EYES ON THE SAND THE LONG RANGE DESERT GROUP AT EL ALAMEIN

Watching and reporting enemy movements, the LRDG served as Monty's eyes and ears in the build up to the decisive battle  

- GAVIN MORTIMER

 

September 1942 was one of the worst months that the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) had experienced in North Africa. A series of raids launched by British special forces - including the Special Air Service (SAS) and the Special Boat Service (SBS) - against Libyan ports had resulted in the death, capture or injury of several of the LRDG's most experienced soldiers. Two officers, David Lloyd Owen and Nick Wilder, were in hospital beds recovering from wounds and one of the unit's best navigators, Mike Carr, had been captured by the Italians at Jalo.

The raids had been hastily planned and were too ambitious in scale, so it was a relief for the LRDG's commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Guy Prendergast, that their next task was a reversion to what they did best: reconnaissance.

That was the LRDG's original purpose, the idea which their founder, Ralph Bagnold, had sold to General Archibald Wavell in June 1940. He had submitted a proposal to the officer commanding the Middle East Command for a light reconnaissance force to penetrate deep into Libya to gather intelligence on the enemy: "Every vehicle of which, with a crew of three and a machine gun, was to carry its own supplies of food and water for three weeks, and its own petrol for 2500 miles [4,000km] of travel across average soft desert surface - equivalent in petrol consumption to some 2,400 miles [3,860km] of road," Bagnold had written.

Wavell thought it a splendid idea and told Bagnold to have his unit operational within six weeks. Prendergast succeeded Bagnold as the LRDG's CO in the summer of 1941 but the pair - both pre-war desert explorers - shared the same vision that the unit was essentially a reconnaissance force and not a raiding one, though it had the capability to launch attacks if necessary.