Sep 13, 2026 · 15 min · 8 segments
The Libyan Taxi Service: How the LRDG Delivered the SAS (Part 2) As the battle for North Africa raged, the Long Range Desert Group evolved from a small reconnaissance unit into a vital intelligence…
By the summer of 1941, the Long Range Desert Group is no longer a novelty.
Its road watch patrols and hit-and-run raids on isolated garrisons have earned it a reputation on both sides of the line, and on the 1st of August, Ralph Bagnold hands over command to Lieutenant Colonel Guy Prendergast and moves to a staff post in Cairo.
Prendergast, dour, precise, and himself a veteran of pre-war desert expeditions alongside Bagnold, inherits a unit that already knows exactly what it is good at.
What it does not yet know is that its job is about to expand.
That same summer a young Scots Guards Lieutenant named David Stirling is recovering from a parachuting accident and pitching Middle East headquarters on an idea of his own.
A small unit of parachute-trained raiders dropped directly onto Axis airfields to destroy aircraft on the ground rather than shoot them down in the air.
The unit is authorised.
It is named L Detachment Special Air Service Brigade, a deliberately misleading name meant to suggest a larger airborne force that does not actually exist in the hope of confusing Axis intelligence.
There is one detail in the plan worth remembering.
Whatever happens on the ground, the survivors are to make their way to a rendezvous point in the open desert where a detachment of the Long Range Desert Group will be waiting to bring them home.
By the summer of 1941, the Long Range Desert Group is no longer a novelty.
Its road watch patrols and hit-and-run raids on isolated garrisons have earned it a reputation on both sides of the line, and on the 1st of August, Ralph Bagnold hands over command to Lieutenant Colonel Guy Prendergast and moves to a staff post in Cairo.
Prendergast, dour, precise, and himself a veteran of pre-war desert expeditions alongside Bagnold, inherits a unit that already knows exactly what it is good at.
What it does not yet know is that its job is about to expand.
That same summer a young Scots Guards Lieutenant named David Stirling is recovering from a parachuting accident and pitching Middle East headquarters on an idea of his own.
A small unit of parachute-trained raiders dropped directly onto Axis airfields to destroy aircraft on the ground rather than shoot them down in the air.
The unit is authorised.
It is named L Detachment Special Air Service Brigade, a deliberately misleading name meant to suggest a larger airborne force that does not actually exist in the hope of confusing Axis intelligence.
There is one detail in the plan worth remembering.
Whatever happens on the ground, the survivors are to make their way to a rendezvous point in the open desert where a detachment of the Long Range Desert Group will be waiting to bring them home.
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