This is the story of the LRDG, an elite NZ unit in WWII. For more, listen to the podcast series 'Desert Pirates'. Short film by Bird of Paradise Productions for NZ Herald.
New Zealand’s “desert pirates” infuriated Adolf Hitler so much that he ordered their immediate execution. John Daniell picks up the story from our podcast
Alf Saunders was just 22 years old when he began driving trucks for the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).
The LRDG wasa highly specialised unit made up mostly of New Zealanders who carried out reconnaissance and raiding missions deep behind enemy lines in the North African desert during World War II.
For LRDG drivers, it wasn’t simply a matter of getting from A to B. Mobility in the desert – mastering the unpredictable terrain of sand and rock without any roads, few landmarks and harsh temperatures – could mean the difference between life and death.
Saunders says the Kiwis rose to the occasion.
“It took us three days the first time across the Egyptian arm of the Sand Sea, but by the third time we could do it in seven hours. That’s how expert we got.”
Alf and Pearl Saunders on their wedding day in October 1943 at Claudelands, Hamilton. Photo / courtesy of Ashley Maxwell
Before long, LRDG raids carried out far behind enemy lines had hit the Italians so hard psychologically that they called them “pattuglia fantasma”: ghost patrols.
“We’d run through an airdrome and shoot up what we could see, and then off for our lives. And we could go 200 miles at nighttime, no trouble.”
Working alone and alongside the Special Air Service, the LRDG forged a reputation that came with a downside.
“Hitler sent out a directive that any Long Range Desert Group or SAS personnel were not to be taken prisoners, but to be shot on sight.”
That raised the stakes on operations like the Road Watch, where the LRDG would hide out in cover near the coastal road that was the enemy’s arterial route to the front line. They gained vital intelligence but had to be close enough to get good information.
Saunders says the road watches were both “bloody monotonous and very nerve-racking.”
Alfred Milton Saunders, Divisional Cavalry, 2NZEF, aged about 95. Photo / courtesy of Ashley Maxwell
One day he remembers in particular. A convoy of Italian infantry had stopped “for a call of nature”. Alf Saunders and a mate were lying down in some low scrub a few hundred metres away when a group of gazelles broke from cover nearby. Immediately, a few Italians swung their rifles up and started shooting at the gazelles.
Saunders and his mate were acutely aware of Hitler’s order to shoot them on sight.
“So we were a bit hairy. If they’d have shot one of those animals, there were probably a dozen that would have run over to get it – fresh meat. They might have seen us accidentally, and we had no show of running away from several hundred of those buggers.”
That wasn’t the only near miss that he had. In fact, Saunders says, he was standing next to five men who were killed.
There are things, he says, that are “buried right down”.
“Sometimes I read or see something on the TV that brings a memory back. I get a bit choked up.”
