Alec Bishop, Eric Nares, Eric Hayes, Charles Norman, Stanley Kirby, Edmund Beard, Christopher Woolner, Wilfrid Lloyd, Reginald Savory, Robert Bridgeman and Alfred Curtis. While there he was promoted to major on 26 June 1927. Soon after he graduated from Camberley Penney was posted to the War Office as a GSO3, from 14 April 1929 until 15 January 1931, when he was posted to Shanghai, China as a brigade major, remaining there until March 1933. On 2 January 1933 he was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and, on 1 July 1934, he was promoted to the brevet rank of lieutenant-colonel, and lieutenant-colonel on 1 April 1935. Upon being sent to India in 1935, where he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) on 21 December 1937 and was mentioned in despatches on 18 February 1938 for his part in the Waziristan campaign, he returned to England and attended the Imperial Defence College in 1939, graduating from there later in the year. Penney was the first officer from the Royal Corps of Signals to do so. Second World War Britain and the home front Upon the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 Penney was still a student at the Imperial Defence College but, graduating soon afterwards, on 18 November he was promoted to colonel (with seniority backdated to 1 July 1937) and the acting rank of brigadier, and became the Deputy Director of Military Intelligence (DDMI) at the War Office on the sane date. With his rank of brigadier being made temporary on 18 May 1940, Penney remained in this post, therefore missing the Battle of France and subsequent Dunkirk evacuation, until November 1940 and, a month later, took over command of the 3rd Infantry Brigade in place of Brigadier Thomas Wilson. The brigade was one of three (the others being the 1st Guards and 2nd Infantry Brigades) which formed part of the 1st Infantry Division, whose General Officer Commanding (GOC) was then-Major-General Kenneth Anderson, and the command was Penney's first time leading a large infantry formation. The brigade was a Regular Army unit which had fought in France earlier in the year as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and was stationed on the Yorkshire coast on anti-invasion duties in the event of a German invasion. The Middle East and North Africa Remaining in that post for just over 9 months, on