Syrett, David The Eyes of the Desert Rats

British Long-Range Reconnaissance Operations in the North African Desert 1940-43

Composed of personnel from the Coldstream and Scots Guards, British Yeomanry cavalry regiments, New Zealanders, South Africans, and soldiers of the Indian Army, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was perhaps the most effective of all the "special forces" raised by the Allies during the Second World War. It was capable of penetrating thousands of miles deep into enemy territoryheavily armed and equipped with its own supplies of fuel, food, and even water sufficient for weeksa novelty in military history. Drawing upon experiences gained during the First World War and on exploratory expeditions in the interwar period, the LRDG thus developed the capability to appear almost anywhere in the desert to conduct nearly every type of ground reconnaissance mission conceivable in desert warfare: scouting and mapping terrain, infiltrating agents behind enemy lines, or determining the strength and position of enemy forces with an extraordinary degree of accuracy and detailthereby enabling it to verify or refute "Ultra" intelligence. Equally vital were its skills in the art of desert navigation, which were demonstrated impressively during the outflanking of the enemy during the Allied advance westward from El Alamein toward Tunisiaan operation led by the LRDG. After joining forces with the Special Air Service (SAS)a unit comprising British, Free French, Commonwealth, and Jewish-Palestinian soldiersthe LRDG perfected the art of irregular, mechanized warfare deep within enemy-held desert territory. They attacked enemy installations of all kinds, mined roads, raided airfields, destroyed enemy aircraft on the ground, and inflicted casualties upon the adversary that stood in inverse proportion to their own remarkably low casualty rate. Drawing on meticulous research into original archival material, this book thus recounts the extraordinary story of how a relatively small group of dedicated men developed the methods and techniques to traverseusing motor vehiclesthe depths of the then-uncharted and seemingly impassable great deserts of Egypt and Libyathe "Western Desert"during the British Army's North African Campaign of 19401943. The Long Range Desert Group and the Special Air Service performed the extraordinary as a matter of course; for them, heroism was an everyday occurrence. Their tactics, techniques, and remarkable successes in desert warfare make them, to this day, a subject of great interest to military historians and analysts. Likewise, by exploring the question of how the deep desert can best be utilized for military purposes, this study remains highly relevant to modern military operationsperhaps even more so than at any other time since the Second World War.