Long Range Desert Group

Behind Enemy Lines in North Africa

W. B. Kennedy Shaw

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781848328587
• eBook ISBN: 9781848328594
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History

A "moving, exciting and authentic" chronicle of the British Army's legendary recon and raiding unit in the desert of North African during WWII ( The Observer).
During its two-and-a-half years fighting in North Africa, from 1940 to 1943, the Long Range Desert Group became the acknowledged master of the desert. This small, highly mobile force made a name for itself through daring exploits and vital reconnaissance far behind enemy lines. Emerging from the depths of the desert, the LRDG would raid airfields or attack Axis lines of communication along the Mediterranean coast—then vanish, only to reappear hundreds of miles away.
First published in 1945, Long Range Desert Group is a classic of military nonfiction. With its brilliant description of the desert's harsh beauty and its exciting chronicle of LRDG activities, it has lost none of its gripping, visceral power.
"A remarkable record, told simply, unpretentiously and with engaging humor." — The Manchester Guardian

CHAPTER ONE

ORIGINS

IT IS a drab, faded, little book, bound in one of those unattractive colours which seem to be reserved for the publications of His Majesty’s Stationery Office. On the outside cover is a stern warning about keeping it in safe custody and disclosing the contents only to authorised persons. It has no date but “internal evidence,” as the critics would say, shows that it was published in 1919.

Its title is hardly more exciting than its appearance—“Report on the Military Geography of the North Western Desert of Egypt,” by Captain Claud H. Williams, M.C., 1/1st Pembroke Yeomanry, attached No. 5 Light Car Patrol.

The first sentence of the Preface is commendably to the point : “The object of this report is to place on record any information in my possession, gathered in the course of desert patrolling during the past three years, that may be of military value in the future.”

You will ask why I quote all this. I do so because on the experiences described in this book many of the achievements of the Long Range Desert Group were founded.

Few people now remember the Light Car Patrols. The men who made them are forgotten though some of their names are still on the maps : “Williams’ Pass”; “Ball and Moore (1917),” written alongside a desert route; “Owston’s Dump”; “Davidson’s Pass.” The others have vanished before the proper conservatism of the official cartographers who have found Arabic equivalents for the old names. “James’ Peak” is now “Qur Hadid”; “Williams’ Dunes” have become “Ghard Misa’ada”; and “Partridge’s Gap” is “Fassulet Rammak.” But though their names may be forgotten they have a place in L.R.D.G. history.

In 1915, as in 1940, Egypt was in danger of attack from the west. Sayed Ahmed esh Sherif, the Senussi leader, had joined the Turks against the hated Italians, and at the end of 1915, with enemy money and equipment and directed by Turkish and German officers, the Senussi forces advanced as far as Matruh. For more than a year they threatened Egypt with invasion. The simplest way to deal with the threat might well have been to pay each Arab £5 a month more than he was being paid by the Germans, but Britain adopted more conventional methods of warfare and thousands of troops, badly needed in Palestine and elsewhere, were tied up in the Western Desert.

The greater part of these troops were horsed Yeomanry, unable to operate far away from ample supplies of water and fodder, so along the Mediterranean coast the Yeomanry engaged the Senussi while in the waterless desert of the interior the Light Car Patrols, specially organised and equipped for this sort of job, guarded the desert frontier and the oases. They were our pioneers. They invented the sun-compass and made the first condensers for their boiling radiators. With simple methods of survey they ran their traverses far into the desert, going out beyond the range of the old camel-explorers. The cars they used were Fords, the original Model T, certainly the best then available but hardly one which would be chosen to-day. Williams in his book praises the “oversize three and a half-inch tyres,” a pathetic comparison with the ten-inch sand tyres which the L.R.D.G. always used. But in spite of all these difficulties the Light Car Patrols did their job, showing for the first time what cars could achieve in desert travel. It is a pity no one wrote their story.

But if men forget the desert remembers. Often during our journeys around the Qattara Depression or Bahariya or south-westwards towards ’Ain Dalla we would find the trace of their narrow wheel-tracks across the gravel or the black, rusted food-tins at their old camps.

In 1917 the Senussi were driven out of Egypt and the next year the Light Car Patrols were disbanded. The desert lay undisturbed.

A quarter of a century later history was being repeated. From the west the Italians menaced Egypt. Though more mobile than the horse and camel-borne units who had fought each other in the Western Desert in the Great War, neither the Italians nor the British who opposed them could move their forces any great distance inland, for it was by sea and along the coastal roads and railways that they received their supplies.

But this time the inner desert was more important than in 1915. For the British in Egypt, in addition to a possible attack from the west, had to face the Italian armies on the east, in Eritrea and in Abyssinia. The Italian forces in the Middle East greatly outnumbered ours; there were only 2500 British and 4500 Sudanese troops in the Sudan in 1940 with no tanks, seven aircraft and hardly any guns, whereas there were about 500,000 Italians in Abyssinia and it was only General Wavell’s stupendous bluffing and, his ability to move his small reserves between Egypt and the Sudan rapidly and at the right moment that saved the Middle East.

Communications between Egypt and the Sudan lay through the Red Sea, or along the Nile Valley—by train to Aswan, by river steamer from Aswan to Wadi Haifa, and thence southwards by train. At any moment the Red Sea might have been made unusable by the enemy navies and the Nile Valley route was open to attack from the west.

Seven hundred miles west of the Nile is the oasis of Kufra. There, secure from attack behind the twin barriers of Sand Sea and Gilf Kebir Plateau, with plentiful water and good, communications to the coast and to Hon, the enemy could build up a considerable force. Beyond Kufra is ’Uweinat with its good though limited water and its landing grounds. From ’Uweinat to Wadi Haifa is a three days’ run over excellent going. In the summer of 1940 a force of a hundred or two determined men could have attacked and taken Wadi Haifa, wrecked the dockyard and the railway workshops, sunk any river steamers or barges and made a mess of the Egypt-Sudan line of communications at that point

From Kufra, too, is the line of approach to the Chad Province of French Equatorial Africa through Sarra and Faya. And through the Chad Province ran the West Africa-Middle East air route, the chain of airfields between Takoradi and Cairo along which so many hundreds of aircraft were flown when the Mediterranean was closed. An Italian force moving down from Kufra and, farther west, from Murzuk in June, 1940, winning over the hesitant French and capturing Fort Lamy, would have been very hard to dislodge at a time when we needed every man and truck for the defence of Egypt and the Sudan.

So there was a real need to know what the enemy was doing in the inner desert. Being Italian he was in fact doing nothing, but we were not then entitled to gamble on that.

How was this need to be met? After the Light Car Patrols had been disbanded official interest in the inner desert lapsed and in the early summer of 1940 there was no military force in Egypt capable of reaching Kufra from the Nile Valley. But the nucleus from which such a force could be created did exist.

For ten years and more before the Nazi war Major (now Brigadier) R. A. Bagnold had been the acknowledged leader of a small band of enthusiasts who found enjoyment in exploring the Libyan Desert. Their expeditions, beginning in the late ’twenties with week-end trips from Cairo to Siwa or Sinai, had grown into large-scale explorations in the ’thirties, journeys of five thousand and six thousand miles during which we covered most of the desert between the Mediterranean and the northern Sudan.

Our expeditions were all private ones, paid for by those who took part in them, and they cost about £20 a head per thousand miles. From so-called “official quarters,” in a typically British way, we received little or no attention, though I remember being sought out in London during the Sanctions “flap” of 1935 by a harassed staff officer from the War Office who asked me whether I thought the Italians would be able to move an armoured force along the escarpment from Solium to Matruh. As I had never seen an armoured force I expect my advice was of little value, and in any case the problem was solved by a surrender to Mussolini’s blusterings. There was an exception, however, in the Royal Geographical Society from whom we received constant support and encouragement. The R.G.S. had a real share in the successes of the L.R.D.G.

During those years we re-learned the lessons of the Light Car Patrols and added new knowledge of our own. Bagnold perfected the sun-compass, invented rope-ladders (now replaced by sand-mats) and steel channels (of which more later) for “unsticking” cars from sand, and with them forced his way far into the Sand Sea which Williams and his men had hardly touched.

About thirty men and women shared in those pre-war journeys, but six or eight of them had a much greater knowledge of the desert than the rest, having served for many years in Egypt with the Army or, like Clayton, in the Egyptian Government Survey. At the outbreak of war with Italy only one or two of these men had been sent to the Middle East. None were engaged in work directly connected with the desert. Had the Germans been in our place would they not have seen the war with Italy as at least a very considerable probability, have gathered these men together and set them to work in the country of which they knew so much?

In fact it was a fortunate accident which brought L.R.D.G. into being. In October, 1939, Bagnold was on his way from England to take up some routine post in East Africa. In the Mediterranean, still open as Italy had not yet come down from her seat on the fence, his ship was involved in a collision and put into Alexandria for repairs. During the delay Bagnold visited Cairo where General Wavell heard of his arrival and had him transferred to his own Command.

You may read in the newspapers of a year or two later, when they were first allowed to write about L.R.D.G., that the moment Italy declared war the Army sent for Bagnold, the man who knew more than any one else about sand, saying to him, “Make us a Long Range Desert Group.” The only true part of this tale is about the sand.¹

In November, 1939, and again in January, 1940, Bagnold made proposals for such a force but it was not until after Italy had declared war on June 10th, that his scheme was adopted. On this third occasion Bagnold put forward his plans on June 19th; on the 23rd they were approved; on August 5th L.R.P.² left Cairo on its first training trip and on the 27th was ready for action. But much had happened before then.

At the beginning of the war I was in Palestine in the Colonial Service. In September, 1939, I had written to the Middle East Command offering to serve in an area of which I had much experience, but had been told that it was considered inadvisable to take me off the job I was then doing—which was helping to censor the Palestine newspapers. In June, 1940, Bagnold came up to Jerusalem and asked me to join his new force. This was a chance which comes only once in a lifetime. Here was the Army proposing to pay me to do what I had spent a lot of time and money doing for myself before the war. In two weeks I was out of the Colonial Service and into the Army.

Meanwhile Bagnold had begun to collect a few more men who knew the Libyan Desert. Clayton soon arrived from Tanganyika. He had spent eighteen years in the Egyptian Desert Survey and had a knowledge of the desert which was unsurpassed. Of the other “desert trippers” of pre-war days Harding Newman was in Egypt but the Military Mission would not let him go, and Prendergast was in England and did not join us till six months later. But Bagnold had found Mitford, an R.T.R. officer who knew Egypt well, and who, besides Clayton, was one of the few Englishmen who had been to Kufra.

Arrival in Cairo put time back ten years. It was just like the preparation for a “Bagnold Trip” in the ’thirties and the same friends helped us as they had helped us then. Since maps of Libya and suitable technical equipment were not at the time available from Army resources Rowntree printed the maps for us at Giza, we borrowed theodolites from Black at the Physical Department or from Murray at the Desert Surveys, and Harding Newman “wangled” sun-compasses for us out of the Egyptian Army. When we wanted information we went to Hatton or Bather at the Egyptian Frontiers Administration or to Jennings Bramly at Burg el ’Arab. Shapiro at Ford’s did rush jobs on the cars; school-mistresses gave us books of Log. Tables and racing men their field-glasses, and in half-forgotten shops in the back-streets of Cairo we searched for a hundred and one (to the Army) unorthodox needs.

The first big problems were men and machines. All our early journeys had been made with Ford 15-cwt. “pick-ups,” first the Model T, then the Model A, the best car Ford ever made, and later with the V 8’s. Though the load which these could carry was enough to give a range of twelve hundred odd miles for peacetime exploring, their capacity was far too small for the guns, ammunition, mines and all the paraphernalia of war, and so Bagnold proposed to use 30-cwt. trucks. I was doubtful if these would be able to cross the sand seas over which we should have to operate, but Bagnold was right. The huge tyres now made—we used 10.50 × 16’s—and the higher horse-power engines enabled us to cross almost any dunes with loads up to two tons.

The Army had no suitable cars in Egypt but Bagnold and Harding Newman managed to collect them; some from the Chevrolet Company in Alexandria and others from the Egyptian Army. At Ordnance Brigadier Richards, a very good friend to L.R.D.G., gave us a high priority for the necessary alterations and by the middle of August all were ready.

After machines men. The New Zealand Command in the Middle East were asked if they would provide officers and men for three patrols and on the 1st July they agreed to do so. It must have been a hard decision to take. It involved a small but continuous liability against their own then scanty forces, and also the placing of New Zealand troops directly under British command. I think they never regretted the decision; certainly no one else ever did.

A newspaper article once described L.R.D.G. as “the bravest, toughest and brainiest unit of Britain’s great desert army.” “When,” it went on, “the decision was taken to organise the Long Range Desert Group for operations behind the enemy lines a call was sent out to all units of the desert army for volunteers. The call stated ‘only men who do not mind a hard life, with scanty food, little water and lots of discomfort, men who possess stamina and initiative, need apply.’”

The second sentence is hardly accurate as the initial recruiting was confined to a few units only, and modesty compels a denial of the first, but the qualities were some of those we needed. Brains, initiative, reliability, endurance and courage were probably of equal importance, though the L.R.D.G. man did not need his courage so often as the unfortunate infantryman suffering constant bombing and shelling up on the coast. But when, caught by enemy aircraft in open desert, he did need it—he needed it badly. Toughness without intelligence was of no use to us, nor was extreme youth essential; speaking without statistics I should say that the twenty-five-year-olds or the nearer-thirties lasted longest and did best.

There can be no doubt whatever that much of the early and continued success of L.R.D.G. was due to the speed and thoroughness with which the New Zealanders learned desert work and life. For it is not enough to have learned how to operate, in the military sense, in the desert, though that may be half of the battle. Naturally the driver must be able to drive in conditions entirely new to him, the signalman to keep in touch, the navigator to find his way, the gunner to have his sand-filled Vickers ready for instant use. But there is more to it than that. To exist at all in the Qattara Depression or in the Sand Se...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Chapter
• Appendices