the Navy in 1941 and served as an ordinary seaman in the destroyer Fernie. He was commissioned in March 1942 and, because of colour blindness, went to the Admiralty as a Special Branch sub lieutenant RNVR. He then joined the Combined Operations and was in the headquarters ship Calpe on the staff of Captain John Hughes-Hallett, the Naval Force Commander for Operation Jubilee, the disastrous raid on Dieppe, which actually took place on Boyle's 21st birthday. As Calpe was leaving the beaches she was strafed and bombed. Boyle was severely wounded, being hit in the head and ankle. After recovering, he had a period at home before joining the African Coastal Flotilla. From the Mediterranean, Boyle went to the Far East in 1945, serving in HMS Lanka, Colombo, and HMS Golden Hind, Sydney. He served in the light fleet carrier Vengeance for the reoccupation of Hong Kong after VJ day.

After demobilisation in 1946, Boyle joined the Sudan Political Service and attended the Middle East School of Arabic Studies in Jerusalem before going to southern Sudan to serve as District Commissioner, from 1949 to 1953. He made the effort to learn the customs and language of the Dinka and could even write letters to their chiefs in their own language. He was, and still is, remembered there as "Tim Atiep". Boyle resigned in 1954 on a point of principle concerning the failures of British policy in Sudan. After a period as a freelance journalist and as a political liaison officer for the Iraq Petroleum Company in the Trucial States, he joined the Overseas Civil Service in 1956 and was posted to Kenya where he served as a District Commissioner until independence. In 1964, he joined HM Diplomatic Service and served in Qatar as Political Agent until 1969, when he was posted to Khartoum, as Head of Chancery. He resigned in 1970, again on a point of principle. Back in England, with his fluent Arabic and intimate knowledge of Middle East affairs, he joined Hambro's Bank and set up a Middle East desk. He became a director of Hambro's Holdings in 1975. In 1981 he was the Senior Representative (London) for the Arab Banking Corporation and in 1982, in order to avoid retirement, he became a consultant and was an adviser to the Emir of Qatar, finally retiring in 1996. Ranald Boyle was a member of the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland. He was an excellent tennis player (1967 Qatar Open Men's Singles Champion) and a squash player who could still beat his sons even in his seventies.

He was for years, an almost single-handed campaigner for the people of the Sudan. In September last year, to mark the centenary of the Battle of Omdurman, he published a newspaper article calling for Britain to take a lead in finding a solution to the sufferings of the people of Sudan, North and South. He conducted his own mission to Khartoum, supported Lady Cox and the Anti-Slavery Society, and spent a month on a consultancy for Save the Children's South Sudan programme. He married, in 1957, Norma Gray, whom he met in Kenya. They have seven children

The Guardian | The Daily Telegraph | The Herald | Sudan Democratic Gazette

Click on the button to return to the top