Inspired: Long Range Dessert Group

Y:Patrol takes its name from the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) which served within the British Army during the Second World War. The LRDG was an irregular unit who fought alongside SAS in the North African Desert. The Logo is based on their badge.

The LRDG was the brainchild of Brigadier Ralph Bagnold (1896-1990) a pre-war scientist-explorer.

The unit was initially comprised of volunteers from New Zealanders and were joined by men from India, British and Rhodesia.

The British volunteers, who came mostly from the Brigade of Guards and Yeomanry (Cavalry) regiments, were incorporated into their own patrols, hence Y:Patrol for the yeomanry.

Historically a yeoman was traditionally a freeholder of respectable standing, one social rank below a gentleman, and the yeomanry's ranks were filled largely by landholders and tenant farmers. Yeomen were expected to provide their own mounts, which represented a high financial barrier to entry and ensured that the yeomanry was an exclusive and prestigious organisation.

While the main British and Axis armies slogged it out along the coast, small LRDG patrols ranged virtually at will across the inner deserts of Egypt, Libya and later Tunisia.

Mounted aboard specially adapted trucks, LRDG patrolmen routinely travelled deep behind enemy lines to reconnoitre, carry out covert surveillance of roads, airfields and installations and gather topographical intelligence. Information sent back over vast distances by skilled radio operators.

Other tasks included ferrying agents and other units to and from their objectives behind enemy lines, as well as rescuing downed aircrew and escaped POWs. Later it struck up a close relationship with other special forces, most notably the SAS, with whom it closely cooperated.

Sadly, the last of the original LRDG/SAS troopers to die in was Mike Sadler (1920-2024)

He was played by the actor Tom Glynn-Carney the first series in BBC Rogue Heros.