Allied Command South East Asia, under Lord Mountbatten, remaining in this post until the end of the war. In this position, he was responsible for the details of the surrender of Japan in September 1945 and provided emergency supplies for the hundreds of thousands of liberated Allied POWs. Postwar After the war ended in 1945, he became Assistant Controller Supplies (Munitions) at the Ministry of Supply until his retirement in 1949. From 22 December 1947 until 22 December 1957 he was Colonel Commandant of the Royal Corps of Signals. In retirement he worked at the Foreign Office. From 1953 he was the first Director of the London Communications Security Agency (an agency established to study and advise on British cypher security and which later evolved to become CESG). He stood down as Director of the London Communications Security Agency in 1957. Knighted the following year, in 1963 he remarried, after the death of his first wife in 1960, to Muriel Stella Daubeny and spent his final years in Berwick-on-Tweed, Northumberland, where he died on 3 December 1964, at the age of 68. Although Mark Clark, the American Fifth Army commander, who was notable for his Anglophobia, seems to have thought little of Penney, describing him as "not too formidable a general but a good telephone operator", he was highly regarded by Lucian Truscott and Alexander and most of his subordinates. Richard Mead wrote that although he was a "rather methodical commander who tended to do things by the book", he also claims "Penney stands out as a rare signaller who managed to make the transition to a field commander, in so doing showing a great deal of understanding for the role of the infantry". Opinion on Anzio Although Penney was perhaps Lucas's strongest critic, in hindsight he agreed that Lucas made the right decision not to immediately advance on Rome or the Alban Hills after the initial Anzio landings. He wrote later, in a letter to Lieutenant-General Sir Terence Sirey on 6 February 1956, that the Allies "could have had one night in Rome and 18 months in P.W. camps". Carlo D'Este wrote that Anzio "haunted Penney for the rest of his life. He believed his men had fought well but had never been given the credit they deserved for their sacrifice at Anzio. He was proud to have been their commander but remained bitter over what he considered to