LEAKEY'S LUCK - A Tank Commander with Nine Lives by Leakey, Maj.Gen Rea, DSO, MC & 2 bars, with George Forty

Sutton, 1999, UK 1st edition, Fine/Fine condition, 6x9, hard bound w/dj, 158 pp, illus, maps, index. --------------------------------Major-General Rea Leakey is one of the Royal Tank Regiment's greatest heroes of the Second World War. He led a charmed life throughout the North African desert campaign and later in the battles of North West Europe. This is his autobiography which covers the period of his Army service, from joining his first regiment to the end of the Second World War.Many of his exploits are hair-raising, some are even too fantastic to be true - but true they are: he won his second Military Cross as a British Army captain fighting as an Australian lance-corporal during the siege of Tobruk; before taking up a staff appointment he spent his ten days' leave with his old regiment, fighting as a tank gunner in the 8th Army's disastrous Gazala battles, escaping with his life.Leakey's Luck is important because it provides us with a graphic eyewitness account by one who was there at the `sharp end' - as a young tank squadron commander fighting Rommel's Afrika Korps in the desert; and later in North West Europe. There, Major-General Leakey served as the Regimental Second in Command of 44 RTR, before commanding two other famous tank regiments in succession - 7 RTR in Normandy, where he supported the Czechs and was awarded a third MC, and then 5 RTR in the fight through to the Rhine and on into Germany and victory, for which he received a DSO.George Forty, well known in his own right as an author, and formerly director of the Tank Museum at Bovington, has edited Leakey's autobiography, setting the scene to each chapter and placing the events of the war within their strategic contexts. The result is an extraordinary story of one man's war and a unique testimony to a soldier who contributed in no uncertain way to victory over the Axis powers in the Second World War.