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Commander Ronald Borner - Obituaries

Commander Ronald Borner - Obituaries

 

 

Officer who took part in Winston

Churchill's daring plan to launch 2300 floating mines into

French rivers

Daily Telegraph, The (London, England) - Tuesday, June 3, 2014

 

COMMANDER RONALD BORNER, who has died aged 101, took part in a most unusual naval operation in France in 1940 which was the personal brainwave of Winston Churchill.

In January 1940 Borner joined a naval expeditionary force codenamed Operation Royal Marine; yet though the officers and men adopted khaki uniforms there were no Royal Marines involved. After trials with dummy mines in the Thames, the force was sent to Western France with several trucks of explosives. Their task – under the overall command of Rear–Admiral John Fitzgerald – was to disrupt river traffic and to destroy bridges by launching floating and bouncing mines into rivers.

For several months during the Phoney War, French forces refused to allow the men of Royal Marine to proceed in earnest. After May 10, however, as France faced the German Blitzkrieg, Borner and his comrades launched more than 2,300 mines into the Rhine, Moselle and Meuse rivers.

Operation Royal Marine, it turned out, was one of the madcap schemes to take the war to the enemy that had been dreamed up by Winston Churchill during his term as First Lord of the Admiralty; as Prime Minister he regaled meetings of the War Cabinet with its success, comparing it with the setbacks experienced in almost every other aspect of the conflict.

Churchill took particular pleasure in presenting his cabinet with photographs showing that the barrage on the Rhine had been broken by fluvial mines, and that river traffic had been completely stopped between Karlsruhe and Mainz. When, in early June, the French suggested that Admiral Fitzgerald's party should be withdrawn, the British Prime Minister personally drafted a telegram which he read to the War Cabinet, pointing out "the success which had attended this manoeuvre and strongly urging that yet further operations of this nature should be undertaken".

Meanwhile in France, often with no one between them and the advancing Germans, Borner and his sailors engaged low–flying aircraft with spirited rifle fire, hunted German paratroops, and turned surplus mines into improvised anti–tank traps. Borner retreated to Paris with orders to launch his remaining mines into the Seine to destroy temporary bridges which the Germans were building lower down the river, and when Paris was declared an open city he withdrew to Le Mans. There he was given a truck and a party of sailors and told to make his own way to the coast. At St Malo they commandeered the Duke of Westminster's private yacht and steamed to Southampton.

Ronald Stewart Borner , son of a commander in the Royal Indian Marine, was born on February 18 1913 and christened in Bombay Cathedral. He was educated at Abbey School, Beckenham, and at Haileybury, where he excelled at cricket. He was mentioned in Wisden for his performance in a 1930 match against Cheltenham and was selected for the Kent young amateurs' XI, but in pre–war London he could not find a firm which would let him have Saturdays off to play. Eventually the accountants Assheton Lowe agreed to do so provided his father paid a premium while he was under articles.

Borner joined London Division RNVR as a paymaster sub–lieutenant in 1934 and was mobilised in August 1939. Despatched via Alexandria to Greece and travelling in plain clothes under cover as a viceconsul, he surveyed the harbours, but was mortified to discover that his painstakingly ciphered reports could not be understood by the Admiralty. Eventually he sent a hard copy en clair via the embassy's diplomatic bag, before returning by train from Brindisi to London. There it was discovered that the codes he had been given were six months out of date.

In July 1940 John Fitzgerald, who had been naval attaché in Paris, was given the title Rear Admiral (French Ships) and in the early hours of July 3 Borner helped him to take over those French warships which, after the fall of France, had taken refuge in Portsmouth. Subsequently Borner was appointed to the shore establishment HMS Glendower where he helped train gunners for the Merchant Navy, and then to the staff of the Director General Shipbuilding and Repairs (India) in Bombay where he met his future wife, who was serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

In 1936 he had joined the accountants Peat Marwick Mitchell, but when he returned to the firm after six years of war he found many juniors who stayed at their desks had been promoted over him. He briefly became bursar of Taunton School before being appointed successively chief executive of the Chartered Land Agents' Society and the Chartered Auctioneers' and Estate Agents' Institute.

In 1957 he was appointed OBE for his services to agriculture.

Later he became director of administration for Savills, and after his retirement continued as a consultant until 1982. He had a well–deserved reputation for efficiency, and among his numerous other appointments were governor of the College of Estate Management (1953–72) and governor (1972–85) and Vice–President (1985–95) of the Royal Star & Garter Home.

He was also a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Farmers and, in 1972–73, its Master. In 1987 he helped it to become the first company for nearly two centuries to acquire a livery hall.

RonaldBorner married Dr Margaret Child in 1947. She predeceased him in 2000. His son John, who was also Master of the Worshipful Company of Farmers, died in 2002.

Cdr RonaldBorner , born February 18 1913, died March 2 2014

 

 

 

Originally Written: 03-Dec-2014 14:54, Last Updated: 16-Dec-2014 14:33