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The Long Range Desert Group

The Long Range Desert Group was formed by Ralph Bagnold in 1940 and played a major part in the Allies victory in North Africa in World War Two. The Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) became the forward eyes and ears of the Allies and together with the Special Air Service played a secretive but vital role for the Allies.

The LRDG had two particular roles in the war in North Africa. They were to get behind enemy lines and act as scouts and gather intelligence to feed back to British military headquarters. To begin with, Bagnold’s new unit was known as the Long Range Patrol Group.

After getting the agreement of General Wavell to create such a unit, Bagnold was given 150 New Zealand volunteers, most of whom had a farming background. Bagnold believed that they would be more adept at maintaining vehicles in a difficult environment should mechanical problems occur.

The LRDG had three main patrols of forty men each. Each patrol was equipped with ten Lewis machine guns, four Boyes anti-tank rifles, anti-aircraft guns, Bren guns and Thompson sub-machine guns. Communication with base was maintained with the use of wireless sets. Their vehicle of choice was a Chevrolet 30-cwt truck. The first batch of these vehicles was obtained from the Egyptian Army or bought in Cairo. Each vehicle commander was allowed to modify his vehicle as he saw fit. The normal range for the Chevrolet was 1,100 miles and it could carry three weeks supply of food and water. In many senses it was the perfect desert vehicle.

On September 13th, 1940, the LRDG set up its first base at the Siwa Oasis. To get to this base, the LRDG had to drive about 160 miles across the Egyptian Sand Seas. Just two days later, the LRDG had its first experience of combat when a patrol led by Captain Mitford attacked an Italian petrol dump and emergency landing fields along the Palificata. Another patrol led by Captain Clayton crossed into French held Chad and persuaded the French forces there to join the Free French Forces. The two patrols met at Gilf Kebir, where they could re-supply, and travelled back to Cairo. By the time they returned, both patrols had covered about 4000 miles and had achieved a great deal.

Buoyed by such success, the War Office agreed that the LRDG could double in size to 300 men. The unit was officially now called the Long Range Desert Group (from Long Range Patrol Group) and Bagnold was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. Volunteers were heavily vetted for such difficult work, but Bagnold found the extra 150 men he wanted. They came from the British, Indian and Rhodesian armies. Their primary targets were enemy held oases. The attackers went in quickly and disappeared just as quickly. Evidence points to the fact that the Italian commanders in North Africa were bemused by what happened to them and even Bagnold recognised that “the Italian army was halted for months”.

The LRDG returned to Chad and, combining with the Free French there, fought the Italian in the region of the Murzuk Oasis. They also succeeded in capturing Kufra, which in 1941 became the headquarters for the LRDG. Bagnold later wrote that the temperature frequently exceeded 50oC, which, he claimed, his men found tolerable as it was dry heat. His main bone of contention was not being able to eat properly during sandstorms, which lasted for several days. Because of the hostility of the environment, few other Allied units got to the Kufra region. To all intents, the LRDG commanders there were de facto full commanders of an area the size of northern Europe.

In July 1941, the LRDG got a new commander – Guy Prendergast. Bagnold, promoted to Colonel, returned to Cairo.

Popski’s Private Army

History

At the start of the Second World War the British military in the Middle East looked for men who had experience in desert survival and knowledge of the North African desert. Vladimir Peniakoff was one such man and in 1941 he was commissioned as a Lieutenant in the British Army.^[1] By 1942 Peniakoff had been on a number of operations with the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). British radio operators having trouble pronouncing his name led to the nickname Popski which was given him by Intelligence Officer of the LRDG, Captain Bill Kennedy Shaw. In the autumn of 1942 he was approached by Colonel John Hackett and asked to form a small independent unit to raid behind the Axis lines. The unit was officially designated No. 1 Demolition Squadron, PPA.

From a small start of five officers and 18 other ranks, Popski’s Private Army eventually numbered 120 men, which was the smallest independent unit of the British Army during the Second World War.

Their first raid behind the lines in December 1942, nearly ended in disaster. Travelling from Egypt to southern Tunisia they were intercepted by German aircraft, which destroyed all but two of their jeeps. All they had left was what the men happened to be carrying. Starting back to Egypt, Popski and his men covered 4,000 miles (6,400 km) before making contact with British patrols.

Less than a month later they were back behind the Axis lines, conducting raids on fuel dumps and installations. On 19 March, 1943, a unit of three men accepted the surrender of 600 Italian soldiers that had been cornered in a wadi.

During its time in the desert, Popski’s Private Army was credited with the destruction of 34 Axis aeroplanes, six armoured vehicles, 112 trucks and 450,000 gallons of fuel. For the loss of one man captured and two wounded.

Italy

After Axis forces surrendered in Tunisia, the PPA saw action in the Allied invasion of Italy. They were part of the British force that landed at Taranto, where they were assigned to reconnoiter enemy forces in the region. They succeeded in getting behind enemy lines and capturing a German quartermaster, who provided details on troop strength in the sector. They also took part in raids in the Adriatic, on one occasion capturing the German garrison of Caserma dei Fiumi Uniti, killing 40 and capturing 152 men, for the loss of three dead and five wounded. In early 1945, the 700-man German garrison of Chioggia surrendered to a patrol of the PPA consisting of 12 men and six jeeps. The following summer, the PPA crossed the Sibellini mountains and captured the town of Camerino.

With the end of the Second World War Popski’s Private Army was officially disbanded on 14 September 1945.

Victor-Force    Establishment and organisation

In April 1942, when the Japanese drove the British Army from Burma and seemed likely to invade India, General SirArchibald Wavell ordered the creation of a guerilla organisation which was to operate along the frontier between India and Burma. This frontier ran for 800 miles (1200 kilometres), from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal.

V Force was envisaged as a “stay-behind” force. If the Japanese had invaded India after the monsoon season ended late in 1942, V Force was to harass their lines of communications with ambushes and sabotage, and to provide intelligence from behind enemy lines. The force was organised into six area commands, corresponding to the Indian Civil Service administrative areas, which in turn corresponded to the ethnicity of the inhabitants of the various parts of the frontier. Each area command had a Commander, Second-in-Command, Adjutant, Quartermaster and Medical Officer, four platoons (about 100 men) of the paramilitary Assam Rifles and up to 1,000 locally enlisted guerillas or auxiliaries.

The area commanders and other officers were rarely Regular Army officers; the qualification for appointment was more often expert knowledge of the local language and peoples. Some commanders were police officers or former civil administrators. Even some tea planters served as senior officers of V Force.

The Japanese did not invade India in 1942 as had been feared. V Force was able to consolidate itself in the wide area between the Allied and Japanese main forces. Bases and outposts were set up, standing patrols instituted and intelligence gathered and collated. By the end of 1943, the force had been reorganised into two main zones:Assam Zone, including Imphal and all the frontier north of it, and Arakan Zone to the south. Detachments in Tripurawere disbanded as they were deep inside India and unlikely to be threatened; an American organisation later took over the northernmost areas around Ledo.

When the Indian Eastern Army carried out a small-scale invasion of Japanese-occupied Arakan in early 1943, V Force provided a degree of warning about the movements of Japanese reserves to the threatened area.

Later operations. The threatened invasion of India finally happened in 1944. The V Force detachments forward of Imphal were engulfed. They could provide some intelligence of Japanese moves during the invasion, but they lacked supplies (the local dumps had been drawn down over 1943) and there were too many demands on Allied transport aircraft to allow supply drops to them. As a result they were unable to harass the Japanese lines of communication as had been planned, and had to disband or make their way back into Allied lines.

The Lushai Brigade was formed from Indian infantry battalions and several thousand of V Force’s former levies in the Lushai Hills, west of Imphal. Under Brigadier P. C. Marindin, they achieved great success against the lines of communication of the Japanese 33rd Division, and later spearheaded the Fourteenth Army’s advance to theAyeyarwady River west of the Chindwin River.

When the Japanese retreated late in 1944 and the Allies advanced, V Force changed its character. Small detachments of native-speaking personnel operated immediately ahead of the advancing regular formations, to gather short-range intelligence. Ambushes were also conducted against the retreating Japanese forces when possible. A very similar unit, Z Force established by Fourteenth Army operated further ahead, its parties being deployed by helicopter or parachute 80 to 100 miles (120 to 160 kilometres) ahead of the main forces.

Once Burma was largely reoccupied in 1945, V Force began deploying parties in Siam and Malaya in readiness for future operations. The war ended before they could be used in their intended role.

In the Arakan, V Force became involved in a local conflict between the mainly Moslem Maugh and Buddhist Arakanese peoples. The Maughs provided most recruits for V Force, the Arakanese supported the Japanese. Over the three years during which the Allies and Japanese fought over the Mayu peninsula, the Maughs engaged in a campaign against Arakanese communities, in many cases using weapons provided by V Force. In defence of the force, it can only be said that the conflict was no part of official policy, and possibly unavoidable in the situation.

Effectiveness. Overall, V Force provided a useful screen for the Allied armies in India during the stalemate of 1942 and 1943. It proved unable to carry out its intended role of sabotage against enemy lines of communication, although theLushai Brigade showed what was possible with assistance from regular units.

Regular formation commanders were occasionally scathing about the intelligence provided by V Force. One such was Lieutenant-General Geoffrey Scoones, Commander of Indian IV Corps. Concerning the arrival of Japanese reinforcements at the height of the Battle of Imphal, he wrote:

“Incidentally, the arrival of this Division or elements of it unheralded on this front is a pretty poor chit for our higher intelligence organisation. I sent in a long letter the other day setting out my views on the amount of money and manpower we are wasting on these hush-hush organizations and which, so far as I am concerned, produce nothing useful.”

Scoones was not referring to V Force alone. However, one of his subordinates at Imphal (Major-General Douglas Gracey, commanding Indian 20th Infantry Division) broke up his best battalion (9/12th Frontier Force Regiment) to provide his own forward screen, rather than relying on V Force.

For most of the Burma campaign, Allied formation commanders treated reports from organisations such as V Force as reliable only when a British officer personally gained the information. V Force was also hampered by lack of Japanese translators or interpreters to deal with captured documents. Lessons. V Force established certain principles in Britain’s handling of guerilla or irregular operations, which were to be important in later conflicts such as the Malayan Emergency. It was accepted that “civilians” with local expertise were entitled to command regular officers. Above all, V Force depended on the goodwill and loyalty of the local populations among which they operated, and made great efforts to gain this.

Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army

The Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA) was a resistance movement during Japanese-occupied Malaya during World War II. It originated among ethnic Chinese cadres of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Some units were trained by the British. The equipment and skills gained in guerrilla warfare against the Japanese served the MPAJA in good stead when it fought Commonwealth forces during the postwar Malayan Emergency (1948-1960).

Origins

Long before Malaya fell to Japan in 1942, many Chinese Malayans had been hostile to Japan, because of the Second Sino-Japanese War (which began in 1937). On December 18, 1941 shortly before the Fall of Singapore, the British and the MCP, formerly enemies, agreed to cooperate against the Japanese in Malaya. The British freed those MCP members they were holding in jail. They also gave some MCP members a crash course in guerilla warfare at 101 Special Training School (STS) in Singapore. These people then dispersed into the countryside to form an underground resistance force against the Japanese. Although small in number (about 165), they were one of the nuclei around which the MPAJA formed. The majority of the MPAJA’s soldiers came from the general population in Malaya, which was wholly occupied by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942.

The MCP also participated in the defence of Singapore; they formed the largest group in Dalforce, the volunteer army that was formed to fight alongside the regular British soldiers.

For various reasons, including the enmity of China and Japan in their recent history, and the racial policy pursued by the Japanese in Malaya (they were much harder on the Chinese than on the Malays), the membership of the MPAJA became predominantly Chinese, although there were significant numbers of ethnic Malays and Indians also. The MPAJA was closely related to the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), and was directed by the MCP, but the organisations were not identical and most MPAJA members were not Party members. The MPAJA was joined by isolated Allied personnel who had been left behind in the retreat, or had escaped prisoner of war camps.

Development

Cheah (Boon Kheng) has characterised the MPAJA’s struggle against the Japanese as having gone through three periods. From February 1942 until mid 1943 they “fared badly, lacking food, capable leadership, and sufficient training and experience in guerrilla warfare. Japanese terrorism prevented people of all races from helping the guerrillas. One-third of the guerrilla force was said to have died during this period.” The second period lasted from mid 1943 until mid 1944. This period “saw the MPAJA improve its organization, food supplies, communications system, and military training; consequently, it was said to have increased four times in size.” The third period, from mid 1944 until the end of the war in August 1945, was one of both “consolidation” and continued growth. Also during this period the British were at last able to help the MPAJA by air-dropping them supplies.

After Singapore’s fall, the MPAJA and the British in Southeast Asia had lost contact. The British attempted to reestablish communications by landing army agents in Malaya by submarine. The first party, consisting of Colonel John Davis and five Chinese agents from the irregular warfare organisation Force 136, landed on the Perak coast on 24 May 1943. Other groups followed, the last on 12 September 1943. On 1 January 1944, MPAJA leaders arrived at the Force 136 camp and entered into discussions with the Force 136 officers. “It was agreed that in return for arms, money, training, and supplies the MPAJA would cooperate and accept the British Army’s orders during the war with Japan…” However, Force 136 was unable to keep several pre-planned rendezvous with its submarines, and had lost its wireless sets; the result was that Allied command did not hear of the agreement until 1 February 1945, and it was only during the last months of the war that the British were able to supply the MPAJA by air.

The MPAJA benefited from the collapse of the Malayan economy due to the Western campaign against Japanese shipping. This cut off Malaya’s tin and rubber exports to Japan. The Japanese had already cut off exports to the West. It also caused hunger in traditionally rice-importing regions of Malaya. Many ethnic Chinese, faced with hunger as well as Japanese discrimination which on some occasions went as far as massacre, moved into the jungle and cleared land to grow food. They formed a large pool of undocumented people who could be persuaded or intimidated into supporting the MPAJA. The MPAJA initially based themselves in the jungle within reach of ethnic Chinese or Malay communities, who provided them with food and recruits. However, the Japanese countered this by engaging in reprisals against the villagers, usually by burning down the village. As a result, the MPAJA retreated into the foothills of the central mountains. According to Cheah, “Many Chinese farmers followed them and cleared large fields where they planted vegetables, sweet potatoes, and tapioca to feed themselves and the guerrillas.”

Results

Cheah, in his assessment of the military results of the MPAJA insurgency, says that “British accounts have reported that the guerrillas carried out a number of military engagements against Japanese installations. The MPAJA’s own account claims its guerrillas undertook 340 individual operations against the Japanese during the occupation, of which 230 were considered “major” efforts — “major” meaning involving an entire regiment.” The MPAJA claimed to have eliminated 5,500 Japanese troops while losing 1,000 themselves. The Japanese claimed that their losses (killed and wounded) were 600 of their own troops and 2000 local police, and that that the MPAJA losses were 2,900. Cheah believes that the Japanese report is probably more reliable, although only approximate. A previous version of this article characterises the MPAJA campaign as a “low-level insurgency against the Japanese.”

The MPAJA engaged in reprisals against members of the local population who collaborated with the Japanese. Because of Japanese policy, these tended to be ethnic Malays, many of whom the Japanese employed as policemen. Although the MCP and MPAJA consistently espoused non-racial policies, the fact that their members came predominantly from the Chinese community caused their reprisals against Malays who had collaborated to be a source of racial tension. They have been criticised for this and also for occasionally wasting time attacking the Kuomintang instead of the Japanese.