The Long Range Desert Group became legend while fighting a powerful enemy in an unforgiving climate.
Here s What You Need to Know: The Long Range Desert Group’s operating three R’s were reconnaissance, road-watching, and raiding.
“The problem,” a member said, “is to make yourself so much master over the appalling difficulties of nature heat, thirst, cold, rain, fatigue that, overcoming these you yet have physical energy and mental resilience to deal with the greater object, the winning of the war.”
The men of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) in the Middle East in World War II did this, and more. The LRDG had been variously described as “arguably the most dashing and successful irregular formation on either side in the entire war,” and “probably one of the most cost-effective special forces in the history of warfare.” It carried out some 200 missions across a desert the size of India, then through the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Adriatic; in five year