John Olivey: Returned home to his farm in Melsetter, south-eastern Rhodesia, and over the next few years fathered five children, including twin sons and daughters. He died in 1968 at the age of 62.
Nick Wilder: Left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel and a DSO for his leadership during the Barce raid. Wilder returned to his 1600-acre farm at Waipukurau and died in 1970 aged 56.
Jack Davis: On his release from a POW camp he returned to New Zealand and died in Christchuch in 1988.
Jim Patch: Having been captured at Levitha, he and Ron Hill escaped from the train taking them to Germany and spent a year living with Bulgarian partisans. After the war he worked for the Post Office and for more than two decades was the secretary of the LRDG Association. He lives in the south of England.
Len Poole: Died in 2000 in Zimbabwe, having worked at a power station before starting his own business.
Spud Murphy: Spent the last year of the war as a prisoner of the Germans. He suffered from poor health in his declining years and died in 1980.
Frank Jopling: Captured during the Barce raid, Jopling spent the rest of the war as a POW. He died in New Zealand in 1987.
Edward Stutterd: One of the nine men who marched more than 200 miles to Allied lines in January 1942, he returned to New Zealand at the end of the war and died aged 58 in 1967. His gravestone says simply: ‘E. C. Stutterd. Long Range Desert Group.’
Stanley Eastwood: Returned to Rhodesia to farm and entered politics, standing unsuccessfully for election in the 1978 Zimbabwe-Rhodesia general election. He died in the 1980s.
Lofty Carr: Worked in insurance for many years before deciding on a change of direction in the late 1960s. He retrained as an art teacher and finished his working life as head of the art department in a school in the north-west of England, where he still lives. ‘We were regarded as an undisciplined and wild rabble,’ he reflected in 2014. ‘Anyone who didn’t fit in, didn’t meet the LRDG etiquette, was gone. For those of us who did serve in the unit, it was a privilege. The camaraderie was magnificent, it was a family.’
The LRDG Association held annual reunions, like this one advertised in 1968, until 2000 when it was wound down due to dwindling numbers. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)
The LRDG’s existence may have been short-lived but as Field Marshal The Hon Sir Harold Alexander said of them in 1945 they did much “fine work with undiminished skill and enthusiasm”. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)
NOTES
Introduction
1.John W. Gordon, The Other Desert War: British Special Forces in North Africa, 1940–1943 (Praeger, 1987).
2.Bagnold’s private papers, Churchill College Archives, Cambridge.
Chapter 1
1.‘A Lost World Refound’, Scientific American, November 1939.
2.Bagnold’s private papers.
Chapter 2
1.‘Destruction of an Army: The First Campaign in Libya’ (Ministry of Information, 1941).
2.Bagnold’s private papers.
3.Ibid.
4.Ibid.
5.Ibid.
6.‘Destruction of an Army’.
7.Bagnold, letter to the 1986 issue of the LRDG newsletter.
8.Kennedy Shaw obituary, LRDG newsletter, 1980.
9.Bill Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group (Collins, 1945).
10.Edward Mitford interview, Imperial War Museum, catalogue number: 29599.
11.Memoirs of Tim Heywood, LRDG newsletter, 1975.
12.David Lloyd Owen, The Desert my Dwelling Place (Cassell, 1957).
13.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
14.Ibid.
15.Bagnold’s private papers.
16.Ibid.
17.Ibid.
18.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
19.Long Range Desert Group war diary, SAS Regimental Association Archives.
20.Bagnold’s private papers.
Chapter 3
1.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
2.The unpublished diary of Trooper Frank Jopling, SAS Regimental Association Archives.
3.Ibid.
4.Ibid.
5.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
6.Ibid.
7.Edward Mitford interview, Imperial War Museum, catalogue number: 29599..
8.Jopling, diary.
9.Interview with Leslie Sullivan, Imperial War Museum sound archive, catalogue number: 30098.
10.Jopling, diary.
11.Bagnold’s private papers.
Chapter 4
1.Jopling, diary.
2.Ibid.
3.Ibid.
4.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
Chapter 5
1.Captain Michael Crichton-Stuart, The Fezzan Operation (1940), contained in the LRDG war diary and also reproduced in Special Forces in the Desert War 1940–1943 (Public Record Office Publications, 2001).
2.Ibid.
3.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
4.Jopling, diary.
5.Crichton-Stuart, The Fezzan Operation.
6.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
7.Ibid.
8.Crichton-Stuart, The Fezzan Operation.
9.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
10.Jopling, diary.
11.Ibid.
12.Ibid.
13.Ibid.
14.Crichton-Stuart, The Fezzan Operation.
15.Clayton, letter to his sister-in-law, 10 February 1941: republished in the 1967 edition of the LRDG newsletter.
16.Ibid.
Chapter 6
1.Lofty Carr, author interview, conducted between February and October 2014.
2.Ron Hill, unpublished war memoirs, SAS Regimental Archives.
3.Ibid.
4.Ibid.
5.‘Destruction of an Army’.
6.Michael Crichton-Stuart, G Patrol (William Kimber, 1958).
7.‘Some Points on Conduct When Meeting the Arabs in the Desert’, Proclamation No. 1 of 1941, (Public Record Offices, WO201/809).
8.Ibid.
9.Guy Prendergast, ‘History of the WACOS’, LRDG newsletter (1986).
10.Ibid.
11.Ibid.
12.Alistair Timpson, In Rommel’s Backyard (Pen & Sword, 2010).
13.Crichton-Stuart, G Patrol.
14.Carr, author interview.
15.Crichton-Stuart, G Patrol.
16.Carr, author interview.
17.An account of this operation by Crichton-Stuart is contained in Special Forces in the Desert War 1940–43 (PRO Publications, 2001).
18.Ibid.
19.Ibid.
20.Ibid.
21.A copy of this article in the Geographical Magazine, volume 22 (1944) is housed in the SAS Regimental Archive.
22.Private papers of Dr Richard Lawson, contained within the private Papers of David Lloyd Owen, Imperial War Museum, collection number: 15623.
Chapter 7
1.The Rommel Papers, edited by Basil Liddell-Hart (DaCapo Press, 1982).
2.Crichton-Stuart, G Patrol.
3.LRDG war diary.
4.Crichton-Stuart, G Patrol.
Chapter 8
1.Rommel Papers, edited by Liddell-Hart.
2.Ibid.
3.Carr, author interview.
4.A copy of Tracks is housed in the SAS Regimental Archive.
5.Alexander Stewart, IWM Sound Archive, catalogue: 13127.
6.Spencer Seadon, IWM Sound Archive, catalogue: 19044.
7.Bill Smudger Smith, LRDG newsletter (1991).
8.Series of articles in the Dundee Courier & Advertiser (October 1970) entitled ‘Dick Turpins of the Desert’.
9.Lloyd Owen, The Desert my Dwelling Place.
10.Jim Patch, author interview, March 2014.
11.Bagnold papers.
12.Minutes of a conference contained in the LRDG war diary.
Chapter 9
1.Lloyd Owen, The Desert my Dwelling Place.
2.Timpson, In Rommel’s Backyard.
3.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
4.Lloyd Owen, The Desert my Dwelling Place.
5.A copy of Mayne’s report is reproduced in Hamish Ross, Paddy Mayne (Sutton Publishing, 2003).
6.Ibid.
7.David Lloyd Owen, Providence Their Guide (Pen & Sword, 2001).
8.Lofty Carr’s report is contained in the LRDG war diary.
9.Ibid.
10.Ibid.
11.An account of Morris’s operational report is reproduced in Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
12.Ibid.
13.Ibid.
14.Ibid.
15.Ibid.
16.Ibid.
17.Ibid.
18.Ibid.
19.Ibid.
20.Private papers of Dr Richard Lawson.
21.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
Chapter 10
1.Rommel Papers, edited by Liddell-Hart.
2.Quoted in Lloyd Owen, Providence Their Guide.
3.LRDG war diary.
4.Timpson, In Rommel’s Backyard.
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid.
7.Ibid.
8.Ibid.
9.Private papers of Dr Richard Lawson.
10.Ibid.
11.Ibid.
12.Ibid.
13.Ibid.
14.Ibid.
15.Ibid.
16.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
17.Ibid.
18.Special Forces in the Desert War.
19.Timpson, In Rommel’s Backyard.
20.Lloyd Owen, Providence Their Guide.
21.Malcolm James, Born of the Desert (Greenhill Books, 1991).
22.Ibid.
23.Ibid.
24.Gavin Mortimer, The SAS in WW2 (Osprey Publishing).
25.Timpson, In Rommel’s Backyard.
26.John Hackett IWM Sound Archive, catalogue number: 12022.
27.Timpson, In Rommel’s Backyard.
28.Richard Dimbleby, The Frontiers Are Green (Hodder & Stoughton, 1943).
29.Timpson’s speech was broadcast on the BBC on 29 July 1942.
30.Ibid.
Chapter 11
1.Lloyd Owen, Providence Their Guide.
2.Mortimer, SAS in WW2.
3.Jim Patch interview, IWM museum, catalogue number: 9961.
4.Timpson, In Rommel’s Backyard.
5.LRDG newsletter, 1986.
6.Arthur Biddle’s account of the Barce raid was in an unidentified newspaper clipping contained among the papers of Henry Horton, ex-LRDG, which were kindly donated to me by his daughter, Barbara Atherton, in 2014.
7.‘Against Impossible Odds’, Parade magazine (1 May 1943).
8.Arthur Biddle’s account.
9.‘Against Impossible Odds’.
10.Ibid.
11.Arthur Biddle’s account.
12.Kennedy Shaw, Long Range Desert Group.
13.LRDG war diary.
14.Ibid.
15.‘Against Impossible Odds’.
16.Ibid.
17.Lloyd Owen, The Desert my Dwelling Place.
18.Rommel Papers, edited by Liddell-Hart.
Chapter 12
1.Mortimer, The SAS in WW2.
2.John Hackett, IWM Sound Archive, catalogue number: 12022.
3.Lance Corporal Jack Davis’s journal, SAS Archives.
4.Ibid.
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid.
7.Lawson Papers, IWM.
8.Ibid.
9.Private papers of David Lloyd Owen.
10.Lance Corporal Jack Davis’s journal.
Chapter 13
1.Ron Hill, memoirs.
2.Richard Lawson, ‘All Change’, LRDG newsletter, 1982.
3.Ron Hill, memoirs.
4.Lawson, ‘All Change’.
5.Gavin Mortimer, The Men Who Made the SAS (Constable, 2015).
6.Ibid.
7.Ron Hill, memoirs.
8.Jim Patch, author interview.
9.Ibid.
10.Peter C. Smith, War in the Aegean (Stackpole Books, 2008).
11.Ibid.
12.Ibid.
13.Operation report, LRDG war diary.
14.Ibid.
15.Ibid.
16.Ibid.
17.Ibid.
Chapter 14
1.David Sutherland, He Who Dares (Leo Cooper, 1998).
2.Jonathan Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group (Les Martens, 2006).
3.Ibid.
4.Ibid.
5.Gavin Mortimer, The History of the Special Boat Squadron in WW2 (Osprey, 2013).
6.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
7.Ibid.
8.John Olivey, unpublished memoirs, SAS Regimental Association archives.
9.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
10.Olivey, memoirs.
11.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
12.Ron Cryer, LRDG newsletter.
13.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
14.Ibid.
15.Smith, War in the Aegean.
16.Guy Prendergast’s operation report, SAS archives.
17.Ibid.
18.Ibid.
19.Ibid.
20.Mortimer, History of the Special Boat Squadron.
21.Richard Lawson’s account appears in the LRDG newsletter (1979).
22.Ibid.
23.Ibid.
24.Ibid.
25.Guy Prendergast’s operation report.
26.Ibid.
27.Ibid.
28.Ibid.
Chapter 15
1.Jim Patch, author interview.
2.Ron Hill, memoirs.
3.Special Forces in the Desert War (PRO Publications, 2001).
4.Captain C. S. Manning, The Rhodesian Squadron with the LRDG (South African Public Relations, 1945).
5.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
6.Ibid.
7.Ibid.
8.Manning, Rhodesian Squadron.
9.LRDG war diary.
10.Manning, Rhodesian Squadron.
11.Ibid.
12.Murphy’s wartime diary, published in LRDG newsletter, 1980.
13.Ibid.
14.Ibid.
15.Ibid.
16.Ibid.
17.Ibid.
18.Ibid.
19.Ibid.
Chapter 16
1.Manning, Rhodesian Squadron.
2.Lloyd Owen, Providence My Guide.
3.Ibid.
4.Ibid.
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid.
7.Manning, Rhodesian Squadron.
8.Fred Leach’s account of the raid appears in the LRDG newsletter, 1996.
9.Ibid.
10.Mortimer, SBS in WW2.
11.Ibid.
12.Ibid.
13.Ibid.
14.Leach’s account.
15.Manning, Rhodesian Squadron.
16.John Olivey, memoirs.
17.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
18.Ibid.
19.John Olivey, memoirs.
20.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
21.Manning, Rhodesian Squadron.
Chapter 17
1.Lloyd Owen, Providence My Guide.
2.Ibid.
3.Gilbert Jetley’s account appeared in the LRDG newsletter, 1971.
4.Ibid.
5.Ibid.
6.Ibid.
7.Mortimer, The Men Who Made the SAS.
8.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
9.Lloyd Owen, Providence My Guide.
10.Ibid.
11.Ibid.
12.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
13.Ibid.
14.Ibid.
15.Ibid.
16.Ibid.
17.Ibid.
18.Alf Page interview, Rhodesian Services Association http://www.rhodesianservices.org/user/image/publication01-2010.pdf
19.Lloyd Owen, Providence My Guide.
20.Pittaway, Long Range Desert Group.
21.The interview with Alf Page appeared in the 2010 e
dition of the Rhodesian Services Association, which can be found at: www.rhodesianservices.org/user/image/newsletter01-2010.doc
22.Ibid.
23.David Lloyd, papers.
24.LRDG newsletter No. 1, author’s collection.
Epilogue
1.Mortimer, SAS in WW2.
2.Private video, author’s collection.
3.Author interview.
FOOTNOTES
Chapter 3
*Patrols always stopped for lunch at midday because this was the hour that the sun was directly overhead and cast no shadow, and so rendered the sun compass ineffective.
†In the three years the LRDG operated in the desert they suffered one death and one broken back as a result of vehicles taking dunes too fast.
‡AKA William Joyce, the American-born Irish fascist who fled to Germany in 1939 and spent the war broadcasting Nazi propaganda in English. He was hanged for treason in January 1946.
§It is worth noting that water rations usually forbade men from washing. One LRDG veteran, Les Sullivan, recalled after the war that Bagnold taught them how to wash using 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.’
Chapter 4
*The 37mm Bofors was mounted on a turntable at the back of a truck, and came to be disliked by the LRDG because of its weight.
Chapter 5
*Gibbs Dentrifice, or toothpaste, was the leading company of its type in Britain at this time, and in 1955 it was the first product to be promoted on UK television.
†In fact four of these men had evaded capture by hiding among the rocks until the Italians had departed.
Chapter 6
*Contrary to some sources, which state that Prendergast was a direct replacement for Pat Clayton, Bill Kennedy Shaw confirmed in his memoirs that Bagnold had already procured his former fellow explorer from England before the capture of Clayton.
†Later in the desert the two WACOs began to lose power due to the effect of sand on the pistons and cylinders.
‡On 18 September 1945, the Times of London published a letter written by Kennedy Shaw entitled ‘Arab Helpers’, in which he stated: ‘Twice the British advanced into Cyrenaica and twice withdrew from it, and at each retreat the Italians took vengeance, sometimes with great severity, on those Arabs whom they suspected of having helped us.
Chapter 8
*On the front cover was the LRDG badge, a scorpion with the words beneath Non Vi Sed Arte (Not by Strength but by Guile). The badge was the brainchild of Teddy Mitford, who during a pre-war expedition to Kufra had been impressed by the insignia of an Italian air force squadron of a black scorpion within a blue wheel.
The Long Range Desert Group in World War II Page 22
