Great Britain. Army. Long Range Desert Group. - The Long Range Desert Group in World War II

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Osprey Publishing,

PO Box 883, Oxford, OX1 9PL, UK

1385 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10018, USA

E-mail:

This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Osprey Publishing, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

2017 Gavin Mortimer

All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Every attempt has been made by the Publisher to secure the appropriate permissions for material reproduced in this book. If there has been any oversight we will be happy to rectify the situation and written submission should be made to the Publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Gavin Mortimer has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work.

ISBN: 978-1-4728-1933-8 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-1935-2 (eBook)
ISBN: 978-1-4728-1934-5 (ePDF)

To find out more about our authors and books visit www.ospreypublishing.com. Here you will find our full range of publications, as well as exclusive online content, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters. You can also sign up for Osprey membership, which entitles you to a discount on purchases made through the Osprey site and access to our extensive online image archive.

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)

: 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)

Osprey Publishing supports the Woodland Trust, the UKs leading woodland conservation charity. Between 2014 and 2018 our donations will be spent on their Centenary Woods project in the UK.

www.ospreypublishing.com

C ONTENTS

D EDICATION

To the men of New Zealand, Britain and Rhodesia whose courage created the LRDG legend.

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 units 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, Id like to thank the team at Osprey on must be congratulated for their enthusiasm, efficiency and editing. Thanks for an excellent job.

INTRODUCTION

The desert campaign of World War I is a largely forgotten theatre in the minds of the British and their allies. One hundred years after the war to end all wars, the perception is of a conflict of carnage fought in the trenches of France and Belgium. Mud, blood and barbed wire. Of course, Australians and New Zealanders still recall with pride the bravery and fortitude of their troops in the Dardanelles campaign of 1915, but few are aware of the consequences of that failed campaign to knock Turkey out of the war.