DESERT DAREDEVIL

Scientist, explorer and a pioneer of special forces warfare – Ralph Bagnold was responsible for creating a crack unit during WWII

- GAVIN MORTIMER

On 7 August 1940 two Chevrolet trucks left Cairo and headed west in the direction of the British military camp at Bagush, close to Mersa Matruh on the Egyptian coast.

The two vehicles contained eight men. Six were New Zealanders, under the command of Captain Pat Clayton, a 44-year-old veteran of the First World War. The eighth member of the party was Ali Fadail, an Egyptian whose connection to Clayton stretched back a decade to when a band of intrepid Britons had used Cairo as a base from which to explore the Western Desert.

After reporting to General Richard O'Connor, commander of the Western Desert Force, Clayton's patrol left Bagush and headed south into the interior of the desert. They arrived at Siwa Oasis, restocked with food and petrol, and set off. “The little patrol of two cars then struck due west, exploring, and made the unwelcome discovery of a large strip of sand sea between the frontier and the Jalo-Kufra road,” reported Clayton. “The Chevrolet clutches began to smell a bit by the time we got across, but the evening saw us near the Kufra track.”

For three days, Clayton and his men kept the track under surveillance, scanning the horizon for any sign that the Italians might be preparing to invade Egypt. They saw nothing.

Not wishing to leave any tell-tell tyre tracks on the Kufra track, Clayton sent some of his men on a foot patrol. They walked west for five miles (8km), returning to report that “no tracks fresher than several months old were seen”.