Farewell to Stanley – the north-east’s last Chindit

Stanley Rothney was one of the last of a select band of World War II veterans.

As a Chindit, he was one of 900 soldiers handpicked to wage a guerilla war against the Japanese in the jungles of Burma – only 90 of whom survived.

A police officer for 30 years, he continued to serve the community right up to his death – on his 90th birthday – as a church elder, a champion of Doric heritage, and a member of the Burma Star Association who rarely missed an opportunity to represent his old comrades at reunions and parades.

Born at Pitfour, one of six children, he left Strichen School at 15 and got a job delivering fuel to farms and villages across Buchan.

War was declared on his 16th birthday and, following a short spell with the Forestry Commission, he enlisted first in the Royal Scots, later switching to the Kings Own Scottish Borderers then the Cameronians.

He was plucked from the ranks to join the Chindits – a crack unit being assembled by General Orde Wingate to drop behind enemy lines in Burma and wreak havoc among the Japanese occupiers. It was an extraordinarily gruelling campaign, and those who were not slaughtered by the enemy faced death by starvation and disease.

Mr Rothney’s father, Alex, a station porter, died while he was in the Far East, but his mother, Elsie, the station clerk at Maud, was there to collect his ticket when he returned.

In 1947 he joined the police, going on to serve at Cults, Echt, Methlick, Banff, Peterhead and Elgin, before being stationed at Peterculter, where he tracked down a gang who robbed the town’s savings bank.

He became Banffshire’s first traffic officer in the 1950s when he took delivery of a Humber Super Snipe patrol car to help in the search for the notorious safecracker Johnny Ramensky on one of his five escapes from Peterhead Prison.

In 1953 he worked through the Muckle Blaw, which left 19 people dead and hundreds more homeless as 125mph gales swept the country, and in 1955 he enlisted boyhood pal Jack Webster, then a cub reporter, in a mission to retrieve bodies from the sea following the wreck of Beatrix Fernande, which ran aground near Gamrie in a vicious storm.

He met his wife-to-be, Isobel, while he was stationed at Banff and the couple went on to have two children – twins Lesley and Graeme, who sadly died in his father’s arms aged 20, after suffering an asthma attack.

Mr Rothney retired from the police after 30 years and worked as a security guard for Shell before finally giving up work at 65.

He was an elder at Peterculter Parish Church, and took great pride in reading the Kohima epitaph – “When you go home tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today” – on Remembrance Sundays.

A loyal member of the Burma Star Association, he regularly led the Armed Forces Day parade in Aberdeen with fellow Chindit George Fulton, who travelled from his home in Canada to join his old pal every year. Mr Rothney’s death came just weeks after Mr Fulton’s.

He is survived by his daughter, Lesley, granddaughters Kelsey and Kayley and brother Douglas.

Stanley Rothney