The Daring Dozen (26 page)

Bagnold flew to Chad and met the commander of the French troops, Colonel Jean Colonna d’Ornano, a tall red-headed officer, who demanded to know the purpose of Bagnold’s visit. ‘I told him frankly what I wanted – petrol, rations and water,’ recalled Bagnold of the meeting. D’Ornano agreed to cooperate but with a caveat. ‘I’ll do all you ask but on one condition,’ he told Bagnold. ‘You take me with you to Murzuk with one of my junior officers and one NCO and we fly the French flag alongside yours.’
¹⁹

The LRDG raiders, consisting of T and G patrols under the overall command of Pat Clayton, rendezvoused with the French near Tazerbo, 350 miles east of Murzuk, on 4 January 1941. As promised D’Ornano had delivered the supplies requested by Bagnold, and the Frenchman and nine of his men were seconded to the LRDG as they struck out west toward Murzuk. On 11 January they stopped for lunch just a few miles from Murzuk, and then the force divided, with Clayton’s T Patrol going off to attack the airfield while G Patrol targeted the fort. Michael Crichton-Stuart recalled that as they neared the garrison they passed a lone cyclist: ‘This gentleman, who proved to be the Postmaster, was added to the party with his bicycle. As the convoy approached the fort, above the main central tower of which the Italian flag flew proudly, the Guard turned out. We were rather sorry for them, but they probably never knew what hit them.’

In the maelstrom of fire that followed, the LRDG lost two men (including Colonel D’Ornano) and suffered several casualties, but the damage inflicted on the Italians was far worse. The main block of the fort was destroyed by a withering mortar barrage, and the garrison commander had the misfortune to return from lunch midway through the onslaught. Neither his staff car nor the escort vehicle made it through the fort’s gates.

Clayton arrived at the fort having wreaked havoc on the airfield, destroying three light bombers, a sizeable fuel dump and killing or capturing all of the 20 guards. Now he ordered the LRDG to withdraw into the vastness of the desert before the inevitable aerial reinforcements arrived from Hon, a large Italian air base 250 miles to the north-east. The LRDG paused to bury their dead five miles to the north of Murzuk, while the French contingent asked permission to slit the throats of their prisoners. Clayton turned down the proposal and the next day the unit headed toward Chad, overrunning a small outpost at Traghen as they went.

The British had been right to court the French in Chad. Even though D’Ornano was dead, his successor, General Leclerc, formed an effective alliance with the LRDG. Guided by T and G patrols (the latter composed of former Guardsmen under the command of Captain Michael Crichton-Stuart), a Free French force captured Kufra on 1 March 1941, but the success was a rarity for the Allies in what was an otherwise wretched few months. Rommel had arrived in North Africa on 12 February, and by the end of April the Afrika Korps had pushed back the Allies’ Western Desert Force (later known as Eighth Army) to the Egyptian frontier. The Mediterranean port of Tobruk was the sole remaining British possession in Cyrenaica.

In February 1941 Major Guy Prendergast, a good friend of Bagnold’s who had accompanied him on his expeditions of 1927 and 1932, joined the LRDG as its second-in-command. An experienced pilot who had also explored the desert by aircraft, one of Prendergast’s early initiatives was to form the unit’s own air force, consisting of two single-engine monoplanes made by the Western Aircraft Cooperation of Ohio (WACO) and bought from their private owners in Cairo. The aircraft, which were piloted by Prendergast and a New Zealander called Barker, were used to keep in regular contact with MEHQ in Cairo and with the patrols scattered across the desert.

With Kufra now in Allied hands, Bagnold moved the LRDG headquarters there from Cairo, a distance of 800 miles. The drawback to the relocation was that MEHQ instructed Bagnold to establish a permanent garrison there until such a time when the Sudan Defence Force could take over. It was a short-sighted decision and one that resulted in a frustrating summer in general for Bagnold and the LRDG, who were not by training or temperament a static garrison force.

At Kufra, Bagnold schooled his men in some of the more primitive ways of the desert such as how to eat a desert snail by sucking him out of its shell, and how to bathe without water. The latter intrigued the men, as Les Sullivan, an LRDG fitter, recalled: ‘He taught us to bath in the 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. We were not allowed water to wash, shower or clean teeth. All water was very precious and was necessary for cooking and drinking and so that was rationed.’
²⁰

Rations (which were packed in wooden petrol cases when the LRDG was on a patrol) were considered of the utmost importance by Bagnold and he issued his unit with a sample menu (with recipes) based on the food available. This consisted of:

Breakfast suggestions

Porridge (no milk or sugar)

Fried bacon with oatmeal fritter

Bacon and oatmeal cake

Bacon stuffed with cooked oatmeal

Bacon with oatmeal chuppatties

Tiffin

Lentil soup

Various sandwich spreads on biscuits

Cheese and oatmeal savoury

Cheese and oatmeal cake

Oatmeal and date cookies

Dinner

Stewed mutton with dumplings

Meat pudding

Each man was allowed six pints of water a day with one issued at breakfast, two in the evening as tea and one at midday with lime juice. The outstanding two pints were drawn by the men in the evening and were used to fill water bottles for the following day. ‘The men,’ wrote Bagnold, ‘are trained to use their water bottles during the day at their own discretion for sipping from time to time to moisten their lips.’
²¹

Fortunately, while Bagnold’s patrols were on garrison duty at Kufra, G and Y patrols were operating out of Siwa Oasis 400 miles to the north, and they spent May and June of 1941 reconnoitring the enemy troops’ positions in eastern Libya. The versatility of the LRDG was evident in July when, under the command of Jake Easonsmith, the two patrols displayed the full range of their desert skills. Writing shortly after the war, Bagnold described it thus:

It was decided to carry out reconnaissance with small parties into the southern foothills of the Gebel Akhdar with the object of getting some idea of the enemy’s dispositions in this area, 300 miles behind his front line, and also making contact with friendly Arabs. Easonsmith carried out a number of such journeys, dropping native agents and in some cases British officers on the outskirts of the Gebel and picking them up a few days later when their tasks had been completed. In addition he was able to collect a number of our troops who had been sheltering with the Arabs in Cyrenaica [eastern Libya] since our withdrawal in the Spring [of 1941]. On one occasion information had been received that a Free French pilot was hiding up near a well in enemy territory and a patrol was sent off to try and pick him up. They located the well but could see nothing of the pilot and were about to leave when a head appeared out of a dry cistern almost under their feet. This was in fact the pilot who had been reluctant to announce himself earlier as he thought that the party of bearded and dishevelled ruffians could not possibly be British troops. In an interval between two such trips Easonsmith, working behind but nearer to the enemy’s front line, successfully shot up a large Italian MT [Motorized Transport] repair section.
²²

In July 1941 the Sudan Defence Force arrived at Kufra to relieve Bagnold and the rest of the LRDG, which were then able to resume their offensive operations against the Axis forces, conducting invaluable reconnaissance in the Sirte desert inland from the Libyan coast. One patrol ventured to within 40 miles of the Axis-held port of Benghazi, bringing back invaluable information for MEHQ which was in the throes of planning a large offensive for November, codenamed Operation
Crusader
.

Since February 1941 the Germans had been arriving in North Africa to fight alongside their Italian allies, but despite the presence of the Afrika Korps, no unit comparable to the LRDG emerged on their side during the Desert War. Only once did the Germans attempt a mission behind British lines, a sortie led by a pre-war desert explorer named Count Ladislaus de Almásy, who was Hungarian-born and British-educated. But he discovered that most of the Germans under his command lacked the initiative and self-sufficiency to survive the desert.

Bagnold and Almásy had bumped into each other in the Middle East before the war and they did so again in 1951, when the Count told his British acquaintance ‘a strange story of an interview he had with Rommel in 1942. If true it throws a curious light on Rommel’s attitude even at that relatively early date. Poor Almasy. With his knowledge of the interior and of how to travel in it he must have longed to do what my people were doing. But Rommel was no Wavell and he was kept on a tight rein.’
²³

There were other reasons, of course, as to why Rommel didn’t raise a unit similar to the LRDG – notably constant fuel constraints and the fact that the British military installations were less remote and better guarded – but ultimately it was because the German mentality was not as individualistic, adventurous or innovative as its British counterpart.

But the British top brass could at times be just as narrow in its outlook as the Germans. In August 1941 Bagnold was promoted to colonel and recalled to Cairo to take up a desk job at GHQ. It was a decision that infuriated many of the LRDG, who knew their leader as ‘Baggy’. ‘He was a great lad and the worst thing that happened to him was that he got promoted and put into GHQ Cairo,’ recalled Les Sullivan. ‘He used to get his own back by any trouble we got into in Cairo – and we often did get in trouble, getting arrested by Redcaps [Military Police] – then we would phone GHQ and he would get us out of where the Redcaps were holding us.’
²⁴

On one occasion, remembered Sullivan, some members of the ex-Guards G Patrol recently returned from ‘Up the Blue’ (the slang for the desert) misbehaved in the restaurant/bar Groppis, one of the most glamorous in Cairo. The outraged owner of Groppis sent a letter to GHQ demanding compensation for what he claimed was £6,000 worth of damage. As the LRDG were blamed, the letter ended up on Bagnold’s desk. ‘He wrote to Groppis and said in flowery language that it was dreadful, etc, and we can’t have it,’ remembered Sullivan. ‘He said “I enclose a cheque for £6,000 and in future Groppis is out of bounds to all ranks.” He sent it off and in no time it was back again with a note [from the owner] saying “Please don’t make Groppis out of bounds and here’s the cheque. I’ll pay!”’
²⁵

With Bagnold in Cairo, command of the LRDG fell to Major Guy Prendergast, who proved himself a more than capable replacement in leading the unit during its role in
Crusader
, the purpose of which was to rid Cyrenaica of the Afrika Korps. The LRDG’s initial task in the operation was to infiltrate enemy lines and observe and report their troop movements and reactions to the main British advance. But on 24 November, six days after the start of the offensive, the LRDG was ordered to attack ‘with the utmost vigour enemy communications wherever they offered suitable targets’.

For the next few weeks the LRDG operated as guerrilla fighters, attacking German and Italian targets in three areas – the coastal road north of Agedabia; the Barce to Maraua road and the Tmimi to Gazala road. One of the most brazen strikes was made by Y Patrol under the command of Captain David Lloyd-Owen, who in broad daylight attacked an Italian fort at El Ezzeiat, killing two enemy soldiers and capturing a further ten. Five weeks later and 500 miles away, Lloyd-Owen assaulted another fort in Tripolitania and the night after ambushed an Italian convoy on the coast road near Tmimi, killing 11 soldiers.

Lloyd-Owen had joined the LRDG from The Queen’s Royal Regiment just before Bagnold relinquished command of the unit, but in that short space of time he was able to gauge something of his leader’s character. Writing in his memoirs,
Providence Their Guide,
Lloyd-Owen said:

He had such a shrewd understanding of the capabilities and limitations of human nature that he knew that he would only get the best out of it by devoted attention to what I described as the four fundamentals essential to successful desert travel, which are also the secret if any small behind the-lines force is to triumph.

These four tenets are: the most careful and detailed planning, first-class equipment, a sound and simple communications system and a human element of rare quality. Ralph Bagnold had learnt these things the hard way in his pre-war desert ventures, and he was not the sort of man to forget them when it came to applying them to war. It was his teaching of the men who served with him in the Long Range Desert Group that made us ever mindful of every minor detail in order to ensure success.
²⁶

It was Lloyd-Owen who was partly responsible for expanding the role of the LRDG in North Africa still further from December 1941 onwards. On the night of 16/17 November a small force of British paratroopers under the command of Captain David Stirling jumped into Libya, intent on attacking five enemy landing strips. But bad weather thwarted their designs and the mission was aborted with heavy casualties. Lloyd-Owen’s patrol rescued some of the survivors, including Stirling, and it was the start of a partnership that was to prove immensely profitable for the British and hugely damaging for the Axis. The force was L Detachment of the Special Air Service, and one of its number from the early days recalled the esteem in which they held the LRDG. ‘After a while we started to call them the Long Range Taxi Service,’ recalled Jeff Du Vivier, ‘but it was a joke the LRDG took well. They knew how much we respected them.’
²⁷

The SAS weren’t alone in their respect for the LRDG. Throughout their operational life in the North African desert – which continued up until March 1943, when the advance of the American First Army from the west and the British Eighth Army from the east trapped Axis forces in a small pocket of Tunisia – the LRDG won plaudits for their pluck and professionalism.