15. Layforce: The British Commando Outfit in North Africa
In 1940, the Italians invaded Egypt from Libya, only to suffer a humiliating defeat that culminated in a British counterattack that overran half of Libya. To save the Italians from total collapse, Hitler sent a German expeditionary force under Erwin Rommel in early 1941. Between German intervention, which occurred just as the British were diverting resources from Egypt to Greece, the situation in the desert was reversed. Suddenly, it was the Axis who were on top and on the offensive, and the British who were on the back foot and hastily retreating. To take off some of the pressure, the British decided to mount a massive raid to disrupt the enemy’s lines of communications and inflict as much damage as possible to Axis equipment and installations.
In January 1941, a 2000 man task force of Commandos, designated Layforce after its commander, Colonel Robert Laycock, was sent to Egypt, where it began training for special operations. An amphibious landing and raid on Bardia, a small Libyan town near the Egyptian border, was to be their first mission on the night of April 9-20, 1941. Backed by some tanks and supported by a cruiser and three destroyers, their aim was to disrupt the enemy rear by destroying an Italian supply dump and an artillery installation, which they accomplished despite losing 71 men. However, as seen below, it did not go smoothly: poor intelligence, inadequate foresight by planners, and mistakes on the ground caused more losses than enemy action.
