The Daring Dozen
Page 18
Increasingly resigned to a war in the quiet backwaters of the conflict, Bagnold’s military career was saved by events thousands of miles away in Western Europe, with the German occupation of the Low Countries in May 1940 and the Italian declaration of war on Britain the following month. A direct consequence of the declaration was that because Italy controlled the Mediterranean and Red Sea sea routes, British forces in the Middle East were now cut off from their comrades in Europe. In addition, the collapse of France and the establishment of a puppet government under Marshal Pétain deprived General Wavell of a whole army corps of Syrian troops.
There was another threat, too, one that only Bagnold really understood. It came from Kufra in the heart of the Libyan Desert, and could lead to the fall of Egypt and the Sudan. Kufra was an isolated post in the south-east of Libya. Surrounded on three sides by depressions, it was of strategic importance because it served as an air base for Italian East Africa, and also because its topographical location commanded outstanding views of the land traffic.
Had Bagnold been authorized to carry out reconnaissance patrols of the Libyan Desert nine months earlier, he would have known the exact strength of the large Italian garrison at Kufra. ‘A well timed raid by a party say 2,000 strong could sever temporarily our only land connection between Egypt and Khartoum,’ wrote Bagnold. ‘With submarines to obstruct the alternative Red Sea route, this interruption might vitally affect the delicate and precarious adjustment of our pitiful resources between the two theatres of war [North Africa and Western Europe].’11
On 19 June 1940, Bagnold submitted his memo for a third time, and this time it was noticed. Four days later he was sat in front of Wavell who, at the end of their meeting, rang his little bell and instructed his chief of staff to give Bagnold every available assistance in assembling his new unit – provisionally called the Long Range Patrol. Time was of the essence, for the British expected the Italians to launch a major offensive by the end of August at the very latest. But Bagnold had been fine-tuning his original memo for months and knew exactly how he envisaged the force. As he later explained there would be three patrols, ‘every vehicle of which, with a crew of three and a machine gun, was to carry its own supplies of food and water for 3 weeks, and its own petrol for 2,500 miles of travel across average soft desert surface – equivalent in petrol consumption to some 2,400 miles of road. By the use of 30-cwt [30-hundredweight] trucks there would be a small margin of load-carrying capacity in each. This margin, if multiplied by a large enough number of trucks would enable the patrol to carry a wireless set, navigating and other equipment, medical stores, spare parts and further tools, and would also allow extra petrol to be carried for another truck mounting a 2-pdr gun with its ammunition, and a light pilot car for the commander.’12
One of the first tasks facing Bagnold was to requisition enough reliable vehicles capable of covering in excess of 2,500 miles without breaking down. The British Army possessed no such thing so Bagnold turned to the commercial Chevrolet 30cwt (30-hundredweight), and 33 were purchased from the Egyptian Army or from vehicle dealers in Cairo. Sun compasses, sand channels, radios and medical supplies were begged, borrowed or stolen in the weeks following the unit’s formation. So were the Arab headdresses and leather sandals that replaced the army-issue leather boots and service dress caps.
As to who to recruit to his fledging enterprise, Bagnold was well aware that the merciless hinterland of the Western Desert could make or break a man. He contacted some of his old colleagues who had accompanied him on previous expeditions into the desert, and before long Bill Kennedy Shaw, Pat Clayton, Teddy Mitford, and Rupert Harding-Newman had joined him in Cairo. Bagnold overcame the fact that Kennedy Shaw and Clayton were civilians by having them commissioned into the Intelligence Corps.
Bagnold designated his patrols R, T and W (the letters chosen at random) with each one comprising two officers and 30 men. Each patrol was armed with nine Lewis light machine guns of World War I-vintage, two Vickers machine guns, a Bofors light anti-aircraft gun and an assortment of small arms. Within each patrol there would be two gunners, two navigators, one fitter, one mechanic, 11 drivers, ten machine gunners, one wireless operator and one medic. Despite the emphasis on drivers and gunners, Bagnold insisted that every man recruited to his force must be proficient in both skills.
With most of his officers boasting a considerable knowledge of the desert, Bagnold now needed to find a small cadre of men with the right temperament to join his Long Range Patrol. ‘They should be resourceful, alert, intelligent and possessed of a sense of responsibility, and emphasis should be laid on these qualities rather than on mere toughness. The Long Range Patrol is a complicated technical mechanism in which a breakdown might spell disaster even though no enemy is encountered.’13
In Bagnold’s view the average British soldier was ‘apt to be wasteful’ when it came to looking after equipment, so when he learned that there was a New Zealand division under Brigadier Puttock idle in Egypt he paid them a visit. Though the Kiwis had arrived safely in North Africa, the supply ship with all their arms and ammunition had been sunk en route, so they were unemployed until further supplies arrived. Bagnold was given permission to recruit the small number of New Zealanders needed to fully complement the Long Range Patrol, and subsequently he was never given any cause to regret the chain of circumstances that led to his visit to the New Zealand division. ‘They made an impressive party by English standards,’ reflected Bagnold. ‘Tougher and more weather-beaten in looks, a sturdy basis of sheep farmers leavened by technicians, property owners and professional men including a few Maoris.’14
Bagnold tried to make training as realistic as possible, with the New Zealanders being particularly schooled in desert driving. The Kiwis were quick learners, and before long they were covering 150 miles in fully loaded trucks. Flag signals were deployed to help patrols travel in strict formation, and Kennedy Shaw had the task of instructing the men in desert navigation using the sun compass. They progressed from training only in the day to travelling at night using the theodolite and the stars, and Bagnold was astonished when the New Zealanders had mastered the art of navigating at night within a week.
Bagnold explained to his Long Range Patrol that their purpose was primarily reconnaissance and that they were to discover what the Italians were up to in their desert forts behind the Great Sand Sea, the natural barrier roughly the size of Ireland that stretches from Siwa Oasis, in the north-west of Egypt, almost as far south as Sudan. When informed of their role, commented Bagnold, the Kiwis were ‘quietly thrilled’.
In August the Long Range Patrol embarked on their first mission. It was led by Pat Clayton, a pre-war desert explorer who had spent nearly 20 years with the Egyptian Survey Department. Clayton led a reconnaissance of the Jalo–Kufra track used by the Italians in Benghazi (a port on the northern coastline of Libya) to resupply their garrisons at Kufra and Uweinat. Having driven east into Libya, Clayton’s two-vehicle patrol watched the track for three days but observed no enemy vehicles. But it wasn’t a wasted expedition. Clayton returned to Egypt, having penetrated 600 miles from his base into enemy territory, with two important details. Firstly, Clayton had noted that enemy aircraft rarely detected sand-coloured vehicles in the desert as long as they were stationary. Secondly, he had discovered a route that crossed first the Egyptian Sand Sea and then, once inside Libya, the Kalansho Sand Sea. The two seas were in fact connected further north to form, as Bagnold later described, ‘an irregular horseshoe’ shape in the south. Clayton had pioneered a route across the two Sand Seas that would become the point of entry into Libya for future patrols.
The Egyptian Sand Sea is a breathtaking phenomenon. One Long Range Patrol officer, Michael Crichton-Stuart, never forgot his first sight of the sea: ‘The parallel lines of dunes run almost north and south, rising to some 500 feet in the centre of the Sand Sea. Packed and shaped by the prevailing wind over thousands of years, this Sand Sea compares in shape and form with a great Atlantic swell; l
ong rollers, crested here and there, with great troughs between. It is utterly lifeless, without a blade of grass or a stone to break the monotony of sand and sky.’15
On 27 August 1940 Bagnold and his 80 men were inspected by General Wavell, and on 5 September Bagnold led the Long Range Patrol in its entirety into Libya on the trail blazed a month earlier by Clayton. He was delighted with the way the New Zealanders adapted to their unfamiliar surroundings and they were soon averaging 30 miles a day as they pierced the interior of the Libyan Desert. Soon the force split, with R Patrol under 2nd Lieutenant Don Steele, a Kiwi, returning to their base at Siwa to resupply, while Teddy Mitford’s W Patrol reconnoitred north towards Kufra and T Patrol under Pat Clayton went south as far as the border with Chad.
Bagnold gave orders that the daily water allowance was one gallon per man, a fragile defence against a brutal midday sun. Teddy Mitford wrote in his diary: ‘On this and the three preceding days there were a number of cases of heat stroke among the men. It was remarkable to notice in the shade of almost every stone a dead or dying bird.’16
The three patrols returned to Cairo with little to report. Whatever Marshal Graziani was doing at his headquarters in Sidi Barrani, his troops were nowhere to be seen in the Libyan Desert. The news conveyed to General Headquarters (GHQ) Cairo by the Long Range Patrol prompted Wavell to amend the unit’s operational instructions in October. No longer were they to carry out reconnaissance missions; instead they were to go on the offensive and, as Bagnold later wrote, ‘stir up trouble in any part of Libya we liked, with the object of drawing off as much enemy transport and troops as possible from the coastal front to defend their remote and useless inland garrisons’.17
The Long Range Patrol relished their opportunity to be more pugnacious. While some patrols mined roads, others blew up bomb dumps or attacked isolated desert outposts manned by bored Italians. Just as Wavell had hoped, Graziani diverted troops from the coastal regions into the interior to escort supply columns and reinforce outposts.
On 1 October Wavell wrote to Bagnold to express his gratitude for the work accomplished by his unit in the three months since its formation. He said:
Dear Bagnold
I should like to convey to the officers and other ranks under your command my congratulations and appreciation of the successful results of the recent patrols carried out by your unit in central Libya.
I am aware of the extreme physical difficulties which had to be overcome, particularly the intense heat. That your operation, involving as it did 150,000 track miles, has been brought to so successful a conclusion indicates a standard of efficiency in preparation and execution, of which you, your officers and men may justly be proud.
A full report of your exploits has already been telegraphed to the War Office and I wish you all the best of luck in your continued operations in which you will be making an important contribution towards keeping Italian forces in back areas on the alert and adding to the anxieties and difficulties of our enemy.18
In early December 1940 the Long Range Patrol, having proved its worth, was expanded, with three new patrols; ‘G’ Patrol, drawn from the 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards and the 2nd Battalion Scots Guards; ‘Y’ Patrol comprised Yeomanry recruited from the 1st Cavalry Division in Palestine; and ‘S’ Patrol was made up of South Rhodesians. Simultaneously the three original New Zealand patrols were reduced to two with some of their number required to return to their regiments. It was Bagnold’s proud boast that ‘including the men on headquarters more than 50 different regiments are now represented in L.R.D.G.’. The initials stood for ‘Long Range Desert Group’, the new name of the unit that by the end of the war would be a byword for efficiency, resourcefulness and courage.
Emboldened by the expansion of his unit, Bagnold planned the LRDG’s most audacious operation to date, an attack against Murzuk, a well-defended Italian fort set among palm trees with an airfield close by, approximately 1,500 miles west of Cairo. As Bagnold noted, the fort ‘was far beyond our self-contained range but a raid on it seemed possible geographically if we could get some extra supplies from the French Army in Chad’. No one in Cairo knew whose side the French forces in Chad were on. Other French dependencies had declared for the Vichy regime, but from Chad there had been no announcement. Bagnold and Wavell thought that an invitation for the French to support a daring raid might be just the sort of escapade to rally them to Britain’s cause.
Bagnold flew to Chad and met the commander of the French troops, Colonel Jean Colonna d’Ornano, a tall red-headed officer, who demanded to know the purpose of Bagnold’s visit. ‘I told him frankly what I wanted – petrol, rations and water,’ recalled Bagnold of the meeting. D’Ornano agreed to cooperate but with a caveat. ‘I’ll do all you ask but on one condition,’ he told Bagnold. ‘You take me with you to Murzuk with one of my junior officers and one NCO and we fly the French flag alongside yours.’19
The LRDG raiders, consisting of T and G patrols under the overall command of Pat Clayton, rendezvoused with the French near Tazerbo, 350 miles east of Murzuk, on 4 January 1941. As promised D’Ornano had delivered the supplies requested by Bagnold, and the Frenchman and nine of his men were seconded to the LRDG as they struck out west toward Murzuk. On 11 January they stopped for lunch just a few miles from Murzuk, and then the force divided, with Clayton’s T Patrol going off to attack the airfield while G Patrol targeted the fort. Michael Crichton-Stuart recalled that as they neared the garrison they passed a lone cyclist: ‘This gentleman, who proved to be the Postmaster, was added to the party with his bicycle. As the convoy approached the fort, above the main central tower of which the Italian flag flew proudly, the Guard turned out. We were rather sorry for them, but they probably never knew what hit them.’
In the maelstrom of fire that followed, the LRDG lost two men (including Colonel D’Ornano) and suffered several casualties, but the damage inflicted on the Italians was far worse. The main block of the fort was destroyed by a withering mortar barrage, and the garrison commander had the misfortune to return from lunch midway through the onslaught. Neither his staff car nor the escort vehicle made it through the fort’s gates.
Clayton arrived at the fort having wreaked havoc on the airfield, destroying three light bombers, a sizeable fuel dump and killing or capturing all of the 20 guards. Now he ordered the LRDG to withdraw into the vastness of the desert before the inevitable aerial reinforcements arrived from Hon, a large Italian air base 250 miles to the north-east. The LRDG paused to bury their dead five miles to the north of Murzuk, while the French contingent asked permission to slit the throats of their prisoners. Clayton turned down the proposal and the next day the unit headed toward Chad, overrunning a small outpost at Traghen as they went.
The British had been right to court the French in Chad. Even though D’Ornano was dead, his successor, General Leclerc, formed an effective alliance with the LRDG. Guided by T and G patrols (the latter composed of former Guardsmen under the command of Captain Michael Crichton-Stuart), a Free French force captured Kufra on 1 March 1941, but the success was a rarity for the Allies in what was an otherwise wretched few months. Rommel had arrived in North Africa on 12 February, and by the end of April the Afrika Korps had pushed back the Allies’ Western Desert Force (later known as Eighth Army) to the Egyptian frontier. The Mediterranean port of Tobruk was the sole remaining British possession in Cyrenaica.
In February 1941 Major Guy Prendergast, a good friend of Bagnold’s who had accompanied him on his expeditions of 1927 and 1932, joined the LRDG as its second-in-command. An experienced pilot who had also explored the desert by aircraft, one of Prendergast’s early initiatives was to form the unit’s own air force, consisting of two single-engine monoplanes made by the Western Aircraft Cooperation of Ohio (WACO) and bought from their private owners in Cairo. The aircraft, which were piloted by Prendergast and a New Zealander called Barker, were used to keep in regular contact with MEHQ in Cairo and with the patrols scattered across the desert.
With Kufra now in Allied hands, Bagnold moved the LRDG headquarters there from Cairo, a distance of 800 miles. The drawback to the relocation was that MEHQ instructed Bagnold to establish a permanent garrison there until such a time when the Sudan Defence Force could take over. It was a short-sighted decision and one that resulted in a frustrating summer in general for Bagnold and the LRDG, who were not by training or temperament a static garrison force.
At Kufra, Bagnold schooled his men in some of the more primitive ways of the desert such as how to eat a desert snail by sucking him out of its shell, and how to bathe without water. The latter intrigued the men, as Les Sullivan, an LRDG fitter, recalled: ‘He taught us to bath in the sand. He said that washing does not get you clean because we don’t normally get dirty. He reckoned you washed and bathed to get rid of dead cells of skin. So in deep desert we bathed in the sand. We were not allowed water to wash, shower or clean teeth. All water was very precious and was necessary for cooking and drinking and so that was rationed.’20
Rations (which were packed in wooden petrol cases when the LRDG was on a patrol) were considered of the utmost importance by Bagnold and he issued his unit with a sample menu (with recipes) based on the food available. This consisted of:
Breakfast suggestions
Porridge (no milk or sugar)
Fried bacon with oatmeal fritter
Bacon and oatmeal cake
Bacon stuffed with cooked oatmeal
Bacon with oatmeal chuppatties
Tiffin
Lentil soup
Various sandwich spreads on biscuits
Cheese and oatmeal savoury
Cheese and oatmeal cake
Oatmeal and date cookies
Dinner
Stewed mutton with dumplings