Pat Clayton

Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Andrew Clayton DSO MBE (died 1962) was a British surveyor and soldier. He served in the British Army's Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) during World War II. He was one of the first men recruited by Ralph Bagnold to form the LRDG.

Clayton spent nearly 20 years with the Egyptian Survey department during the 1920s and 1930s extensively mapping large areas of previously unmapped desert. In 1931, Clayton was running triangulation from Wadi Halfa to Uweinat when he came across refugees fleeing from the Italian occupation of Kufra, via Uweinat and helped save many from death in the arid desert. Clayton had collaboratad extensively with Bagnold in the preparation and mapping associated with Bagnold's pre-war exploration trips.

At the start of the war Clayton was a government surveyor in Tanganyika. Bagnold had him returned to Egypt because of his detailed knowledge of the Western Desert. He was commissioned into the Intelligence Corps.

Clayton was leading "T" Patrol in a planned attack on Kufra when the patrol was engaged by the Italian Auto-Saharan Company on 31 January 1941, near Gebel Sherif. During the action Captain Clayton was wounded and his car damaged. He along with his colleagues was taken Prisoner of war. He was moved to the Abruzzo region in Italy where he was visited by Laszlo Almasy after Almasy's spy mission, Operation "Salaam", to transport two German spies across the Libyan desert to Cairo.

See also

* Bill Kennedy Shaw
* Zerzura

External links

* [http://www.specialforcesroh.com/browse.php?mode=viewiaward&awardid=266 British Special Forces Roll of Honour]
* [http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-1Epi-c2-WH2-1Epi-e-1.html New Zealand Electronic Text centre on the LRDG, 1940-41]
* [http://www.lrdg.org LRDG Preservation Society]

References

* "Desert Explorer: A Biography of Colonel P.A.Clayton" by Peter Clayton
* "Libyan Sands, Travel in a Dead World" about the travels of R.A.Bagnold by Ralph Alger Bagnold
* "Long Range Desert Group" about the LRDG by Bill Kennedy Shaw
* "The Long Range Desert Group" about the LRDG by David Lloyd Owen
* "The Hunt for Zerzura and World War II" about members of the Zerzura Club in World War II by Saul Kelly
* "The Secret Life of Laszlo Almasy" by John Bierman