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For me, its appeal was that it was an immaculate place, clean of people, taking into account that there were many very dirty people, in every sense of the word, in the Middle East; clean of flies; pristine sand instead of clay or limestone dust. It was also a quiet place, so quiet at times that one could end up straining one's ears for something to listen to. And it was beautiful too. Not at midday, when the hills seemed flat and dead, but early in the morning, or late in the afternoon, when they cast cool, long shadows, and the low height of the sun allowed us to appreciate the splendid symmetry of the yellowish dunes. . This is how William Boyd (Bill, as he liked to be called) Kennedy Shaw , in his work dedicated to the LRDG , expressed his experience of the desert, a territory where deprivation was the order of the day but which, nevertheless, became in a scenario dominated by the men of this unit, primarily exploration, although it would also participate in direct actions against the enemy, as Saul Kelly tells us in The Lost Oasis. Almásy, Zerzura and the desert war . When you think of the desert, heat and thirst immediately come to mind.
There is something false in the first of these deprivations, since the nights can be very cold (which is not necessarily a relief either), and thirst can be alleviated with adequate reserves of water. For Kennedy Shaw the worst was the Ghibli . “Many places have their warm winds: the Egyptian Jamsin, the Sherkiya of Palestine, the Harmatan of West Africa. Add them all up and B2B Email List blow them, with as much sand as possible, northwards, straight from the gates of hell, and you can get a rough idea of what the Ghibli in Kufra is like during the summer. Not only do you feel hot, not only do you feel tired, but you feel like every bit of energy has fled from your body, like your brain is trying to force its way through the top of your head and you want to lie there in a stupor. , until the damn sun has set.” Events like these could last for days and become a terrible test for the men of the LRDG, although our author will also come to recognize that these phenomena were much worse on the coast, where the passage of tens of thousands of soldiers had turned the ground into a constant cloud of dust, while in the desert it was “only” sand that riddled everything, and although the winds could blow up to km/h, they did so at ground level, so it was always possible to move . Long Range desert Group LRDG Eighth Army A British soldier watches the approach of a sandstorm next to his jeep , North Africa, October
Despite everything, training future LRDG combatants to carry out their missions in these circumstances was never complex since many already had the characteristics and knowledge of soldiers and, furthermore, there was no time. The New Zealanders were only to undertake two voyages, along with Bagnold , before being deemed fit for service; The Guards, for their part, would receive ten days of training, two of which they would spend in the desert itself, near el-Fayoum, with Commander Pat Clayton . One of the non-commissioned officers of Patrol S, formed with Rhodesian soldiers in January , will remember: “We were very lucky to have Bagnold tutor us, and we learned a lot more during the informal talks that took place in the evenings around the camp fire.” Survival Spirit Among the techniques learned in the LRDG, the fundamental thing was to survive in the desert , for which it was important to learn to conserve water (although once the discipline was acquired, each man could consume his ration as best suited him) and to take shelter. It was also essential to know how to orient yourself, since men could easily get lost or abandoned.
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