British Special Forces in WWII
The LRP/LRDG was created by Major Ralph A. Bagnold, a British Army Officer who spent the better part of a decade exploring the Libyan Desert before the outbreak of
hostilities in World War II. Based on his experiences as a peacetime explorer, Bagnold
envisioned the need for the British Army to deploy a motorized reconnaissance force, to
patrol the Libyan Desert in any future conflict that took place in the Middle East. In
many respects, Bagnold’s plan revitalized a concept that was effectively used in World
War I, when the British Light Car Patrols protected the Egyptian frontier from the
Turkish and German backed Senussi in the Western Desert.
