Long Range Desert Group

by W B Kennedy Shaw

  The ’Alamein line, from the cliffs of the Qattara Depression to the sea, was soon closed. “A” squadron at Kufra could still get up to the Gebel Akhdar from there, but the patrols coming from the east would have to go through the Depression or, when that route was denied to us, past Bahariya to ’Ain Dalla and across the Sand Sea. But the enemy were strangely slow to block the passes on the west side of the Qattara Depression. The Italians were in Siwa a few days after we left but there they remained, apparently not daring to move out to the east. And from the beginning of July till the middle of August the patrols were passing through the Depression on their way from the Faiyum to the Gebel or to targets between ’Alamein and Sidi Barrani.

  The battle line at ’Alamein had hardly been stabilised when on July 1st Hunter and Timpson were off to No Man’s Land. Hunter somehow got through the southern end of the ’Alamein positions but Timpson had no luck. Wire, minefields, and being soundly shelled by our own troops forced him to take the long route round through the Depression.

  It is strange that the true character of this great hole in Egypt, which so conveniently guarded our southern flank at ’Alamein, was unknown till the last war. When the Light Car Patrols were operating in the Western Desert Dr. Ball, then Director of Desert Surveys in Cairo, used to lend the officers aneroid barometers and get them to, record the height readings along their route. One day a man brought in to the Survey Office the sketch map of his last patrol with the aneroid readings he had taken. When Ball worked them out they showed figures a hundred feet or more below sea level and Ball thought that the man had mis-read the instrument or that it had been out of order. But he remembered the incident and after the war sent one of his surveyors (G. F. Walpole) to make a more accurate survey. When his work was finished there was added to the map of Egypt this huge basin, 150 miles long and half as broad and at its deepest point 450 feet below the Mediterranean.

  There is, on paper, a fascinating project of Ball’s for opening a canal from the sea to the Depression and dropping the Mediterranean over the iooo-foot cliffs to produce an immense supply of hydro-electric power. Evaporation in the Depression would be so great that the sea could be poured in for hundreds of years before it filled up. At the moment an unindustrial Egypt has no need for so much electric power but the plan may be put into force some day.

  There can be few more horrible places in the world than this at midday in July. To the north the unscaleable cliffs shimmer in the heat haze; to the south are the tongues of sand dunes, the outliers of the Sand Sea. In the basin the heat is stifling, no hill gives shade, no tree breaks the monotony of the salt marshes. Drive your truck two yards from the beaten track and it will be sunk to its axles in the quicksands. And, in July, 1942, there might well be a couple of Stukas in the distance, slowly circling the tracks of the last patrol which had gone through. Then it was best to cross at night if you could see the way, or at midday when the heat haze would reduce the visibility to nothing.

  The old caravan masters had found a way across, a narrow strip of harder ground with a rivulet of salt cutting across it; El Qaneitra they called it—the Little Bridge. But there was a limit to the amount of traffic it would stand and that limit had been passed. At the end of June, when we evacuated Siwa, Holliman had stayed behind to bring away the garrison of Jaghbub, a mixed party of Free French, Indians and British. By the time he got to Qara the enemy were pushing fast along the coast and he had to take the Qaneitra route or stay behind. There were 250 vehicles in that party and how they got across the Depression is a mystery. A good many did not and their carcasses still line the route. But Holliman got the garrison to Cairo in the end. He had signalled “Qaneitra completely wrecked for further traffic” which did not look hopeful for our new operations.

  However, we used alternative routes, along the telegraph line to Qattara Spring and then following the cliffs to the pass at Qara or a bypass round the Qaneitra to the south. And after some weeks at Qaneitra dried up enough for light cars to get across it.

  When the Eighth Army went back to ’Alamein it was expected and hoped that in a very short time we should again be advancing westwards. It looked as if the enemy had over-reached himself on his rapid push into Egypt and that we might catch him on the rebound.

  The share of the parashots and L.R.D.G. in this anticipated advance was to do everything possible to upset the enemy’s communications behind the ’Alamein line and to destroy aircraft on his forward landing grounds. So from the beginning of July till mid-August patrols were going out across the Qattara Depression to Stirling’s base at Bir el Quseir and from there northwards to “pinprick” the enemy anywhere between Sidi Barrani and ’Alamein. The parashots had changed their organisation a lot since we had last done a job with them; they had got their own transport and were working out very effective new tactics for the use of heavily armed Jeeps. But they still relied on L.R.D.G. to some extent for signals and navigation and also occasionally for supplies.

  While Timpson was blowing up the water pipeline west of Matruh, Hunter had gone to the landing grounds round Fuka with a party of French parashots, for Stirling had a Free French section in his force. They had two targets, L.G.’s 16 and 68. Hunter dropped the French on the edge of No. 16, waiting in support while they did their attack. In an hour they returned successful. Meanwhile the Italian guards on the other landing ground, either because they thought they were being attacked or to keep up their courage, were letting off all their guns and the night was lit up with Breda and M.G. fire.

  Not proposing to run slap into this shooting, Hunter skirted round the landmg ground and in the dispersal area found three or four aircraft which he destroyed. A few yards farther on he had trouble. In the darkness the cars were following each other closely to keep in touch, when suddenly the first fell headlong into a deep and unseen hole and the second, close behind, crashed into it and wrecked the engine. The next ten minutes were hectic; in the hole, cursing and sweating, Y patrol were trying to get the front, undamaged truck out; all around the Italians were firing furiously and ineffectively. In the end it was done and Hunter got away with the loss of one truck only, but two days later he was caught near Qattara Spring by three Messerschmidts and another car was set on fire and burnt out. Tyres of some of the other cars had been punctured in the attack and Miller Kerr and two other men, with the ammunition going off inside the blazing truck, jacked up the wheels and took three spares from it.

  A week later Wilder and Gurdon reached Bir el Quseir with their patrols. On the 8th July Gurdon was on the coast road near Fuka destroying parked transport, fuel tankers and tents. Three days later, going up for a second attack, he was caught late in the evening by three Macchis and severely shot up. Gurdon, mortally wounded but conscious and giving orders till the end, died before he could be taken back to the parashots’ doctor fifty miles away; Murray his driver, badly hit in arm and legs, reached Cairo after a five-day journey through the Qattara Depression and recovered from his wounds.

  Stirling, with his new Jeeps, had evolved a fresh technique for destroying aircraft. Having got on to the landing ground to be attacked, the Jeeps formed up in a hollow three-sided square. In each car was a crew of three, one driver and two gunners firing twin-mounted Vickers guns outwards from the square. In this phalanx Stirling, leading, would drive slowly round the airfield pouring out a volume of tracer, explosive and incendiary which would destroy or damage any aircraft within range and send the guards hurrying into their slit trenches.

  After a night or two of practising this formation Wilder and the parashots went up to raid the landing grounds near Ma’aten Bagush. By dawn they had destroyed fifteen aircraft and Wilder had captured four surprised and sleepy Germans whom he had almost run over by the side of the track.

  The next morning the Germans reacted, sending out aircraft which soon found the patrol and were followed by a strong ground force. In the confused fighting which followed, Sanders, the T patrol gunner, knocked out four enemy trucks. The enemy’s att
ack appeared to be directed by a Fiesler Storch which kept circling slowly round the battlefield and occasionally landing to confer with its ground troops. In the end it did this once too often when two New Zealanders appeared over a ridge with Tommy guns, held up the crew, and burnt the plan:.

  All these operations needed supplies and in the middle of July Stirling signalled us for 1500 gallons of petrol, 5000 rounds of ammunition and 300 Mills bombs, oil, rations, etc. To get this load from the Faiyum and across the Depression would have been a big enough job in peace time; this was war and the enemy were waking up. By this time they must have realised where these attacks were coming from, and though oddly enough they had not closed the Qattara passes their aircraft were over the Depression every day and patrolling the road which runs north-east from Qara.

  But the Heavy Section rose to the occasion and Arnold, with S1 patrol as escort, set off with four three-tonners carrying Stirling’s needs. Lazarus worked out a new route across the Depression south of the Qaneitra Crossing, delivered the load to Stirling and was back in the Faiyum a week after he had left.

  By the end of July it was clear that the closing of the passes was imminent. Enemy armoured car patrols were moving down south from the coast and Lloyd Owen, returning from the Tobruk area, learned from the Arabs in Qara that enemy aircraft had bombed the village shortly before his arrival.

  Meanwhile, far off in the Gebel Akhdar, some of the behind-the-line Intelligence men were running short of supplies so on August 8th Hunter set off for their old hiding place on the escarpment above Benghazi. From the Faiyum to Benghazi is 700 miles, and from Benghazi Hunter might have to go back to Kufra. This was too far even for an L.R.D.G. patrol, so Sweeting, who had taken over G2 after Gurdon had been killed, went with Hunter carrying extra petrol. I took three cars as far as Qara with a load of supplies for the natives there. They were cut off from both Siwa and the coast and were beginning to run short of food. Also I wanted to make a plan with Sheikh Hamza, an old friend of L.R.D.G., to let us know if the passes had been closed by the enemy. We arranged to send over an aircraft periodically and as long as they were open Sheikh Hamza would spread out on the flat roof of his house a large white sheet with a black triangle on it. When the passes were held he would show nothing.

  We left the Faiyum early one morning and as we halted for a moment before turning off the Cairo road on to the desert Lloyd Owen with Y1 came over the hill. We waited to get his news and while we stood there talking Arnold with the Heavy Section caught us up, and it struck me how this chance meeting by the roadside was typical of the long rangeness of L.R.D.G. Lloyd Owen had left Kufra ten days before, gone up to the coast road between Tohruk and Solium in an unsuccessful attempt to find in that bare waste enough cover to hide him while he did a road watch, and then come on to the Faiyum. Since Kufra he had travelled 1100 miles. Hunter was off to Benghazi and Arnold was setting out with supplies for “A” squadron at Kufra, a week’s journey which would take him down the Nile Valley to Asyut, across the plateau to Kharga, and from there a run of 600 miles through the Gilf Kebir. Before we parted the Waco roared over our heads taking Prendergast back from Cairo to the Faiyum.

  As far as Mushroom Rock we were on the old track to ’Ain Dalla and the Sand Sea but beyond was new country to me. And except for a few patches of acacias it was as bare as the back of your hand. So to dodge aircraft we travelled before dawn or else at midday when the shimmering heat-haze made the visibility almost nil. In the early half-light a Y patrol truck crashed into the one in front of it and wrecked the radiator and the front of the engine. While we waited to change their guns and gear on to one of my three trucks, I walked up the low hill beside us. On the top was a heap of potsherds, fragments from the water jars of some Roman caravan from Siwa to Bahariya. We towed the damaged car into cover to pick up on our way back. Near the hiding place were the remains of a Beaufighter, blown into a thousand pieces, which had crashed after some sortie months before. I wondered who in two thousand years would next find the remains of two empires.

  It was scorchingly hot as we crawled across the Depression, bumping over the slabs of rock salt and the endless giant sand ripples. In the late afternoon I did my business with Sheikh Hamza and left Hunter to go on from Qara. I wanted to get to the east of the Depression before the next dawn which meant going by the Qaneitra Crossing for the route we had come by would be impossible in the dark. For the first forty miles from Qara the tracks are plain enough but it was dark before we got to the Qaneitra and on the slab rock which skirts the salt marsh the tracks were invisible. For an hour we searched with torches for the narrow gap leading between the quicksands, found it in the end and by first light were well away towards the east.

  Sheikh Hamza put out no signals for the aircraft which flew over Qara a few days later and so we used that route no more. Stirling also withdrew his force which was needed for the coming operations in Cyrenaica; the last of his men were brought out by two Bombays of 216 Squadron which landed after dark down a flare path on a dry mud-pan near Bir el Quseir.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘TULIP,’ ‘DAFFODIL,’ ‘SNOWDROP,’ ‘HYACINTH’

  WHEN the Army is planning an operation it does not announce its objective to all the world, or even to its own men. So if you found your way into the G (Plans) room at Middle East and rolled up the blank-paper curtains which hid the maps pinned to the wall you would not find on them the legend “Plan for proposed operation at ’Alamein. October 23rd, 1942,” but merely Operation—“Rosemary” or whatever name had caught the fancy of the Plans staff when the scheme was born.

  Hence “Tulip,” “Daffodil,” “Snowdrop,” “Hyacinth,” in all of which L.R.D.G. had a share.

  The purpose of all four was the same, to disrupt the enemy’s lines of supply. Rommel, with the front line steady at ’Alamein, was bringing all his supplies through Tobruk or Benghazi. It was known that he was about to attack; if he could be held and then caught on the rebound short of supplies it might be the finish of him. The Navy and the R.A.F. were hitting hard at his Mediterranean convoys and serious damage done to the two ports might tip the scales. So in late August, when the plans were made, hopes were high.

  “Daffodil” stood for Tobruk—a simultaneous attack from land and sea, designed to capture the coast defence guns and destroy as much as possible of the harbour installations, particularly the large, unbombable petrol storage tanks. For if the enemy were unable to land petrol in bulk from tankers the difficulties of their fuel supplies would be enormously increased.

  “Snowdrop” was for Benghazi, a simpler plan in which Stirling, who commanded the force, would try to sink shipping in the harbour and then wreck all else he could. Lazarus with S2 was to guide the advance party up from Kufra and then, joined by Olivey with S1 from the Faiyum, attack the aerodrome at Benina.

  “Tulip” plan was also simple, the taking of Jalo by the Sudan Defence Force from Kufra to provide a base to which Stirling could return and from which he could make further raids against Rommel’s lines of communications in the Gebel. Hunter’s patrol and Talbot’s were to go with the S.D.F.

  “Hyacinth” was a purely L.R.D.G. show. T1 and G1 under Easonsmith would go from the Faiyum by our old “underground” route to ’Ain Dalla, across the Sand Sea to Big Cairn, out of the sands at Garet Khod and then north-west across the open desert to Barce to raid the airfield there.

  Such were the general plans. And there seemed a good chance of success. The enemy garrisons were believed to be small and composed of low category troops. Surprise was essential and the danger here was the passage through the bottleneck at Jalo, the twenty-mile gap between the oasis and the edge of the Sand Sea. If the force were seen here the cat would be out of the bag and beyond recapture.

  I was in Palestine on a week’s leave when the patrols left the Faiyum but came back a few days before D Day—September 13th. Prendergast went to Alexandria where the operation was to be run by a combined staff of the all-highest—C.-in-C. Med
iterranean, A.O.C. and D.M.O., Middle East—and I stayed at the Faiyum to deal with the signals coming in to Group H.Q. Tim Heywood had had a big share in the Signals planning and from H.Q. we could communicate with all the patrols and with Alexandria, Cairo and Kufra.

  Up to D Day all seemed to be going well. Lloyd Owen and Lazarus had got through the Jalo gap unseen; the Italians there must be as sleepy and feckless as we were entitled to expect. Jake had not been so lucky; one does not get across the Sand Sea for nothing. But two broken steering arms, three burnt-out clutches and a broken nose were the least of his troubles—at any rate he had spares for the first two. On the morning of the third day in the Sea a Jeep in which Timpson and Wann were driving swept up the blind side of a razor-back dune, crashed over the crest, threw the two men out and rolled over them. Timpson lost some of his front teeth and cracked his skull but Wann hurt his spine badly and was paralysed from the waist downwards.

  After some hectic wirelessing a Hudson took off from Kufra for Big Cairn to collect the injured. Now the bigness of Big Cairn is strictly relative. It is about five feet high and stands on a low gravel ridge. Coming westwards out of many miles of pure sand, it seems a fine landmark in a country where there are no stones as big as eggs, but to a pilot at the end of a 200-mile flight from Kufra it is as nothing and the Hudson failed to find it. More signalling and Tony Browne left Kufra in a Blenheim and found the cairn. But a Blenheim is not designed for stretcher cases and it seemed impossible to get Wann inside. Lawson was experimenting with a specimen patient strapped to a sand channel when the Hudson made a second attempt and this time succeeded. With just enough petrol for the flight it took Timpson and Wann back to Cairo direct, while the patrols pushed on.

  Faiyum to Barce and back to Kufra was beyond the range of the patrols so at Howard’s Cairn Arnold and the Heavy Section were waiting with fifteen hundred gallons of petrol. Jake hurried on and made up lost time, and at Group H.Q. we waited for D Day.