New Zealand’s ‘desert pirates’ helped win North Africa for the Allies. Days later, everything unravelled. John Daniell explains why in the final of our four-part podcast series
The Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), a little-known unit of mostly New Zealand soldiers, played a decisive role in the Allied victory in North Africa during World War II. But just weeks after helping secure that win, many of those same men were sent into a disastrous campaign.
In the final episode of Desert Pirates, that extraordinary rise and brutal turn is laid bare.
In January 1943, Hawke’s Bay sheep farmer Nick Wilder led an LRDG patrol that found a new route into Tunisia through mountainous desert country. After the New Zealand Division used it to outflank the enemy and punch in behind their lines, the path became known as Wilder’s Gap.
Within weeks of this flanking manoeuvre, the Germans and Italians were forced into submission. Three hundred thousand were taken prisoner.
Field Marshal Alexander wrote to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on the day of the Axis surrender. While recognising the sacrifice of all the allied forces, Alexander singled out two: “Of the formations engaged, the desert raiders of the LRDG and the SAS formed – numerically – a minute part. But without their efforts, victory would have come at a far greater cost. Their role in the history of warfare remains unique.”
Unfortunately, this kind of praise from high-ranking British officers was going to ring hollow within months. Under Churchill’s orders, the British undertook a disastrous operation in the Greek islands – and because they were a British unit, the New Zealanders of the LRDG took part.
Between prisoners and casualties, the LRDG’s Kiwis lost more men in a single day on a tiny Greek island than they did in all their time in North Africa.
Ian Judge, who joined the LRDG in 1943, managed to escape through Turkey and make his way back to Egypt. In the final episode of Desert Pirates, we hear that, while he was hospitalised for exhaustion, he wrote a letter home expressing his frustration with the poorly run campaign.
Judge described it as “a complete and utter shambles. I don’t know how we’re winning the war, because these idiots at the top – everybody from [US Army General Dwight D.] Eisenhower down to me should be put up against the wall and shot”.
More than 50 years on, he was able to laugh about it. “Geez, it was a beaut letter.”
However, it would never reach its destination – wartime censorship saw to that. Still, the feeling was shared by the New Zealand Government, which demanded its men return to the NZ Division where they would be subject to a chain of command run by New Zealanders.
That political aspect – the decisions made by a civilian government around military deployments – is important to understand today as well.
We finished the series by talking with former Minister of Defence Judith Collins, who told us that, given New Zealand’s small population, “our Special Forces are quite extraordinary in their ability to make an effort and the effect that they bring about”.
New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) soldiers are often deployed on top-secret missions, as directed by the Government. Collins says ministers are conscious of the stakes involved in any deployment.
“We make those decisions at the highest level in New Zealand. So they go to myself and a group of ministers, primarily Cabinet, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, myself and you know, other senior ministers. These deployments are not treated as business as usual, and the knowledge of them does not go very widely, because of the absolute sensitivity.
“Special Forces are not sent into places because anyone can do it. They’re going into places that almost nobody can go into and come out of. So we treat it very, very seriously.”
Desert Pirates is presented by NZ Herald in collaboration with Bird of Paradise Productions.
Made with support from NZ On Air.