by Sadler, John
Many volunteered because they were sick of the boredom, ‘bull’ and general ‘mucking about’ that formed regular Calvaries in the life of the desert soldier. John Shute found himself stuck in Iraq in 1943 having disobeyed the old dictum of ‘never volunteer for anything’ – so when a call came for volunteers for the LRDG, I – with several hundred other bored young men – put my name down and wondered whether I could possibly measure up to the exacting tests to which I could expect to be subjected.48
‘Blondie’ Duncalfe was another young hopeful who, having listened to his father’s tales of comradeship in the previous war, saw that the LRDG could be the ultimate dream, of any soldier.49 Archie Gibson MM was a driver in the Guards. Several of his mates had already volunteered for service with LRDG. Archie had all his worldly goods and possessions including a beautiful set of German spanners50 in his truck, which the Afrika Korps disobligingly blew up, capturing him in the process. He was rescued by a patrol from 11th Hussars as his captors stopped for a brew. The Germans left hurriedly and Archie, once he’d convinced his deliverers he was not an enemy prisoner, which he managed by abusing them roundly and with such an excellent command of English no doubts remained, he was re-united with his unit. Then they said the magic words, ‘we’ve had an application for a driver/mechanic from the LRDG. Are you interested?’51
By summer 1942, Churchill had lost patience with Auchinleck, though a great deal of his and his staff’s hard-earned theory went into the planning of 2nd El Alamein. ‘Strafer’ Gott was to have replaced the Auk but died in a plane crash. Alexander now became C-in-C and Bernard Law Montgomery took over leadership of Eighth Army. Rommel knew the sands of time were running out. In late August he attacked again at Alam Halfa and was seen off with loss. The battle scarcely lasted a week. Montgomery did not immediately stage a counter-offensive. Despite the urgings of his critics, he was determined to prepare his forces for a knockout blow. He would not be hurried. The PM had found a general as obstinate and opinionated as himself!
That summer, Hitler had dreamed of a combined drive to the oilfields of the Caucasus as Rommel burst through towards Iran and Iraq. Mussolini had even prepared his white charger for a triumphal entry into Alexandria. Rabid nationalists in the Delta dusted off their German dictionaries. However, the horse stayed in the stables and the phrase books on the shelf. One of the most profound phenomena of the Desert War was the manner in which the Delta was transformed into one vast industrial estate. Its sole output was war supplies.
The British created this flourishing and versatile infrastructure which fed a very large part of the Allies’ needs, avoiding a necessity to bring everything in by ship. Rommel had no such comparable resource. For fuel and materiel he was dependent on his Italian allies. These tried and failed to supply him. Enigma decrypts provided Allied planes and warships with dates and coordinates. A vast tonnage of Axis shipping went to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
In the opening stages of the Desert War, the British suffered badly from material deficiencies. Their two-pounder ant-tank gun, whilst a clever and handy weapon, was largely ineffective. Most British tanks carried this same two-pounder which afforded very limited firepower at best. German armour was faster, better armed and considerably more reliable.
Lumbering Matildas, fickle Crusaders and even the nimble Honey (Stuart) sallied forth like medieval knights ‘balaklavering’ onto screens of lethal 88mm Axis flak guns, drawn into one-sided melees. By mid 1942, however, the balance had begun to shift. Allied forces now had the vastly improved six-pounder anti-tank gun. New tanks, US Grants and latterly Shermans, achieved parity with the Axis workhorse the Mark IV Panzer. Progressively, the Desert Air Force (RAF) eroded Axis supremacy and achieved near hegemony in Saharan skies.52
The Desert presented other opportunities. Britain’s imperial dominance had been built upon a powerful navy able to place land forces pretty much at any spot on the globe. This led to an essentially peripheral strategy, avoiding costly continental confrontations between mass armies and striking at the enemy’s soft underbelly. Britain had done very well indeed from the Seven Years War (1756–1763) when surgical military strokes delivered at key points, such as the taking of Quebec in 1759, bled France white whilst boosting Britain. The defeat of Napoleon in 1815 had ended any dreams of French hegemony in Europe. Wellington’s great victory ushered in a century of British imperial growth with increasing if ultimately unaffordable splendour.
On 1st July 1916, British army corps attacked along the eighteen mile front of what would become the battle of the Somme and, on that terrible day suffered nearly sixty thousand casualties. The Great War left little room for swashbuckling, amidst a grim, relentless, sapping battle of attrition that left all the combatant nations prostrate. Britain, for the first time committed mass armies, and victory in 1918 was entirely pyrrhic.
The war, for all the horrors of the Western and other fronts, was not completely devoid of derring-do, however. T.E. Lawrence had shown the potential offered by well led indigenous guerrilla forces striking at the conventional enemy’s supply and communications. For the first time since then in an interstate war, the Desert offered opportunities for that type of behind the lines buccaneering action in which the Long Range Desert Group (‘LRDG’) would come to excel.
Notes
1 Crichton-Stewart, M., G Patrol (London 1958) p. 19.
2 Ibid. p. 31.
3 Warner, P., Alamein, Recollections of the Heroes (London, 1979), p. 39.
4 Crawford, R.J., I Was an Eighth Army Soldier (London, 1944), p. 21.
5 The trigh had previously only been trodden by human and camel traffic.
6 Crawford, p. 21.
7 Possibly a Norse invention.
8 Crawford, p. 21.
9 Ralph Algar Bagnold (1896–1990) a noted desert explorer in the 1930s, he later founded LRDG.
10 Patrick Andrew Clayton (d. 1962) another inter-war desert surveyor, served with Bagnold in LRDG.
11 Count Lazlo Almasy (1895–1951), real life version of the fictional character immortalised in The English Patient whose life was, if anything, more colourful.
12 From de Manny, E., ‘Silver Fern Leaf up the Blue’ in Return to the Oasis (1980).
13 Lucas, J., War in the Desert (London, 1982), p.9.
14 Crawford, p. 86.
15 Sangar – from the Northwest Frontier denoting any small temporary fortification made up of stone and perhaps sandbagged walls.
16 Lucas, p. 74.
17 Ibid. p. 74.
18 AL63 – anti-louse powder.
19 Crawford, p. 20.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., pp. 19–21.
22 Ibid.
23 Strawson, J., The Battle for North Africa (London, 1969), p. 8.
24 Crawford, p. 27.
25 Literally ‘war without hate’.
26 Johann Theodor von Ravenstein, 1889–1962, post war he became director of traffic for Duisburg.
27 Strawson, p. 10.
28 Warner, p. 30.
29 Alan McRae Moorehead (1910–1983), Australian born war correspondent and latterly, historian, quoted in Warner, p. 30.
30 Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly (1913–2001), her wartime diaries were published as To War with Whittaker (London, 1994), p. 135.
31 Crusader, issue no 57, May 31st 1943.
32 Quoted in Simpson, R., Operation Mercury, the Battle for Crete (London, 1981), p. 22.
33 The Germans found it easier to blame failure on Italian incompetence than face the possibility that the British might have cracked Enigma.
34 The 10th Air Corps, specialising in coastal operations.
35 ANZAC doggerel.
36 ‘Aerial Envelopment’ was the strategic notion that an enemy held island in this case could be taken entirely by means of air assault. In the circumstances this proved deeply flawed and virtually ended Student’s career.
37 Playfair, Major-General I.S.O., Official History, UK Military Series, Campaigns: The Mediterrane
an and Middle East (London 1962–1966), vol. 3, p. 152.
38 Heinrich Alfred Brauchitsch (1881–1948), Field-Marshal and army commander (Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres) in the early stages of the war, relieved after the failure of Barbarossa.
39 Franz Halder (1884–1972) was Chief of the Army General Staff from 1938 to September 1942.
40 General Italo Gariboldi (1879–1970) replaced Marshal Graziani but was later removed due to his poor relationship with Rommel.
41 Parkinson, R., The War in the Desert (London, 1976), p. 40.
42 Crawford, p. 34.
43 The Defence Academy, Shrivenham, TRDC 13711.
44 Timpson, A. & A. Gibson-Watt, In Rommel’s Backyard (Pen & Sword, Barnsley 2000), p. 6.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., p. 7.
47 Morgan, M., Sting of the Scorpion (Sutton, Stroud 2000), p. 75.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., p. 74.
50 Ibid., p. 73.
51 Ibid.
52 The Defence Academy, Shrivenham, TRDC 02954, 05407, 05408, 05889.
CHAPTER 2
Piracy on the High Desert, 1940
Somehow one feels unfettered by any of the harsh, restricting influences of human existence as we live it these days. There are no buildings, no roads, no street lights, no artificial or even natural noise, no hustle and bustle, no need for anyone to shout or to have money or to pretend about anything: those human beings who are with you are probably fairly well known to you, and are there for the same reason you are – they know the dangers and delights of solitude just the same as you do, and they will react to the unblemished and staggering loveliness of a huge desert sky, deep blue by day and of a marvellous purple at night, sprinkled haphazardly with hundreds and thousands of stars silently lighting up that great canopy of night-time that drifts down with the close of day.
—David Lloyd Owen
In the central hall of the Imperial War Museum in London, stands a true veteran of the LRDG, a 30 cwt Chevrolet1, discovered intact in the Libyan Desert in 1980 and presented in its recovered state to the IWM three years later by the LRDG Association. The words ‘iconic’ and to a lesser extent ‘totemic’ have been much abused in recent years, to the extent their impact has largely drained away. It would however, be quite right to apply either to this remarkable survivor.
This really is the image of the LRDG; the chariot of myth, stripped and scoured by the harsh wind. It offers a palpable connection to that eclectic group of pioneers who together made up what would now be branded as Special Forces in the Western Desert. ‘Heroes’ is another much abused expression, applied with such grapeshot effect as to include anyone who does anything praiseworthy from winning the Victoria Cross to rescuing next door’s cat. Nonetheless, that or perhaps the term ‘Homeric’ sums up those who fought Rommel and, as he conceded, punched way above their weight.
Though these Special Forces actions were, in relative terms, mere pinpricks, they did reduce the numbers of Axis aircraft and forced Rommel to divert resources into defending his airfields. Their intelligence gathering was of prime significance. Besides, this was precisely the type of Henty-esque derring-do the Prime Minister adored. Not only Churchill was impressed; soldiers of Eighth Army were not immune to the charisma of these fabled desert warriors:
Of course, the super-saboteurs were our long range desert patrols. These were the super ‘Desert Rats’. Stories were legion about their exploits.… No men were braver or fitter than those in these groups. Occasionally we actually saw them move out into ‘the blue’, but mostly they were as legendary as Lawrence of Arabia. They stayed out behind enemy lines for months at a time.… They were led by men of unrivalled knowledge of the Desert, and did untold material damage to German supplies, but their main contribution was in boosting our morale and lowering the German morale correspondingly. Whenever news came round of their exploits, our tails went up like anything.2
Special Forces were by no means a novel concept, though the vast sweep of the desert provided a perfect, bespoke canvas. One commentator, speaking of a much later conflict, the First Gulf War, echoing General Hackett, referred to Iraq as a ‘Special Forces Theme Park’.3 This observation, outwardly flippant, might be said to have been true of Libya. The British have or are perceived as having a form of mythic attachment to these empty spaces, from Doughty and Burton through T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Glubb and Thesiger.
Their enemies did not. In the main, the Italians found the sands distinctly unappealing, whilst the Germans simply got on with it and made the best they could.4 The comment by Driver Crawford who was writing in 1944, only two years after the events he describes, highlights the less tangible value of Special Forces operations. The fact that the Allies were still taking the fight to the Axis, even when fortunes overall were dire, afforded a much needed boost to morale.
Beginnings
We tend to associate Special Forces operations in the Western Desert very much with the Second World War, but the genesis of these dashing cavaliers of the sands originated a generation earlier during the Great War. In that conflict Italy was an ally but the Senussi Arabs sided with the Turks. A series of border bickerings escalated in late 1915 into a more dangerous incursion into Egypt. Such a highly mobile foe, fighting in his very specialist environment, proved a sore trial to hard-pressed Imperial cavalry, hamstrung by supply constraints and a hostile terrain. Mobility and firepower were provided by motor vehicles, yeomanry patrol groups, driving customised Model T Fords.5 Active only between 1916 and the following year, the trucks proved highly successful and their crews learnt much about desert travel. They mapped as they went.
Although the need for a constant military presence disappeared, the lure of the sands survived the onset of peace. Organisations such as the Sudan Forest Commission or the Egyptian Desert Survey, together with various archaeological digs provided a platform for those who felt the tug.6 The Light Car Patrols which, like the exploits of T.E. Lawrence, had offered a dash of chivalric glamour amid the horror of industrialised warfare on the Western Front, attracted a series of intrepid desert explorers. Prominent amongst these was Ralph Bagnold, a major in the Royal Signals. He turned desert travel from a challenging recreation into a navigational science.7
Bagnold was aware that the eastern flank of Italian Libya, the dead straight line of the frontier, ran south–north and Mussolini had set up a series of garrison outposts and desert landing strips. To cover these isolated bases, the Italians had created ‘Auto-Saharan Companies’ (see Appendix 6), mechanized patrols supported by limited air cover. The French too had formed such flying columns, and even before hostilities, as early as May 1939, some form of aggressive action in the event war did break out had been mooted.
This southwest corner of Libya is known as the Fezzan (in Berber, ‘Rough Rocks’), an expanse of deep desert. To the north, this region is traversed by the Ash-Shati Valley (Wadi Al Shatii) and in the west by the Wadi Irawan. Only these parts, together with reaches of the Tibesti Mountains straddling the Chadian border plus a scattering of remote oases and outposts, are capable of sustaining settled communities. The vast dune seas (“ergs”) of the Idehan Ubari and the Idehan Murzuq cover much of the remaining ground.
This string of isolated Italian posts snaked south through Jalo and Kufra to Uweinat, some six hundred miles inland. Here was real Beau Geste country. The closest garrisons of Mussolini’s ramshackle empire of Africa were over a thousand miles away over the great swathe of the Sudan. The narrow umbilical of a single track linked these far-flung bases.
A random accident at sea meant Ralph Bagnold fetched up in Alexandria and, during the hiatus, went off to visit his many friends in Cairo.
Although most of us were young army officers, not one of us in the 1920s dreamed for a moment that war would ever come to the vast, waterless and lifeless Libyan Desert. We simply enjoyed the excitement of pioneering into the unknown. But the Second World War was declared almost as soon as the physics book [‘The Physics of Blow
n Sand and Desert Dunes’] was finished.… Now, as a reservist, I was recalled to the Army in the autumn of 1939 and posted to East Africa. It was by the pure accident of a convoy collision in the Mediterranean that I was landed at Port Said to await another troop ship.8
The diversion to Cairo happily resulted in Bagnold being re-assigned to Egypt. For a long while HQ British Troops in Egypt (“BTE”) had been focused purely on internal security. The threat, fast becoming a reality, of external invasion had not featured in pre-war planning. HQ in Cairo did not seem overly keen to get involved in the hot arid wastes, so the long frontier with Libya was effectively wide open. Those pioneering light-car patrols of 1916 had since been consigned to the tactical waste-basket and few current British military vehicles were suitable for a mechanised revival.
Bagnold initially struggled in vain against such ingrained languor. He penned a skeleton argument for a revival but was brusquely turned down … even the idea of driving out into the desert seemed to appal them as impossible, insane or at least reckless.9 Only the arrival of General Archibald Wavell as C-in-C Middle East Forces and the subsequent side-lining of BTE created a window – that and the clear implications of the forces Italy was building up in Libya. The indefatigable Major rescued his earlier memo and, with some hasty additions, arranged for it to be laid on the great man’s desk… I was sent for within an hour. Things had changed.
Wavell was ready to listen and Bagnold outlined the risks of a potential enemy raid on Aswan coming out of Uweinat. The distance was no greater than five hundred miles and he himself had covered this in only a day and a half. The potential for damage was enormous, and in their Major Lorenzini (an enterprising officer Bagnold had encountered during his desert explorations), the Italians possessed a capable leader who had openly boasted he could achieve just this. As a counter, the English Major proposed raising a small, specially equipped band of volunteers who would have the capability to cross 1,500 miles of ground without re-supply. Bagnold knew the desert like his own back-garden. For him and men like him it held no terrors. The key requirements for the Long Range Patrol (“LRP” as it was first known), were quite straightforward:
