Chapter 9
*The actual designation of Stirling’s 60-strong force was L Detachment, Special Air Service Brigade, a deliberate attempt by MEHQ [Middle East Headquarters] to fool the Germans into believing – through one of their many spies in Egypt – that an airborne brigade had arrived from Britain.
†Oedema is frequently caused by famine and leads to swelling and discolouration of the skin, often turning it black.
Chapter 10
*George Matthews’ remains were never found and he is commemorated on panel 54 of the Alamein Memorial.
†Lieutenant General William Gott was the initially the choice as Eighth Army commander but en route to Cairo to take up his appointment in early August his plane was shot down.
‡In the view of David Lloyd Owen, later the CO of the LRDG, this was an imprudent decision. ‘From the moment [Stirling] began to get his own transport, and became independent of the LRDG, he began to lose his effectiveness because he necessarily had to concern himself with the mechanics of administration,’ he wrote. ‘David Stirling was a magnificent fighting leader, but the tedious business of worrying where the food, the ammunition, the communications, the fuel and water were to come from was something with which he did not want to concern himself. Up until then the LRDG had done all that for him.’
Chapter 11
*Wann spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He died in 1987 and Timpson – who returned to the Scots Guards at the start of 1943 – wrote his obituary. He finished with an anecdote about one of his many visits to Wann in his native Edinburgh. ‘I always feel dreadful about my responsibility for what happened to you,’ he told Wann. ‘You should not worry, sir, I never regret having gone with you to the LRDG.’
Chapter 12
*Stirling paid a high price for his hubris when, a couple of weeks later, his patrol was captured by the Germans, just beyond the Gabes Gap, a geographical bottleneck between the Tunisian salt-flats and the Mediterranean Sea. Stirling spent the remainder of the war a prisoner and Paddy Mayne assumed command of the SAS.
Chapter 15
*Bramley’s was the most successful of the four. Inserting without incident, they spent a week radioing back information to Allied Armies in Italy [AAI] HQ. When the radio died, Bramley led his men back safely having provided information of ‘considerable value to our advancing troops’.
†It was subsequently learned that Fleming’s parachute had failed to open because of a default static line and he had been killed on landing. His mother commissioned a brooch designed on the LRDG emblem and wore it for the rest of her life.
‡Irrefutable proof of the Order came in August 1944 when two SAS soldiers miraculously managed to escape from in front of a firing squad in a French forest, running into the trees as the Germans gunned down the rest of their comrades. The pair were found by the Maquis who eventually spirited them back to England.
Chapter 16
*The rest of the raiding party were picked up by motor launch on the night of 6 September.
Chapter 17
*Commander Montgomery wrote in his log that ‘midget thought sunk’. It was probably a Biber (German for ‘beaver’) submarine, which were 9 metres in length, crewed by one man and armed with two torpedoes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Bagnold, Ralph, Sun, Sea, War & Wind (University of Arizona Press, 1991).
Bierman, John and Smith, Colin, Alamein (Penguin, 2003).
Cowles, Virginia, The Phantom Major (Collins, 1958).
Crichton-Stuart, Michael, G Patrol (William Kimber, 1958).
Dimbleby, Richard, The Frontiers Are Green (Hodder & Stoughton, 1943).
Feebery, David (ed.), Guardsman & Commando (Pen & Sword, 2008).
James, Malcolm, Born of the Desert (Greenhill Books, 1991).
Kelly, Saul, The Hunt for Zerzura (John Murray, 2003).
Kennedy Shaw, Bill, Long Range Desert Group (Collins, 1945).
Lewin, Ronald, The Life and Death of the Afrika Korps (Pen & Sword, 2003).
Liddell-Hart, Basil (ed.), The Rommel Papers (DaCapo Press, 1982).
Lloyd Owen, David, The Desert my Dwelling Place (Cassell, 1957).
Lloyd Owen, David, Providence Their Guide (Pen & Sword, 2001).
Maclean, Fitzroy, Eastern Approaches (Penguin, 1991).
Moorehead, Alan, Desert War: The North African Campaign (H. Hamilton, 1965).
Morgan, Mike, Sting of the Scorpion (The History Press, 2003).
Mortimer, Gavin, The Daring Dozen (Osprey, 2011).
Mortimer, Gavin, The History of the Special Air Service in WW2 (Osprey, 2012).
Mortimer, Gavin, The History of the Special Boat Squadron in WW2 (Osprey, 2013).
Mortimer, Gavin, Stirling’s Men: The Inside History of the SAS in WW2 (Weidenfeld, 2004).
O’Carroll, Brendan, The Kiwi Scorpions: The Story of the New Zealanders in the LRDG (Token Publishing Ltd, 2000).
Peniakoff, Vladimir, Popski’s Private Army (Harper & Collins, 1975).
Pittaway, Jonathan, Long Range Desert Group (Les Martens, 2006).
Pitt, Barrie, Special Boat Squadron (Corgi, 1985).
Ross, Hamish, Paddy Mayne (Sutton Publishing, 2003).
Schmidt, Heinz W., With Rommel in the Desert (Constable, 1998).
Smith, Peter C., War in the Aegean (Stackpole Books, 2008).
Smith, Peter C., Massacre at Tobruk (Stackpole Books, 2008).
Special Forces in the Desert War 1940–1943 (PRO Publications, 2001).
Timpson, Alistair, In Rommel’s Backyard (Pen & Sword, 2010]).
Young, Desmond, Rommel (Fontana Press, 1989).
Author interviews
Lofty Carr, February to October 2014
Jim Patch, March 2014
Imperial War Museum interviews
Cryer, Ron, catalogue number: 16849
Hackett, John, catalogue number: 12022
Heys, James, catalogue number: 16977
Lord, Frank, catalogue number: 10383
Matthews, Rod, catalogue number: 10214
Mitford, Teddy, catalogue number: 29599
Patch, James (Jim), catalogue number: 9961
Seadon, Spencer, catalogue number: 19044
Stewart, Alexander, catalogue number: 13127
Sullivan, Les, catalogue number: 30098
Swanson, James, catalogue number: 11385
Thompson, Lawrence, catalogue number: 20495
Upcher, Peter, catalogue number: 8006-26
Imperial War Museum documents
Diary of Walter Milner-Barry, catalogue number: 16758
David Lloyd Owen papers, catalogue number: 15623
Harding-Newman, Rupert, catalogue number: 1373
Websites
http://www.lrdg.org
http://www.popski.org
http://patria.homestead.com/patriadsoWILDERN.html
Articles and Journals
Bigio, Eric, ‘Against Impossible Odds’, Parade magazine (1 May 1943).
‘Destruction of an Army: The First Campaign in Libya’ (Ministry of Information, 1941).
Dundee Courier & Advertiser, October 1970.
The Egyptian Mail, 14 February 1941.
Kenn, Maurice, ‘Ralph Alger Bagnold’, reprinted from Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, vol. 37 (1991).
Kennedy Shaw, Bill, ‘The Oasis of Siwa’, Geographical Magazine, vol. 22 (1944).
‘Long Range Desert Group in the Mediterranean’, NZ in the Second World War, Official History, 1948-1954, War History Branch.
Manning, Captain C. S., The Rhodesian Squadron with the LRDG (South African Public Relations, 1945).
The Times, 14 February 1941; 8 September 1944 and 22 September 1945.
West Sussex County Times, 3 December 1943.
SAS Archives
Diary of Trooper F. W. Jopling.
John Olivey, unpublished memoirs.
LRDG Diary (NZ Patrol), as kept by Lance Corporal Jack Davis.
LRDG news
letters, 1941 to 2000.
Mars & Minerva, regimental journal of the SAS, 1960 to 2010.
Papers of Ron Hill.
Report from Colonel G. Prendergast on his escape from Leros.
Churchill Archives, Cambridge
Bagnold Papers, GBR/0014/BGND
National Archives, Kew
File numbers: WO 373/8/500
WO201/807
HS 9/1036/1
WO 201/810
WO 208/5582-5583
WO 208/3326/2920
WO 201/799
WO 201/797
INF 2/44/87
WO 201/817
WO 201/818
WO 201/813
WO 201/729
WO 204/8495
W0 204/8492
WO 201/816
WO 201/817
WO 201/818
WO 201/813
WO 204/8459
WO 204/8500
DO 35/1696
WO 201/812
WO 201/738
WO 204/8460
T 161/1436/6
HW 1/1261
WO 218/90
WO 218/92
WO 201/2201
WO 218/94
WO 218/89
HW 1/648
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost I would like to thank Lofty Carr, Mike Sadler and James Patch, three of the handful of LRDG veterans who, 75 years later, still talk with pride and affection of their time in the unit. This book is dedicated to you, and your former comrades, who served with such gallantry and guile in the Long Range Desert Group.
I am also grateful to Grenville Bint for his assistance in my research, particularly in the supply of some many of the wonderful photographs in the book, and my thanks, too, to the SAS Regimental Archive, who allowed me access to their treasure trove of LRDG records.
Similarly, I am indebted to Jonathan Pittaway, author of the excellent history of the Rhodesian members of the LRDG, and John Valenti, who does such a fine job running the LRDG Preservation Society, and who generously granted me permission to reproduce some of his photos in this book.
Thank you to the staff at the Imperial War Museum, the National Archives in Kew and the Churchill Archives in Cambridge.
Several relatives of LRDG personnel exhibited great kindness during my research in unearthing documents and diaries, notably Barbara Atherton, daughter of Harry Horton, one of the unit’s most efficient signallers, and Ian Chard.
Thank you to my agent, Felicity Blunt, and her assistant, Jessica Whitlum-Cooper, at Curtis Brown for their diligence on my behalf.
Finally, I’d like to thank the team at Osprey on must be congratulated for their enthusiasm, efficiency and editing. Thanks for an excellent job.
First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Osprey Publishing,
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© 2017 Gavin Mortimer
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Front cover: Left: Two men of a Long Range Desert Group patrol, dressed in greatcoats, make use of available cover while on a road watch. (Imperial War Museum E 12434). Right: A Chevrolet truck about to set off on patrol from Siwa in 1940. (Imperial War Museum E 12373)
Here: Stuck in the mud: an LRDG patrol uses sand channels to extract a vehicle from a desert quagmire. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)
Imprint page: Two LRDG men aboard a Chevrolet truck, the preferred mode of transport in the desert. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)
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The Long Range Desert Group in World War II Page 23
