by Sadler, John
Middle East Commando re-organised their ‘A’ Squadron along SAS lines, splitting the men into three patrols, each equipped with new Chevy 15-cwts. The commandos had a fairly circumscribed operational range but also formed another three offensive or sabotage sections for going in on foot and blowing things up. At the same time, (11th May), a pair of patrols from the Indian Long Range Squadron (“ILRS”) was imported from Syria.
The ILRS only came fully under the wing of LRDG from October 1942 till the following spring and the advance into Tunisia. Captain Sam McCoy, a regular from the Indian Army, had the idea, approved by C-in-C Middle East, and the unit served as part of Ninth Army during 1941–1942. Its intended role was broadly similar to its North African equivalent but focused in the Iraq/Iran sector. Captain, then Major McCoy recruited from Indian Army units, primarily cavalry. In ethos and outlook it was very similar to LRDG and the unit integrated easily in the Western Desert.
Eric Wilson had been posted back to Blighty and Jake Easonsmith took over as 2I/C. Philip Arnold continued the unsung work of the ‘heavies’ by creating a whole series of escape dumps, essential when you need them. Despite this wider role, LRDG was ‘blind’ as both WACOs were temporarily hors de combat awaiting new engines. The RAF’s disdain for the minor competition had not diminished. During the early spring it was back to Marble Arch and the roads. Despite the weight of enemy traffic and their past experiences of LRDG beat ups, there was little or no contact. Some back roads and tracks had been mined.
Lieutenant Crisp, on watch along the Mekili–Msus track during virtually all of May, picked up little traffic data but he did recover six RAF crewmen who’d crash-landed their Wellington bomber nearby. On 2nd May, Robin Gurdon taxied two intelligence officers to a location nearly 40 miles southeast of Benghazi. In the event, one of the IO’s, Captain Melot, needed to be nearer the coast and the patrol motored another 15 miles northwest.
Alastair Timpson with G1 was allocated a section of highway between Marble Arch and Sirte. His mission was to seek and destroy enemy vehicles, not in the traditional shoot ’em up style, but by lobbing time bombs into passing traffic. This was easier ordered than accomplished. Chucking the devices into moving vehicles was very tricky. The bomber had to force or dupe his quarry into slowing down so that someone could throw the bomb into the open rear of the truck. This also had its hazards, for those riding in the back were liable to notice an explosive device arriving so suddenly in their horrified midst. The knack was to fake up a section of supposed road works, using 45-gallon drums with poles stretched over and between with suitably worded dummy warning notices put up.
A pile of road metal, handily dumped by the enemy, highlighted the ideal spot. On the night of 14th May, Timpson and his bombing party were lurking with intent. Their truck was well hidden back from the road, both machine-guns ready. Two more ambushers with small arms and grenades were in place nearby. The gravel was scattered over the road in a slovenly non-Teutonic, Italianate manner and five of the drums set up. It looked convincing enough, perhaps so much so that blasé drivers weren’t inclined to take notice and simply drove around. All attempts proved abortive. Moving the obstructions further across the highway had no greater effect. Next idea was that an LRDG truck, lights doused, would follow Axis vehicles and then Sergeant Fraser, perched rather precariously on the bonnet, would lob bombs into the vehicle in front. That didn’t work either.43
Abortive or not, such impudence was unlikely to go unpunished. Next afternoon, in the dull sheen of midday heat, the LRDG sentry saw an enemy vehicle approaching at about 200 yards. Probably the Italians had spotted the patrol’s radio antenna. They began shooting with rifles and automatic weapons. This was foolish and wasteful as the raider’s trucks were well camouflaged, and a sharp little skirmish kicked off. Enemy fire soon slackened and the patrol managed to get all their vehicles out of the Wadi. Had these attackers been German then it might have been very different. As it was, the Italians’ enthusiasm for continuing soon ebbed. One trooper, Guardsman Matthews, was killed in the action.44 Undeterred, the patrol beat up a roadhouse on the night of 22nd/23rd May before returning to Siwa on the 28th.
At the beginning of the second week in May, John Olivey with S2 was taxiing commandos to and from the foothills of the Jebel-el-Akhdar. The hope had been that these could take on some of the chore of road watch but they hadn’t built up the necessary skills base. By now LRDG were past masters, so the experiment was abandoned. As a substitute, ‘Popski’ and his brigands were detailed to undertake road watch in this vicinity. In the middle of the month Robin Gurdon, leading G2, ferried in the indefatigable Stirling for another crack at Benghazi. As a secondary objective, they were to mine the Benghazi–Barce railway line. En route, they encountered Nick Wilder and T2 who warned that the Axis had planted agents amongst hitherto friendly Arabs, and their route was varied accordingly.
In the wee small hours of 22nd May, Corporal Wilson successfully mined the tracks in two places. Despite the care and ingenuity of the sabotage squad, the mine failed to explode (more probably it was detected45). As usual, they fared better than Stirling, who’d spent two busy if fruitless days in Benghazi. The Italians never suspected who was in their midst but their shipping stayed safe, for the moment at least. Nick Wilder had been looking for road traffic to bomb. His idea had been similar to Timpson’s and worked no better. Their attempt at impromptu road works was treated with the same casual disdain by Axis drivers, though one vehicle was shot up and bombed.
Lloyd Owen was briefed to ferry a team of spooks up to Tarhuna, some forty miles southeast of Tripoli. Once the shepherding duty was completed, he was given free rein to beat up a large MT depot nearby. So far all good, but the inaccuracy of the maps meant the distance was far greater than imagined, a total trip of some 2,000 miles and operating further west than any previous patrol. Lloyd Owen wasn’t overly enthusiastic about his passengers, the senior member being an Italian civilian prisoner who professed to be anti-fascist; to whom he took an instant dislike.46 His suspicions proved entirely justified, the Italian was indeed shifty, and Lloyd Owen decided he should be ‘banged-up’ for the rest of the war. To dodgy Italians was added the problem of dodgy tyres, a duff batch which meant the patrol never got as far as Tripoli.
The ‘Gazala’ Gallop’
Rommel’s offensive and the Battle of Gazala, dubbed ‘the Gazala Gallop’ by Eighth Army, can be divided into three phases: (1) Rommel launches his flank attack, 26th–29th May, attempting to overrun British defences from behind; (2) fighting in the ‘Cauldron’ as Rommel tries to re-supply and consolidate his forces; and (3) the reduction of Bir Hacheim, and the pounding of British armour 11th–13th June, followed by withdrawal from the Gazala line. A fourth and final phase of this battle was the subsequent storming of Tobruk.
By 14th June, Ritchie was seeking permission to draw off, fall back to the frontier and save his forces from encirclement. Rommel was master of the central battlefield. This would imply the temporary abandonment of the Tobruk garrison, which would again be isolated. Auchinleck was not yet ready to throw in the towel, however, insisting that further counter-attacks be launched to deny the approaches to Tobruk. As C-in-C he had to answer to the Prime Minister who was already querying his intentions.
Withdrawal in the face on an aggressive enemy is never a smooth business and the retreat of Eighth Army inevitably produced a semblance of rout. Rommel would not relinquish pressure and struck toward the airfield at Gambut. The rump of 4th Armoured sallied out but was again badly mauled; control of events had passed irrevocably beyond Ritchie’s grip. For Rommel, there was now the matter of his unfinished business with the defenders of Tobruk.
As early as January 1942, the joint Middle East commanders, Auchinleck, Cunningham and Tedder, had agreed that Tobruk, if isolated, should not once again be defended. Militarily, this was eminently sensible but the place had become imbued with a great deal of political capital at a time when British arms had endured such a series of
dismal defeats in Norway, France, Greece and Crete with such sharp reverses in the Western Desert.
By 17th June, Rommel had secured Gambut airfield and beaten off the remnant of British armour. Tobruk was again invested. Two days later there was still some ill-founded optimism that the perimeter could be held on the basis or in the pious hope that Axis forces would settle down for a lengthy siege. However, the situation now within the ring was very different from before. Hitherto strong defences had been denuded and pillaged to meet the exigencies of the now defunct Gazala Line, and the garrison was badly placed to resist a sustained attack.
Rommel, scenting this weakness, unleashed the Luftwaffe, which began blasting the fortress on 20th June as the precursor to a determined attack from the southeast. By 7:45 the anti-tank ditch, equivalent to a medieval moat, had been breached and the perimeter was collapsing. There had been talk of a breakout should this occur, but in reality no escape route was viable. Auchinleck’s report to London, late on the 20th, sounded a note of impending catastrophe, and then Tobruk fell. 35,000 Allied soldiers passed into captivity, and 2,000 tons of fuel and as many vehicles fell into Axis hands. It was a disastrous defeat. The debacles in Greece and Crete combined had not witnessed such fearful loss.
As the storm broke over Eighth Army, new orders came to LRDG:
Road watch on the Mekili-Msus section was to continue;
Beat ups were to be planned for the area around Lamluda (some 28 miles west of Derna, a key junction for several tracks);
A taxi service to be provided for Bertie Buck’s irregular irregulars and a detachment of Free French who were about to have a crack at Martuba airfield;
The commandos were detailed to beat up the two parallel roads running through the Jebel el Akhdar. LRDG would do the ferrying but should keep out of any fighting;
Two patrols were to guide Stirling for another attack on the aerodromes at Berca, Benina and Barce (if the raid went ahead);
Road watch on the main Tripoli highway should be maintained;
At least one patrol was to be held in reserve and be ready to recce desert terrain in Cyrenaica.47
One of the more depressing features of road watch at this time was the large number of Allied POWs being marched west. Indian (1) Patrol was sent out from Siwa on 30th May to ferry spooks toward Benghazi and to collect Captain Melot as they returned. On his instruction, they might mine the Barce–Benghazi line. They achieved all of these objectives. The railway was indeed mined and, despite some pursuit, they got clear without loss, back at Siwa by 9th June. The commandos were less fortunate, losing most of their transport to enemy air attacks.
Nick Wilder fared rather better. He’d led both T1 and T2 out on 4th June to beat up the road section from Jedabia to Benghazi. He divided his force into two assault groups, targeting specific areas. On the night of 7th/8th June, T1 ‘brassed-up’ an enemy convoy, wrecking numerous vehicles and leaving as many as thirty Axis dead in their wake.48 On the 9th the combined patrols got ready to attack an enemy bunker but the assault was postponed and they had to be content with beating up an enemy patrol in a short, sharp firefight, killing several and taking a number of prisoners.
It fell to Robin Gurdon with G2 to taxi Stirling, Mayne and several SAS detachments, including a Free French team into the Benina–Barce sector. LRDG had eight patrols working this same zone, and G1 would be relatively close and able to provide back-up if needed. The enemy was getting smarter, tracks were now regularly mined, and several vehicles were damaged. Aircraft were constantly on the prowl. Despite difficulties, Stirling and his raiders were dropped off near Regima, as planned, on the evening of 11th June. The SAS were recovered two and three days later, intact except for one man who’d been mislaid.
On the 16th they moved again – the French would hit Berca and the British would go back into Benghazi. Stirling not only had Fitzroy Maclean with him but also Randolph Churchill. Bill Kennedy later wished, writing in May 1943, that the episode could be read out to Il Duce, letting him know that the British Prime Minister’s son spent thirty-six hours lurking undetected in the capital of Cyrenaica!49
Nobody seems to have told the RAF, who carried out a big beat up of their own on the Berca airstrips on the night of the 12th/13th, compromising the French SAS raid. Despite this, the French wrecked eleven planes and killed fifteen of the enemy. Stirling inflicted some damage at Benina. At Benghazi in the witching hours of 16th/17th June, Stirling did yet more damage. None of these raids would materially affect the course of the main battle, which overall went disastrously badly for the Allies, but, as ever, the pinpricks could amount to a serious bleed, as the enemy had to divert personnel and resources to repairing the damage and beefing up security.
Holliman with S1 took another Free French SAS team to Barce on 8th June. Little could be achieved as the enemy had significantly boosted their defences and increased their vigilance. Frustrating as this was, it reflected the success of the earlier raids. These troops, now enduring the tedium of guarding airfields, might otherwise have been deployed in the main battle. LRDG/SAS were still punching way above their combined weight.
Alastair Guild with R1 was also ordered to transport yet another Free French SAS unit, fourteen troopers under Lieutenant Jordan plus Captain ‘Bertie’ Buck and another fourteen of his SIG German Jews from Palestine, dressed as DAK. Buck commanded both commando units. His targets were the airfields at Martuba and Derna. At the outset Buck’s raiders did very well, knocking out a score of Axis planes. It seems likely one of the SIG was an Abwehr plant, however, and he betrayed them all. In the melee which followed, all of the Free French were killed or captured, though Lieutenant Jordan subsequently contrived to escape. LRDG successfully extracted the survivors.50
Lieutenant G.W. Nangle and Indian (2) Patrol spent a tedious and enervating week on the Jalo–Jedabia track but found no trade. Meanwhile, Timpson with G1 had teamed up with Dick Croucher and R2, for a joint assignment to watch the road from Afrag to El Carmusa, some twenty miles southwest of Derna. Again, the track was bare of any trade. Timpson next decided to have a look at the coast road, since locals had advised of several enemy camps.
The patrols selected a suitable tactical vantage about three miles south of the main highway near Sidi Scisher Ruhai. On the night of 18th/19th June, both units moved into offensive positions. At first, all went well when a pair of Italian tank transporters were stopped and their crews taken prisoner. So far so good, but radio contact between the two patrol groups had been lost and, with confusion rampant, both began firing at each other! Despite their combined weight of firepower, nobody was hit. They were all back at Siwa by 22nd June.51
Lieutenant Crisp with T2 was in the field from 19th to 25th June. His job was to pick up an RAF survivor who’d been recovered by Popski’s guerrillas in the Jebel Akhdar. He was also to insert a dozen volunteers from the Libyan Arab Force led by a Captain Grandguillot into the area as an escape and evasion team, assisting other flyers who’d come down there. On the day he returned, there were momentous changes taking place within Eighth Army HQ.
Mersa Matruh
On that same day, General Auchinleck, accompanied by Brigadier Eric Dorman-Smith, arrived from Cairo at Maaten Baggush, Ritchie’s Eighth Army HQ. It was not a social call. The army commander was curtly relieved of his post and Auchinleck, as C-in-C, assumed direct tactical control of Eighth Army. Dorman-Smith – ‘Chink’ – was to act as an unofficial chief of staff. On the flight from Cairo the two had discussed the current, dire position, concluding that the only course open was for a further tactical withdrawal to the El Alamein line a hundred and fifty miles east of Mersa Matruh, where the army was attempting a stand. Wavell had previously identified the small port as the absolute ‘last ditch’ position for defence of the Delta. Otherwise enemy aircraft could strike at vital installations and civilian targets there.
Despite the scale of the recent reverses, Eighth Army HQ persisted in a degree of upbeat assessments whose optimistic tone rested o
n the belief that Rommel, for the moment, was spent and could not maintain his offensive. Bastico, with Kesselring, reminded their impetuous paladin that it was time to draw breath whilst the agreed strategy for Operation ‘Herkules’, the reduction of Malta, was effected. Bastico, who like Rommel, had now attained his field marshal’s baton, demanded a halt. The Desert Fox, who modestly ascribed his successes solely to the valour of his troops, persisted in arguing that to ease pressure at this juncture would toss away a hard-earned opportunity. On 24th June Rommel received the green light, just as well perhaps as his forward units had already been advancing for the last two days!
The Fox, his hunter’s instincts attuned, was poised to deliver what he believed to be the killing blow. In the circumstances, it is difficult to see what other course remained for Auchinleck, other than to take direct command. Ritchie was floundering and Eighth Army was in a most parlous state. Brooke maintained his confidence in the ‘Auk’ and Churchill, who could be as magnanimous as he could be bullying, lent his hearty approval. In choosing Dorman-Smith as chief of staff, he found a subordinate of considerable intellectual capacity and strategic insight, but one who, like himself, was not able to fully mesh with the army commanders themselves. These were frequently both confused and demoralised by orders they received but did not fully understand. Auchinleck commanded the army’s resources but he did not control its soul, without which the sinews could not flex properly.
‘Chink’, whose views on his fellow officers tended to be unflattering, was made to ‘writhe’ when he learnt of Ritchie’s dispositions for the defence of Matruh. It was as if Eighth Army had learnt absolutely nothing from previous mistakes. ‘Strafer’ Gott with 13 Corps was to hold the perimeter around the port, with hastily dug and inadequate defences – inviting a repeat of Tobruk. 20 Corps was deployed a score of miles to the south astride an escarpment; Freyberg with his New Zealanders was posted ‘in the middle of nowhere’. Remnants of 1st Armoured Division were lurking far to the south while the yawning gap between the two corps was patrolled by a brace of relatively weak mobile columns.
