The Long Range Desert Group in World War II

by Gavin Mortimer

  From the start of July LRDG patrols began using the Qattara Depression as the back door into the enemy’s territory, undertaking the orders of Auchinleck, who told them ‘to do everything possible to upset the enemy’s communications behind the Alamein line and to destroy aircraft on his forward landing grounds’.17 These were the last instructions given to the LRDG by ‘The Auk’; he was soon replaced as commander-in-chief at the instigation of Winston Churchill by Lieutenant General Sir Harold Alexander, with Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery assuming command of the Eighth Army.†

  One of the first LRDG patrols to follow Auchinleck’s instructions was Robin Gurdon’s G2 Patrol. Since joining the unit the previous February, the 38-year-old lieutenant had proved himself an officer of initiative and endurance, forging an excellent working relationship with David Stirling, CO of the SAS, and like Gurdon a member of the British aristocracy. On 3 July Gurdon led his patrol west with the aim of attacking landing grounds west of the El Alamein line; they were accompanied by Stirling and some of his SAS raiders. On 6 July they arrived at Qaret Tartura on the north-western edge of the Qattara Depression, where they were greeted by Alastair Timpson’s G1 Patrol and also Y2 Patrol under the command of Tony Hunter.

  From the remote base of Qaret Tartura, Stirling planned to attack ‘the enemy’s landing grounds from Ed Daba to Sidi Barrani [and] the road from Ed Daba to the Halfaya Pass’ as the Eighth Army counter-attacked.18 Timpson was impressed by Stirling, a man he described as having ‘extraordinarily little fear, largely because he was so pre-occupied with how to execute an operation he was engaged in’. In addition, the SAS commander ‘liked to deal with people who said “yes” or “no”, preferably not “no”. Those who wanted to take a lot of time in coming to a decision angered him’.19

  Timpson was delighted to see Gurdon, but the pair had little time for a chat; at midday the three LRDG patrols headed off to the six targets selected by the SAS. Stirling would attack the airfields at Bagush, while Lieutenant Bill Fraser and Lieutenant Augustin Jordan would lead British and French parties to airfields at Fuka, east of Bagush, and a fifth unit would lay waste to Sidi Barrani. Finally, Earl George Jellicoe would jointly command an Anglo-French raid on the coast road from Fuka to Galal.

  The results were mixed. At Sidi Barrani it was discovered that the airfields were used only during the day, to bring in supplies on transport planes; Jellicoe captured ‘a few stray prisoners’ but encountered no vehicles on the road from Fuka to Galal; the attacks on the landing grounds at Fuka resulted in the destruction of ten aircraft, while Stirling and Paddy Mayne scored a first for the SAS by approaching Bagush airfield not on foot, but in a jeep and Stirling’s ‘Blitz Buggy’ (a stripped down German staff car). Stirling had improvised after discovering that the primers on many of their bombs were damp, so, unwilling to leave without attacking the target, he led his men onto the airfield where they machine gunned around 14 aircraft. The success of the attack persuaded Stirling that the SAS could become self-sufficient and no longer required the support of the LRDG.‡20

  Following the attacks, the raiders moved their base 25 miles west from Qaret Tartura to Bir el Quseir because of a fear they’d been spotted by Italian aircraft. Then on the afternoon of 11 July Gurdon led G Patrol towards the airfields between Fuka and Daba, their four trucks containing a party of SAS men led by a French officer called François Martin. The first 24 hours of their journey were uneventful, and in the late afternoon of 12 July they passed through some hills and out into the plain beyond. Dusk was approaching and Gurdon gave instructions for the trucks to disperse and camouflage for the evening. Suddenly from the west three aircraft were spotted. They were soon identified as Italian Macchi fighters. Unfazed, Gurdon clambered atop one of the trucks and gave a friendly wave of his arms, hoping the pilots would think them on their side. The aircraft made a pass, then rose into the air, circled, and came in again, this time firing as they swooped.

  __________

  The next day a solitary LRDG truck arrived at its base at Bir el Quseir. Most of the SAS soldiers had returned to Cairo with David Stirling to acquire jeeps and further supplies that could operate independently of the LRDG. A few remained, however, at the remote desert hideaway, sweating silently in one of the many caves sunk into the rocks. Captain Malcolm Pleydell roused himself when he heard three long blasts on a whistle, the signal of an approaching vehicle. ‘We grouped round it as Corporal Preston, the navigator of Robin Gurdon’s patrol, lowered himself down wearily from his seat next to the driver,’ he wrote subsequently. ‘His leg was bandaged; a dirty old bandage through which the blood had soaked and dried in irregular dark patches. He looked as if he was exhausted, and his eyes were reddened with fatigue. When he spoke, it was almost with a tired resignation in the very words.’21

  The first thing Preston said was that ‘Mr Gurdon is badly wounded’. He required medical attention, urgently. So did another member of the patrol, Murray, who’d been shot through the elbow. Pleydell grabbed his medical bag and within minutes he was in a truck with Preston explaining the sequence of events of the previous day.

  The aircraft had failed to inflict any damage in the first attack, and as they circled for a second strike, Gurdon ordered his men to seek cover. As his truck began to move off, it was targeted in front by one of the Italians. Gurdon was hit twice by cannon fire, in the stomach and the lungs, and Murray was caught in his elbow. The pair were dragged clear of the burning truck before it exploded, the bulk of their medical supplies going up in flames. There was a small amount of morphia, but it was clear that Gurdon’s wounds were grave. Pleydell had known Gurdon for years, and could scarcely comprehend that he was, after all mortal. ‘That sort of thing would not happen to him,’ he reflected. ‘He was too proud, too lordly, to die ungraciously like this in the wilderness.’20

  But any faint hope Pleydell had that his friend’s wounds were not as serious as Corporal Preston described vanished when they reached ‘a small saucer-like depression in which were scattered elevations and rocky cliffs’. It was there the rest of G2 had sheltered during the 45-minute attack, and it was here that Gurdon died. Pleydell realized at once from the bearing of the men who came to greet their truck. ‘When I inquired, they just nodded and pointed to two small stony hills to the south, saying that that was where they had buried him.’

  Four members of the Rhodesian LRDG patrol with the original caption reading: Dod, Joe, Skinner and Mac. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)

  Gurdon’s batman began explaining his officer’s end, but he broke down and wept. Pleydell put an arm round the soldier’s shoulder and then he, too, cried for his dead friend. The rest of the soldiers moved discreetly away. Eventually a French soldier approached and offered his hip flask. Pleydell took a swig. It was water laced with rum. ‘I wiped my eyes on a dirty rag of a handkerchief, and blew my nose vigorously,’ said Pleydell.23 Then he set about tending Murray’s shattered elbow.

  The death of Gurdon, and the acquisition by Stirling of 20 jeeps mounted with Vickers and Browning machine guns, signalled the end of the LRDG providing the SAS with a ‘Taxi Service’.

  In the first six months of 1942 the SAS, thanks in large measure to the LRDG, had destroyed 143 enemy aircraft. As David Stirling noted: ‘By the end of June L Detachment had raided all the more important German and Italian aerodromes within 300 miles of the forward area at least once or twice. Methods of defence were beginning to improve and although the advantage still lay with L Detachment, the time had come to alter our own methods.’24

  Indirect pressure may also have been brought to bear on Stirling to become self-sufficient by Guy Prendergast, CO of the LRDG, who was running out of patience with the SAS. According to Alastair Timpson, Prendergast was increasingly exasperated by what he considered Stirling’s rather cavalier approach to logistics. ‘One cannot blame Prendergast for being a little sour about the episodes when he had to cope with what went wrong in the administration of Stirling’s glamorous sortie
s,’ said Timpson.25 Timpson’s view was shared by Lieutenant Colonel John Hackett, a staff officer supervising light raiding forces in North Africa in 1942 (who would later command the 4th Parachute Brigade at Arnhem. After the war he recalled:

  One of the chief problems was to keep these little armies out of each other’s way … There was the LRDG practising its intricately careful, cautious, skilful reconnaissance … but the SAS would come out to blow up some aeroplanes and they were very careless about it. Lovely men, but very careless and they would leave a lot of stuff around, and they would stir the thing up no end and out would come the Axis forces to see what had stirred it up, and they would find the LRDG.26

  LEAVE AT CAIRO

  The reward for weeks operating behind enemy lines deep in the Libyan Desert was a few days’ leave in Cairo. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)

  A member of S Patrol on leave in January 1942 at the Rhodesian Club, with Cairo in the background. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)

  Some of S Patrol relax in the Rhodesian Club in Cairo. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)

  Ginger Low, Dopey Torr and Pluto Endersby in the Rhodesian Club, January 1942. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)

  Road watching for the LRDG continued throughout July into August, but at the start of that month Timpson’s G1 Patrol was granted ten days’ leave. Timpson, like many Guards officers, was frightfully well-connected and one evening found himself dining at the British Embassy in Cairo. On his right was Lady Jacqueline Lampson, vivacious wife of the ambassador, Sir Miles, and on her right was a brigadier in military intelligence. At an opportune moment the brigadier – rather impertinently, in Timpson’s view – leaned across Lady Lampson and requested his presence at his office the following day. When he arrived at the brigadier’s office, Timpson was told that, with the way the war in North Africa was going, military intelligence thought it might be a boost if an LRDG officer broadcast a dashing account of the unit’s exploits on the BBC to help boost morale. Timpson didn’t like the idea. It was anathema to what the LRDG, and indeed all special forces, hoped to achieve, ‘which was trying to be as clandestine as possible’.

  Timpson discussed the matter with Prendergast and Jake Easonsmith, who appreciated the reasoning of military intelligence but agreed that security must not in any way be compromised. The upshot was that Timpson ‘decided to do something as helpful as I could without saying anything which we presumed they must know or guess, and even [giving] some misleading remarks’.27

  Timpson was taken in hand by the distinguished war correspondent Richard Dimbleby, who was working for the BBC in North Africa. ‘It was of the greatest importance that London should have accurate information as quickly as possible,’ he wrote of the summer of 1942. ‘The need for frequent despatches of a reasonably authoritative nature tied me to battle headquarters for long periods.’28 The pair lunched together, and in the afternoon Dimbleby coached Timpson in a broadcasting crash-course. The talk, which had been written by a member of military intelligence, ran for six minutes and Timpson delivered it, so said Dimbleby, in an ‘excellent’ style. It began:

  Far from being all what the adventurous-minded would call fun and having a good party, being completely on one’s own with one’s patrol, often hundreds of miles behind the enemy’s forward positions, not knowing when one may run into his forces, we must be constantly on the lookout. For the reconnaissance work, when it is essential to avoid detection, we have to be particularly vigilant, often creeping past enemy occupied posts at night. But when on a raiding party detection does not matter so much, we can shoot up anything we meet on our way to our objective, and besides, if we see some enemy tracks we can generally pass them quite close without them suspecting that we are anything but their own people.29

  The rest of the address was in a similar vein, what Timpson described as ‘incredibly dull’. He mentioned no names, either of soldiers or places, and his account of the firefight in Wadi Cahela that cost George Matthews his life was told in dry, colourless prose. ‘Unfortunately the enemy somehow discovered our hideout at around midday, our sentry did not spot them until they came over the brow of the wadi side about 200 yds away,’ Timpson told his audience.

  They opened fire on us at once. They were Italian troops, about 30 or 40 ofthem. We were a good deal less. It took us some time to get the automated guns … because they were covered in bushes and nets. And to fire from the tops of the trucks meant being very exposed to the enemy fire. The first man to get to his guns, a Coldstream Guardsman, and one of my best men, got a bullet through his head, but we got most of the guns firing soon. Then followed a quarter of an hour of exchange of fire, with the enemy’s fire slackening.30

  C HAPTER 11

  COURAGE IN THE FACE OF CALAMITY

  The Allies and the Afrika Korps had both been busy augmenting their armies in the late summer of 1942. The former had been reinforced by the arrival of 44th and 51st divisions, plus two armoured divisions, while Rommel had finally winkled some infantry and artillery reinforcements from Germany.

  Captioned ‘Patrols Meeting at Bir Etla’, this photo is believed to have been taken in late 1941. (Courtesy of the SAS Regimental Archive)

  General Montgomery arrived in Egypt bursting with ‘binge’, his word for fighting spirit. He was confident he had the measure of Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’, and had already begun drafting plans for a big offensive in the autumn. But in the meantime Montgomery wanted to disrupt the enemy’s supplies arriving in the ports of Tobruk and Benghazi, despite the fact they were still woefully inadequate for Rommel (in August 42,000 tons of supplies were shipped across the Mediterranean to Axis forces in North Africa, 32 per cent of what the Afrika Korps required).

  What Montgomery had in mind were simultaneous attacks against Tobruk and Benghazi, and an airfield at Barce (now called El Marj), 40 miles north-east of Benghazi. A fourth assault would be launched against the Italian garrison at Jalo, a strategically important base for whoever was in possession. The first the LRDG knew about the attacks was when Prendergast and his officers were summoned to the office of John Hackett at GHQ.

  When they departed there was little enthusiasm for what they had just heard. The raids would be launched on the night of 13 September, except for Jalo, which would occur four days later. The attack on Barce airfield would be the only purely LRDG affair, led by Jake Easonsmith. Stirling would lead a 200-strong party to Benghazi, the SAS supported by the two Rhodesian patrols of the LRDG. A third raid, against Tobruk, was the most daring. It involved naval co-operation and the use of a small unit of Palestine Jews recruited from Middle East Commando into the Special Interrogation Group (SIG), alongside the LRDG, Commandos, gunners and engineers. They would attack from the desert, neutralizing the coastal guns, allowing two Royal Navy destroyers to land soldiers from the Northumberland Fusiliers and Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the harbour. Once these objectives had been gained, Y2 Patrol under the command of Captain Tony Hunter would guide the Sudan Defence Force (SDF, designated Z Force) to Jalo, where the garrison would be captured so that the SAS could use it as a base from which to launch a series of hit-and-run raids on the enemy’s line of communication once Montgomery launched his major offensive (El Alamein) in October.

  The whole plan was magnificent in its ambition, impressive in its audacity and doomed to fail from the outset. Such a large operation, involving thousands of troops, ran counter to every principle that had guided the LRDG and the SAS from their formation. Their success of the previous two years had been built on secrecy, speed and surprise. What the Eighth Army proposed was amassing in Kufra what amounted to a small army – including two tanks for the attack on Benghazi – and sending it out into the desert over hundreds of miles. Not only were the chances of detection from the air considerable, but assembling the force without arousing the suspicion of the scores of German spies operating in British-held territory was highly unlikely.

  Lloyd Owen was as ‘horrified [by] ho
w unwieldy the whole thing was’, as he was at the indiscretion of some of the raid’s participants. ‘It was very clear to me when I arrived [in Kufra] from Fayoum at the end of August that far too many of those who were to take part in these raids were talking too much,’ he wrote. ‘I had heard rumours; and I heard these through gossip at parties and in the bars of Cairo. I was very suspicious that security had been blown.’1

  Of the four raids, only the attack by T1 and G1 patrols on Barce met with success. The SAS were ambushed on the approach to Benghazi and forced to withdraw in the face of heavy enemy fire towards the shelter of a faraway escarpment. Dawn broke soon after and those vehicles still out in the open were picked off by enemy aircraft. ‘It was a sharp lesson which confirmed my previous views on the error of attacking strategical targets on a tactical scale,’ reflected Stirling.2

  The attack on Jalo by the Sudan Defence Force (SDF) augmented by 18 men of Y2 Patrol was also a fiasco, and confirmation that the Axis had learned of the attack. The Italians had been reinforced by a company of Afrika Korps, and all hell broke loose as the attackers approached the fort. Most of the SDF fled in the face of the withering fire, and the next morning Lofty Carr, one of the few men to stand and fight, was captured as he tried to escape. The loss of arguably the LRDG’s best navigator was a heavy blow. ‘The enemy obviously knew of the operation and were waiting for it,’ wrote Captain Tony Hunter in his report on the raid.

  Unlike the operations against Benghazi and Jalo, the raiders tasked with attacking Tobruk reached their target without incident, having been escorted from Kufra by David Lloyd Owen’s Y1 Patrol. The LRDG wouldn’t be participating in the assault: they were to wait at a pre-arranged RV for the raiders (known as B Force), who made the final approach to Tobruk in four trucks daubed with the insignia of the Afrika Korps. The German soldiers on board the trucks were actually German Jews belonging to the Special Interrogation Group and the British prisoners they were supposedly guarding were actually British Commandos, their weapons concealed in the vehicles.