THE ORIGINAL DESERT RAT

Burritt was part of the advanced party to land on Juno Beach on 6 June 1944 and was awarded the Légion d’honneur by the French government in 2014, along with all other surviving veterans of D-Day

Damaged panzers in the aftermath of the Battle of Sidi Rezegh, November 1941. Burritt recalls not sleeping for days on end during the battle

It is February 1940, and a young British signalman is assisting his general in the Western Desert. The general is the second man to command a newly formed armoured division, and at that moment his men are relatively untested in battle.

At one point a local boy passes by with a pet jerboa. The unusual-looking rodent is quick and nimble, and it catches the eye of the general, who finds inspiration in its flexible mobility. The commander decides to call his new force ‘The Jerboa Division’, but the signalman, who has also witnessed the scene, suggests a catchier name. In that moment a legendary formation is created: ‘The Desert Rats’.

First assembled in 1938 as the Mobile Division in Egypt, what later became the Seventh Armoured Division fought in most of the major battles in the prolonged and hard-fought Western Desert Campaign, before moving on to campaign in Europe, in Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and finally Germany. The division became one of the most famous British forces of World War II, and the man who coined its distinctive nickname was the young signalman, Len Burritt.

Burritt joined the Royal Corps of Signals aged 18 in the ‘Abdication Crisis’ year of 1936 and went on to become involved in over 100 battles in 15 countries during the war. By 1945 he had been mentioned in dispatches twice for his meritorious actions in the face of the enemy, in both North Africa and Europe. His prolific service was largely due to his work as the personal wireless operator for the first commanders of the Seventh Armoured Division. The majority of his battles were fought in North Africa.

Now aged 99, Burritt tells the remarkable story of a long, harsh, desolate war where survival was often measured in pints of water or a simple Morse code message. It is a unique insider’s view of the British high command in North Africa from the perspective of the original Desert Rat.

Joining up

Burritt was born in Kent on 28 August 1918 during the ‘Hundred Days Offensive’ that would finally bring an end to World War I. His upbringing had been rural but practical. “I was in farming before I went into the army, and my dad won every major county show in England three or four times at least.”

Burritt learned to drive a five-ton lorry when he was only 14 and a motorcycle when he was 15, but a few years later he decided to join the British Army. “I joined a week before I was 18 in 1936. My father used to manage an estate, but I wanted a change of life and thought, ‘I’ll go and join the army and see the world’, and that is what I did.”

Aged just 17, Burritt was technically still a minor,