Major Roy Aylmer Wadeson was killed in Germany at the end of May, 1944, at the age of 45. During the Great War he served with distinction in the Tank Corps in France, being awarded the Military Cross and attaining the rank of Captain.
On demobilization he entered the Camborne School of Mines and obtained the Diploma of the School in 1923. In the same year he was appointed assistant surveyor to the Hemsworth and South Kirby Colliery Co., Ltd., Yorkshire, and after six months went to British East Africa as assistant mechanical engineer, Bahati Estates, Ltd. From September, 1924, to June, 1926, he was mining engineer to the Nakuru Prospecting and Gold Mining Syndicate, Ltd., in Kenya and Tanganyika Territory, and for the following seven months was engineer and acting assistant manager at the Sekenke gold mine.
He was then employed by the London Tin Syndicate Ltd., in August, 1927, as assistant to the late Mr. R.J. Morgan for some months, prospecting and examining mining properties in Uganda and Southern Rhodesia. A year later found him working in Yugoslavia for the Selection Trust, Ltd., and from 1929 to 1931 he was engaged by the Société Minière de la Kagara Ruanda, in Tanganyika and the Congo. For a short time Major Wadeson was in Burma, working on the Mwedaw Concession of the Kafue Copper Development Co., Ltd., and he later spent a year with Nigerian Gold Mines, Ltd., in Northern Nigeria.
In 1935 he returned to become manager for two years of the Roman Deep gold mine in Wales, but at the end of 1937 he went to Austria to the Gewerkschaft Rathausberg, Salzburg, leaving in 1939 to join the staff of Central European Mines, Ltd., in Yugoslavia. When that country was occupied by the Germans, he escaped through Greece to Egypt, where he was commissioned to the Royal Engineers and was mentioned in dispatches in the Middle East, November 30th, 1941. He was captured during the North African campaign and imprisoned in Italy, where he escaped several times only to be recaptured in a few days. He was taken to Germany after the Italian armistice, escaped on April 20, 1944, and is reported to have been shot at the end of May while trying to escape again after recapture.
Major Wadeson was elected a Student of the Institution in 1922, and was transferred to Associateship in 1928.
Vol. 54, Trans IMM 1944-45, p.277
