The Daring Dozen (25 page)

Fearful that the British in Egypt could be outmanoeuvred by the Italian forces in Libya, Bagnold drafted a memo for Middle East Headquarters (MEHQ) in which he suggested that some American trucks (he had great faith in American vehicles, having used them on his previous desert expeditions) should be acquired and used to reconnoitre the Egyptian side of the Western Desert. General Percy Hobart, commander of the 7th Armoured Division, approved of the idea but told Bagnold: ‘I know what will happen; they’ll call it a matter of high policy and pigeon-hole it.’ Hobart was right, and though Bagnold submitted his idea again in January 1940, it received the same response. Bagnold could do nothing but vent his frustration in private at the blinkeredness of much of MEHQ, writing: ‘The Cairo staff, rarely venturing beyond the cultivation, had long been a little frightened of the desert which they did not understand … they had always discouraged any desire among officers to get to know it. For there was risk; and casualties incurred in peacetime had unpleasant consequences for those in charge … all British Cairo grew anxious lest a man might die or a government vehicle have to be written off.’
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So in the spring of 1940 – instead of patrolling the Western Desert and plotting the disposition of the Italian troops who, while still officially at peace with Britain, were openly pro-German – Bagnold was appointed to the signal staff of General Archibald Wavell, Commander-in-Chief Middle East Command, and despatched ‘across the snows of Anatolia and Thrace (Turkish regions in the Balkans) collecting technical details about telegraphs and telephone’.

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].’
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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.’
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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.’
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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.’
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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; long 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.’
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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.’
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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’.
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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.
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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.