Brendan O’Carroll, The Long Range Desert Group in the Aegean (Pen & Sword, 2020)
What do you do with an elite unit when the war they trained for is over? You retrain them and send them to another war. That is approximately what happened to the British & Commonwealth Long Range Desert Group after the desert war finished in May 1943. Brendan O’Carroll examines the LRDG’s new role in the ill-fated Dodecanese campaign that ended bitterly for so many.
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O’Carroll surveys the activities of the LRDG in the desert before they retrained in the Lebanon as commandos and were ordered to the Aegean. The hub of the plan was to take Kos and Leros as part of a network of Allied controlled islands. It might have worked, but the Germans had other ideas. O’Carroll describes how the LRDG used makeshift motorized sailing vessels, called caiques, to move around the islands, dropping off troops to perform their missions and picking-up them up on completion. That was fine if the LRDG were used in the way they had been trained for covert missions, reconnaissance, establishing observation posts etc, things that elite special forces do, but when used as regular troops, they did not do so well. All too often, the LRDG found themselves outnumbered and outgunned, losing men killed in action and taken prisoner. When Kos fell, the Allies lost their only airfield, and German air superiority rapidly told against the ground forces. This included a swan song for the infamous JU-87 Stuka dive bomber, which O’Carroll devotes a chapter to for its significance. The LRDG also lost men in the disastrous attempt to invade Levitha, prompting New Zealand to withdraw its contingent of soldiers. For the climactic battle for Leros, the LRDG supplied 150 men out of 3,000 defenders, but they made little difference to what O’Carroll calls an ‘avoidable’ outcome.
The individual stories told by the men of the LRDG are the highlight of O’Carroll’s book. Their resilience and courage are undeniable, in combat, on the run from the Germans, and escaping their clutches even as POWs. O’Carroll leans into the vital roles played by Greek civilians in assisting the LRDG at the risk of execution, and the curious role of the Italians, now allies, is well-covered too. The inclusion of the chapters on the JU-87 and a regular soldier’s account of the fighting on Leros, while fascinating, make the book seem a wee bit disjointed, but they add to the overall picture of an ill-conceived campaign that Churchill should probably never have authorized. On the whole, this is a gripping book that WWII readers will enjoy.
