‘Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’
These words, first quoted by Saint Matthew, were quoted again by Winston Churchill in his Christmas signal to General Sir Archibald Wavell in December 1940. With his genius for weighing the political significance of military events, Churchill knew that the Army of the Nile, then pausing on the frontier of Libya after its victory at Sidi Barrani, must go on.
It was only six months since Dunkirk. That dark night might have been long drawn-out if the R.A.F. fighter pilots in the Battle for Britain had not scattered the then-unbroken clouds of defeat and let in the dawn. Yet it was a grey dawn of foreboding storm-clouds, from which the Axis lightning might strike any time – at Britain, at Suez.
The first shaft of light came in through the back door. Hunted from the Eastern Mediterranean by Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham’s fleet, the Italian Navy took shelter behind Taranto Harbour’s guns. But on the night of November 11th, 1940, the Fleet Air Arm reached out to the Italian lair, sank a battleship and two cruisers, and left two battleships beached. For twenty-four hours Cunningham trailed his coat on Mussolini’s doorstep, but the Italian Navy stayed inside. With Cunningham commanding the sea, Wavell could attack on land with greater hope of victory.
Before Christmas the Middle East sun was beginning to show above the horizon. Two-thirds of Mussolini’s Tenth Army, which had been poised to strike for Suez, had been captured at Sidi Barrani or shut up in Bardia. For the time being the threat to Egypt was scotched. With Bardia taken, Wavell’s immediate military objective would be gained. Mussolini could not strike again with the small Italian forces still at large in Cyrenaica, and Cunningham’s ships would see to it that he was not swiftly reinforced. Wavell had little to gain for the defence on Suez in going beyond Bardia and thus adding to the strain on his over-taxed resources of men and material, already in action on three continents from Malta to Aden, from the Sudan to Albania.
Taking a world view, however, Churchill knew that the Army of the Nile could not stop. The Italians, reeling under the blow of Sidi Barrani, must be driven to the ropes. Part of Mussolini’s Empire must be conquered under his very nose; the destruction of his Army must go on till his humiliation was complete. With the Greeks pursuing the Italians into Albania, the British could not afford to call a halt on the Libyan border.
Nor were the British people in a mood for halting. After the defeats and sufferings of the past year it was not enough to beat off the enemy attack on Suez. They wanted to see their own troops sweep through Axis territory, as the Germans had swept through Europe. If the British people were to go on ‘taking it’ through 1941, as they had during the latter part of 1940, they needed the stimulus of a striking victory. Men and women working in the bombed factories of Britain looked for a sign that the arms they had endured so much to fashion really were the tools of victory. America, still torn by dissension, must be shown that the cause she was asked to support was far from being lost.
Most important, a strong threat must be established to the Axis in North Africa before spring brought back ‘invasion weather’ to the English Channel. Before then German attention must be turned to the Mediterranean and away from Britain. Knowing all this Churchill might well say to his Middle East Commander-in-Chief – as he did – ‘Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.’
At noon on January 5th, 1941, Italian resistance at Bardia ended. By dawn next morning Wavell’s vanguard was knocking at the door of Tobruk. But whether or not Mussolini’s Libyan Empire would be opened to him depended on what happened at that doorway.
Wavell’s desert commander was Lieutenant-General Richard O’Connor – a wisp of a man, with a bold spirit and a shrewd brain. O’Connor knew – as Rommel found out later – that no force which by-passed Tobruk could advance far beyond it. The ‘Imperial Army of the Nile’, which was really little more than O’Connor’s 13th Corps, had not enough motor transport to maintain its two divisions further than a hundred miles from the nearest port or railhead. Using the Sollum harbour and Bardia’s water supply O’Connor’s forces could attack Tobruk, but they could not advance the next stage to Derna until they had access to the water and harbour of Tobruk. There was certainly not the transport to supply one force containing Tobruk and another continuing westward.
Mussolini’s Libyan Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, still had enough troops to give serious opposition to O’Connor’s advance. At Tobruk and Derna he had two infantry divisions and an armoured force with 120 new medium tanks. He had more medium tanks than O’Connor. He had twice as many guns. In his 13th Corps O’Connor had only the 7th British Armoured Division, the 6th Australian Infantry Division, and a small reserve of British infantry, artillery, machine-guns and heavy ‘I’ tanks.1 He had fewer men, but these had a clear advantage in training, skill and spirit, and in addition the British had command of the sea and superiority in the air.
Nevertheless, O’Connor could not risk the inevitably heavy losses of an immediate assault on Tobruk, for the Italians had prepared it as their main fortress for the defence of Cyrenaica. After Bardia it took a fortnight to gather the necessary forces and supplies for the next attack. Preparations, however, were delayed more by the weather than by the Italians.
Every few days during this fortnight sandstorms clogged the British supply lines. Swirling dust blotted out everything and brought work and traffic almost to a standstill. I was caught in one of these storms on January 15th on the Sidi Barrani–Tobruk road. It was thicker than the worst London fog. You could not see a man ten yards in front of you, and even the sun was browned out.
In Sollum harbour that day, troops unloading supply ships could barely see to work. On the road up the cliff behind them, a captured 10-ton truck missed a sharp turn and plunged into space. Over the beds of the hospital in Bardia, the storm spread an extra blanket. Along the road between Bardia and Tobruk one of the few vehicles which tried to move got off the tarmac and blew up on a thermos bomb. Around Gambut drome thirty-eight miles east of Tobruk, reconnaissance aircraft, which should have been taking photographs or spotting for the artillery, were grounded. In the wadis near Gambut, ordnance engineers had to lash tarpaulins over the precious ‘I’ tanks they had been overhauling, and stop work. On the bare plateau outside Tobruk, Australian and British troops huddled in trucks with anti-gas goggles over their eyes, handkerchiefs across their noses and mouths, or lay in slit-trenches with blankets over their heads while the scourging sand steadily silted in. Preparations for the attack came almost to a halt.
The sandstorm died at dusk. Next morning was bright and clear and the road was packed with traffic making up for lost time. On the shell-torn road between Sollum and Bardia we overtook a long convoy of Italian Diesels driven by dusty, unshaven Diggers. The trucks still bore their Italian markings, but the Australians had given them new numbers – ‘Wop 69’, ‘Wop 73’ – and new names – ‘Dago Dragon’, ‘Spaghetti Sue’, ‘Benito’s Bus’. Without the hundreds of vehicles captured at Sidi Barrani and Bardia, the speed of the advance through Cyrenaica could never have been maintained.
Inside the Bardia defences, a ‘Mobile Bath and Decontamination Unit’ had set up showers at an Italian water-point beside the road. A convoy had stopped to let some grimy gunners have their last shower until Tobruk fell. At the water-point two huge captured water-trucks were filling up. Near by a military policeman was questioning westbound drivers – ‘Got any water? Fill your tins or take two from here. Up there the boys are on half a gallon a day for everything.’
A mile out of Bardia a blue enamel sign said TOBRUCH 119 KM. Underneath it was a warning – KEEP TO THE ROAD: BEWARE THERMOS BOMBS.2 Four or five trucks had been blown up already by these bombs, which Italian aircraft had scattered alongside the road.
For the first fifteen miles the road was either pock-marked by shelling or broken by enemy demolition. From there onwards it was a smooth, black highway, stretching like a liquorice strap across the desert. A motley collection of British and captured vehicles streamed westward. Ten-ton Italian Diesels ground laboriously on under 12- and 15-ton loads; staff cars, light trucks and empty ambulances sped past; dust-laden dispatch riders on Italian motor-bikes wove their way in and out among the traffic fast and slow, overtaking everything. Along a desert track, clear of thermos bombs, a few Matildas and some reconditioned Italian tanks rolled slowly towards Tobruk, husbanding their tracks and engines. The road was an ideal strafing target, but the R.A.F. ruled the skies. From time to time Hurricanes on road patrol roared past just above the telegraph poles.
Nothing checked the westbound traffic until it came to a barricade across the road and a sign –
If you lika da spaghetti – KEEP GOING. Next stop TOBRUK – 27 Kms.
Fifteen miles to the town, but only four to the fortified perimeter. From this road block, however, you could see nothing of the defences. Even a couple of miles closer all that could be picked up was the outline of barbed wire etched against the skyline. On every side the flat and featureless desert swept away to the horizon. Every yard of the level plateau was covered by Italian machine-guns, firing from concrete posts, flush with the ground and invisible even from a few hundred yards. They were hard to get at and hard to see, but nothing restricted their fire, nothing blocked their view except darkness or duststorm. For the attacker there was no cover. He could be seen a mile or more from the defences and could be covered by fire all the way in.
That was Tobruk’s strength. It was not a natural fortress. Its defences had been hewn from the uncompromising desert at tremendous cost. The Italians had fortified this piece of wasteland because here there is a harbour and a few springs of moderately pure water – the only good harbour between Bengazi and Alexandria; the only good water supply between Derna and Mersa Matruh.
The harbour is the heart of the Fortress. The defences built to protect it run in a rough semicircle across the desert from the coast eight miles east of the harbour to the coast again nine miles west of it. This fortified semicircle makes a perimeter thirty miles long, enclosing an area roughly the size of Adelaide and its suburbs. The harbour is not large – only two and a quarter miles long and a mile wide – but it is safe and fairly deep. Its northern shore is protected by a high tongue-shaped promontory, on the slopes of which the Italians built the garrison town of Tobruk – a cluster of little white houses, big concrete barracks and other naval and military installations covering an area about half a mile by a mile.
Between the high coastal cliffs and the perimeter the desert plateau rises in three steps – each step leading to a flat shelf a mile or two wide before the next escarpment carries the plateau another fifty to a hundred feet higher. The edge of these escarpments is broken by a series of rough wadis, useful for concealing artillery and headquarters.
The coastal cliffs are also broken by wadis and several of these, with their reliable wells and occasional clump of thirsty palms, might almost pass for oases. These are the least unpleasant places in the Fortress, for in addition they open on to sheltered beaches of white sand. Elsewhere there is a wasteland of rock and bare, brown earth bound together by stubby, thorny camel-bush. It is a hard, cruel and parched land and even the ten inches of rain, which reputedly fall each year, often leave the desert two or three miles inland bone dry. There nothing lays the dust or gives shade from the fierce summer sun or shelter from the winter’s bitter wind.
Around the 30-mile perimeter the Italians by January 1941 had drilled and blasted a fairly strong defensive system. First there was a double wire fence – five feet high. Outside this they had begun to dig an anti-tank ditch. Where it was finished, it was twenty feet wide and twelve feet deep and in most places it had been cut out of solid rock. In the southern sector, however, for four miles east of the El Adem road the ditch was uncompleted and very shallow. In the western sector there was no ditch at all, although a deep wadi running five miles inland was incorporated in the defences and provided a natural tank trap. Where the ditch was unfinished or non-existent, the Italians had laid minefields, but they had made the mistake of laying these as much as 150 yards in front of the wire. To stop engineers coming forward at night and disarming the mines, however, they had put down a belt of ‘booby-traps’ in front of the minefields.
The perimeter was covered by two lines of strongpoints – 128 in all. The forward series were right on the wire, 600 to 800 yards apart. Some 500 yards behind them ran a second series which covered the gaps between the forward posts. All posts were protected by individual barbed-wire fences, and each of the forward ones was surrounded by a circular anti-tank ditch as well.
The posts were not linked by any connecting trenches, but could support each other with fire which was linked to cover the barbed wire and the anti-tank trench or minefields and to sweep the plateau for hundreds of yards into no-man’s-land. The front was also covered by field and medium guns emplaced several miles behind the perimeter.
Each strongpoint had two or three machine-guns and an anti-tank or light field gun. Some had a mortar as well and certain key posts had twice this fire power. The weapons were emplaced in circular pits, each roughly four feet deep and six feet wide, about twenty yards apart and connected by deep trenches. Opening off these were bomb- and shell-proof ammunition chambers, command posts and cramped sleeping quarters for about twenty men.
Although the posts were concreted, they were not pillboxes. Concrete, which should have been used to roof the fire positions, had been put into the floors and sides of the pits and trenches. The posts, like those at Bardia, were more funk-holes than fighting trenches. They had insufficient fire positions, and those that there were, had no overhead cover for the troops who manned them. But there was full protection for those who stayed below.
The defence of Tobruk was organized in part by the elusive General Bergonzoli, nicknamed ‘Electric Beard’ by his troops when they were ‘non-intervening’ in Spain. Already he had escaped the Australian clutches once at Bardia, where he had been in command until the last night. Then, realizing the position was hopeless, he and a few of his staff had walked out through the British lines and after five days had reached Tobruk.
There he found 72-year-old General Petasso Manella in command of a garrison of 25 000,3 strong in artillery but weak in infantry. His main force was the 61st Division under General Della Mura, but its six battalions (plus two odd battalions from other divisions) were barely sufficient to man the 30-mile perimeter. At Bardia Bergonzoli had found that even with twenty-two battalions he could not hold a 17-mile line. Maybe this explains why he put himself and his celebrated beard on the last plane to leave Tobruk before the attack.4
Because of weakness in infantry, Manella was relying on artillery to check any break-through. He had plenty of guns for this purpose – 140 field and 68 medium and heavy pieces. In addition there were 36 heavy A.A. and a dozen coast defence guns (including a 12-inch naval monster) which could be turned against attacking ground troops. However, he did not have men enough to establish defence in depth to protect these guns if a break-through should be made. Behind the shell formed by the outer perimeter he had only a few strongpoints covering the main gun positions and road junctions. To strengthen the defence of these areas, a number of light and medium tanks had been dug in as pillboxes and in front of them were booby-traps and minefields. Lacking defence in depth, the enemy needed a strong mobile reserve of tanks and infantry to counter-attack. But for this task he had only twenty-three medium tanks and one infantry battalion. With all these weaknesses, the Tobruk Fortress was still strong enough to make its capture costly, unless the attacks were thoroughly prepared.
The Italian garrison in Tobruk would have been in a reasonably strong position if Mussolini’s forces farther west had done anything to help it beyond dropping leaflets exhorting it to hold out. The Italian Navy made no attempt to bring relief or even to interfere with the British warships, which supported O’Connor’s preparations with naval bombardment. After Bardia the Italian Air Force yielded the skies to the R.A.F. which bombed Tobruk as it wished. The attackers thus had unrestricted aerial observation; the defenders had none.
Even the remaining ground forces in Cyrenaica – the 60th Infantry Division and General Babini’s 120 medium tanks – remained inactive between Derna and Mechili.5 They made no effort to keep open the garrison’s landward way of escape to Derna or to draw off any of O’Connor’s forces. The Tobruk garrison was left to its fate. Against it Wavell was free to concentrate all the land, sea and air power he had available in Libya and off its coasts.
As at Bardia, O’Connor delegated the task of planning and carrying out the attack to Major-General Iven Mackay and his 6th Australian Division, plus supporting British troops. As at Bardia, O’Connor decided that the British should keep the ring with the 7th Armoured Division and the Navy, and provide a powerful left lead with tanks, bombers and artillery, while Australian infantry was to be the strong right, which would break through the enemy defence and deliver the knock-out.
For the Tobruk attack, Mackay’s forces were weaker in ‘I’ tanks, but stronger in other supporting arms than they had been at Bardia. There they had twenty-six ‘I’ tanks of the 7th Royal Tank Regiment; but ten of these were now out of action through mechanical trouble. Private enterprise, however, on the part of ‘A’ Squadron of the 6th Divisional Cavalry Regiment added to the tank strength. (The rest of the regiment was besieging the Italians at Giarabub.) It salvaged fifteen Italian mediums from Sidi Barrani and Bardia. It also doubled its normal establishment of carriers so that its O.C. (Major Denzil Macarthur Onslow) had one ‘squadron’ of tanks and two of carriers. Even with these captures, there were insufficient tanks to give the infantry as much support as at Bardia, and there were only enough ‘I’ tanks to assist one infantry brigade in the opening phase of the attack.
Mackay had the following force available:
Australian:
16th Infantry Brigade – 2/1st, 2/2nd, 2/3rd Battalions.
17th Infantry Brigade – 2/5th, 2/6th, 2/7th Battalions.
19th Infantry Brigade – 2/4th, 2/8th, 2/11th Battalions.
2/1st, 2/2nd and one battery of the 2/3rd Field Regiments.
16th and one troop of the 17th Anti-tank Companies.
2/1st, 2/2nd and 2/8th Field Companies.
‘A’ squadron plus two scratch ‘squadrons’ of 6th Divisional Cavalry.
British:
7th Royal Tank Regiment, 1st Royal Northumberland Fusiliers (M.Gs).
1st Battalion, Cheshire Regiment (M.Gs).
104th Royal Horse Artillery Regiment; one battery of 4th R.H.A.;
51st Field Regiment; 7th Medium Regiment; one battery of 64th Medium Regiment; two batteries of 3rd R.H.A. (anti-tank). The other battery of 4th R.H.A. and most of the guns of 1st R.H.A. were also available to support the Armoured Division’s demonstration.
The general plan was for the armoured division in the west and south-west, and the 17th Australian Brigade in the east, to make a demonstration, while the main attack was launched from the south. To soften up the garrison and support these diversions, the Navy and the R.A.F. were to bombard vital areas inside the perimeter during the night immediately preceding the direct assault. Then before dawn, under cover of a heavy barrage, the 126th Australian Brigade was to seize a small bridgehead on the perimeter about three miles east of the El Adem road. With ‘I’ tank and artillery support, this brigade was then to roll up the perimeter and over-run the field guns immediately behind it on either side of the bridgehead towards the El Adem road on the left and the Bardia road on the right. At the end of this phase, with eight miles of the perimeter captured, the way would be open for a deep thrust to the junction of the El Adem and Bardia roads (hereafter to be called the ‘El Adem crossroads’) and onwards into the heart of the defences. This deep thrust was to be made by the 19th Australian Brigade, supported by Macarthur Onslow’s carriers and captured tanks, and by strong artillery concentrations.
It was expected that at the end of these two phases the 17th Brigade would have swung in from the east and established itself along the Bardia road ready to drive north to the sea; the 19th Brigade would be beyond the El Adem crossroads, command-ing the high ground of the main escarpment and in a position to attack generally west-north-west, while the 16th Brigade – now holding the line of the El Adem road – could roll up the western perimeter.
These were the planned objectives for the first day, but individual Brigadiers were given freedom to exploit their success and it was hoped that by nightfall the most advanced troops would hold the last escarpment overlooking the town and harbour. Mackay’s problem was not whether he could take Tobruk, but how cheaply and how quickly. Speed in overcoming resistance, once the perimeter had been breached, was most necessary to scotch any counter-attack and to prevent the enemy demolishing the port installations and water pumping and distilling plants, which were the main prizes of the battle.
In broad outline the plan was simple, but the most detailed and complex organization was needed to carry out the closely timed programme smoothly and swiftly. Important preliminary problems had to be solved. First, patrols had to test the enemy defences and plot the minefields, booby-traps, anti-tank ditch and barbed wire in the sector where the bridgehead was to be established. Bright moonlight made this patrolling hazardous, for the enemy was very jumpy. He did not patrol far out beyond his wire, but covered the front with heavy fire on the slightest provocation. One particularly sensitive area became known as ‘Jittery Corner’ and the Diggers pictured Italians sitting beside a heap of machine-gun belts with orders to reel them off before dawn.
The point for the actual break-through was selected only after prolonged reconnaissance. Infantry and engineer patrols early located the shallow section of the anti-tank ditch east of the El Adem road, but the various patrol reports were so conflicting that Mackay eventually sent two lieutenants from his Engineer H.Q. – G. Beckingsale and P. R. Gilmour – to survey the area between Posts 55 and 57, which seemed most suitable. On the night of January 15th–16th these two sapper officers spent more than seven hours with compass and tape, checking bearings and measuring distances until they had accurately plotted the positions of the ditch, minefields and booby-traps. As a result of their work the point of penetration was finally chosen.
Engineers of the 2/1st Field Company – commanded by Major Alec Torr – continued this good work by finding the way through the enemy’s defensive screen. Two of them, Lieutenant B. Dawson and Sergeant E. J. Johnston, located parts of the ditch that were only two feet deep and had sides so soft that they could be dug in to make ramps for vehicles and tanks. The fields of mines and booby-traps were thoroughly explored by Lieutenant S. B. Cann and Sergeant V. E. Nash. They found that the traps were mounted on small posts eighteen inches above the ground and consisted of canisters filled with explosive and fragments of metal. From the trigger on each booby-trap a trip-line of tough twine ran ankle-high to the post of the next trap, fifteen yards away. Cann and Nash found, however, that by slipping a nail into the slot, from which the Italians had removed the ‘safety pin’, they could neutralize the trap. They taught their men to find these by walking slowly forward with a thin stick held out before them pointing groundwards until the stick touched the trip-line. Then they could follow this along, ‘delouse’ the trap and cut the twine.
In the minefield they discovered a double row of mines laid as close as stepping stones, but just as easy to delouse as the booby-traps. There was nothing to prevent them lifting the lids of the long green boxes, which housed the mines, and removing percussion caps and detonators. With the same thoroughness the enemy barbed wire was explored by Lieutenant W. A. Davey and Sergeant R. Williams. Back in the field company’s lines sappers then built models of the defences, and test demolitions were carried out on the wire with ‘home-made’ Bangalore torpedoes, consisting of high explosive packed into 12-foot lengths of 3-inch water-pipe. (At Bardia two Bangalores placed side by side had blown 25-foot gaps in the Italian wire despite its great strength.) Meanwhile, the rank and file practised delousing specimen mines and booby-traps brought back by Cann and Nash.
The second problem was to keep the enemy artillery quiet – especially during the second phase, when the ‘I’ tanks would not be available to help the 19th Brigade. Fortunately the 6th Division’s artillery commander, Brigadier E. F. Herring, had 140 field and 26 medium guns to support the attack.6 The gunners’ main task during the first phase was to silence all enemy weapons in the area where the bridgehead was to be established, and then to put down concentrations in front of the battalions as they pushed east and west along, and inside, the perimeter. Roughly half the guns were allotted to these tasks. The remainder were to silence enemy batteries, especially those which could shell the bridgehead area.
In the second phase the path of the 19th Brigade’s advance was to be covered by a creeping barrage, and more than a hundred guns were simultaneously to blast the enemy batteries, so that the infantry would not run into point-blank artillery fire as the 17th Brigade had done at Bardia. If the 19th Brigade’s deep thrust was going to succeed the enemy guns must be silenced.
The barrages on the perimeter posts and the known infantry positions provided no great problem. At Bardia the Australian infantry had followed in as close as 150 yards behind the barrage and overwhelmed the posts before the Italians had recovered from the shelling.
The counter-battery tasks were not so simple. The enemy battery positions had first to be found and precisely plotted. Captured maps and the R.A.F.’s command of the air made this possible, for excellent maps of the Tobruk defences and details of the garrison were found at Bardia. Even at Sidi Barrani the Italians had with them maps of Tobruk that showed minefields, anti-tank obstacles and battery positions. These positions, as marked on the captured maps, were confirmed by air photographs, and by reconnaissance planes which observed the batteries in action. Once the pilots had ‘fixed’ a battery position they kept close watch to make sure that it was not moved without their knowledge or that it was not a dummy. These reconnaissances were carried out in slow, vulnerable Lysanders, which regularly ‘stooged around’ spotting for half an hour or so at 4000 to 6000 feet in the face of strong ack-ack fire; and yet on only two out of forty-six reconnaissances was a plane hit.
Having located the enemy barriers, Herring needed to find out what area each was given to shell, and especially what guns could fire on the proposed break-through area, so that all his counter-battery effort could be concentrated on these at the start. Some of this information came from the pilots but most from ‘flash-spotting’. (For flash-spotting, men were posted at a number of positions near the perimeter to watch for the flashes of enemy guns. When they saw a flash each took a compass bearing on the point from which the flash came and noted the time. Simultaneously other observers noted where the shells fell. When all the observers compared their readings they could locate the batteries and thus tell which were most active, and what were their individual areas of fire.) The next phase was to check the accuracy of our fire by ranging on the enemy batteries. This too called for aerial spotting because only one enemy gun position could be seen from the ground. The Italians had much better observation because they had erected many pole and tower O.P.s.
The gunners had one final problem. They were mostly in positions near the Bardia road, but in order to support the proposed attack they had to move their guns to an area south of the break-through point. To avoid revealing the direction of the attack, however, they could not fire from their new positions until zero hour. This meant that the gunners had to lay their guns on the initial targets by survey and mathematical calculation without any check by ranging.
The organizing brains behind the artillery plan were Brigadier Herring, a really great commander, and his very able staff officer, Major George O’Brien, a regular gunner. Herring served with the British Army in the Great War, at the outbreak of which he was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. As an artillery officer in France and Macedonia he won a D.S.O. and an M.C. Between the two wars he rose to be one of Australia’s leading King’s Counsel. This background helped him considerably in Libya. More than half his gunners were British and at first some regular British artillery commanders were reluctant to serve under an Australian ‘civilian soldier’. But Herring has a quiet, easy manner and his last war service had given him an understanding of the British to which they were quick to respond. After Bardia and Tobruk those officers who had been most sceptical were his strongest champions. In building up the artillery plan Herring brought to bear the same thorough, relentless logic and attention to detail with which he had so often built up a legal argument.
The artillery support that his gunners could give left little doubt that the 16th Brigade would establish the bridgehead and clean up its share of the perimeter, just as it had done at Bardia. Its success there had been the result of thorough training during the previous eleven months in Palestine and Egypt under the command of Brigadier Arthur Allen.
A Sydney accountant in private life, Allen began his career of active service in 1914 as a platoon commander in the 13th Battalion, but typhoid fever stopped him getting to Gallipoli. Within three years, however, he was commanding the 48th Battalion in France at the age of twenty-four. He gained then a reputation, which his men in this war strongly endorse, of being fair and fearless. He is now one of the most experienced soldiers in Australia. In the Syrian campaign, when he gained command of the 7th Division, he, like Mackay before him, achieved the distinction of having commanded in battle everything from a platoon to a division.
Although at forty-seven his last-war nickname, ‘Tubby’, was even more appropriate, he was still hard and active. He proved this later in New Guinea by marching with his troops for five days through the back-breaking Owen Stanley Range. His strength in training or in planning an operation was his thoroughness and his capacity for inspiring men to great efforts. Allen was fortunate in having as his right-hand man Major Ian Campbell – probably the most brilliant of all the younger staff officers in the A.I.F. and a commanding personality. He, as his Brigadier was the first to insist, played a very big part in the splendid planning of the assaults at Bardia and Tobruk.7
For the second phase of the attack which called for speed, drive and daring, General Mackay could not have found a more suitable man than Brigadier H. C. H. Robertson, a Staff Corps officer who commanded the 19th Brigade. Those who have served under or with him rank him second to none as an audacious, brilliant, hard-driving leader. He is, moreover, as able in the training camp as in the field. He showed this later in 1941 when he built up the A.I.F. Reinforcement Depot in Palestine from little more than a drafting camp to a first-class training centre, which General Auchinleck took as a model for all Middle East forces.
He possesses undoubted brilliance – a fact of which he is not unaware. His eagerness to exercise his talents in a wider field, and his sharp intolerance of the shortcomings of others, have made him a target for criticism, and it is unfortunate that these traits have tended to blind his critics to his real ability. In the task of making soldiers and leading them he may be right in thinking there is no place for the gloved hand and the soft tongue. Certainly his methods have produced outstanding results. Mackay appreciated his qualities and gave him a free hand to plan Phase II of the attack.
Describing his plan to me later the Brigadier said:
I believed that the Italians could be defeated by speed and that, if my brigade could penetrate fast enough, we could strike at the heart of the Tobruk defences before the enemy could organize an effective counter-attack. I set myself to get to the El Adem crossroads by the middle of the morning so that the artillery could move inside the perimeter about midday and be ready to support a further advance early in the afternoon. In that case I considered we might capture the H.Q. of the Tobruk Fortress before dark.
This meant that my brigade had to pass through the perimeter gap while the 16th Brigade’s attack was still in progress and would have to move at a hundred yards a minute during the approach march and the attack. That would involve covering twelve miles in four hours – and fighting the last three of them. The success of this plan depended on the 16th Brigade carrying out its programme to time, the artillery silencing the enemy batteries and my troops keeping up the stiff pace. I felt confident they could do this because in training them I had concentrated on mobility, speed and hardness, and before the battle every man was told what he had to do and was impressed with the importance of speed.
The 16th Brigade’s plans for the break-through involved most careful reconnaissance of the bridgehead area, but because of bright moonlight and booby-traps this was extremely dangerous. The point which had been chosen for the initial break-through could be easily picked on the map, but on the featureless ground at night it was difficult to find. Nor was it easy in the open desert to fix a start-line for the infantry advance.
The problem was solved at Tobruk, as at Bardia, by the resource and daring of Major Ian Campbell. Aerial photographs and maps showed that between Posts 55 and 57 the anti-tank ditch ran first south-east and then turned sharply north-east. If this elbow could be found there would be a certain reference point from which to start. On the night of January 18th–19th Captain R. W. Knights, Allen’s new Brigade Major, and Captain F. G. Hassett and Lieutenant H. O. Bamford of the 2/3rd Battalion were wounded by booby-traps in trying to locate this point. On the night of January 19th–20th, Campbell, recalled from Divisional H.Q., went out himself, crawled through the booby-trap field and found the turn in the ditch. From there he moved due south on a compass bearing for a thousand yards and thus established the position for the start-line. It was then marked by pegging a light-coloured hessian tape to the ground. The stage was set for Mackay’s forces to make the assault, led by engineers of the 2/1st Field Company and infantry of the 2/3rd Battalion.
The final problem was to fool the Italians as to the date and direction of the attack. Zero hour was eventually fixed for 5.40 a.m. on Tuesday, January 21st. On the previous Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, the Navy, the R.A.F. and Herring’s artillery carried out the same bombardment programme as they did on Monday night – the eve of the attack. They directed their fire on to the town, the inner defences and the eastern and western perimeter. Every night during the previous week patrols exploded Bangalore torpedoes in the enemy wire and shot up posts from close quarters in sectors other than that chosen for the break-through.
South of this sector on the Sunday and Monday, there was nothing to attract the attention of any inquisitive pilot. He would have seen most of the guns, tanks, carriers and trucks still concentrated in the Bardia road area. They did not move until the Monday night and the noise they made was covered by bombing and shelling. Nevertheless, it was no easy task to assemble unobserved in a small area of open desert eight infantry battalions, five artillery regiments, more than fifty tanks and carriers and hundreds of vehicles.
By the afternoon of the 20th everything was ready. The assaulting infantry was ‘stripped for action’. To give them speed and freedom, respirators were dumped; ground-sheets and greatcoats shed. Shrunken haversacks contained only a dixie, a tin of bully, four packets of biscuits and a few personal odds and ends. Pouches bulged with at least a hundred rounds of .303 ammunition and two or three grenades. In some battalions each man carried four empty sandbags – to be filled, if necessary, from the desert. At dusk they had a hot meal and a swig of rum, and turned in for a few hours’ sleep before the battle. They missed their greatcoats and, though their leather jerkins helped to keep out the biting Libyan cold, they were glad even at the bottom of a slit trench of the four blankets, specially provided for this night’s rest.
And as they slept British warships stole in to bombard the Tobruk garrison into sleeplessness and to distract the Italians’ attention from the desert outside, which had suddenly come to life as night fell. There, field and medium guns bumped over camel-thorn hummocks to battle positions beside ready-stacked ammunition. Tanks, carriers and trucks rumbled across the desert to the concentration areas, two miles south of the start-line. By midnight they were all in position and the Navy turned out to sea again – its first task over. Back in Egypt aircraftsmen fuelled and bombed-up Wellingtons and Blenheims, which were to begin the bombing offensive at 3.30 in the morning.
From inside the perimeter came occasionally the nervous chatter of Italian machine-guns and the sullen roar of routine gun-fire, but among the Diggers and Tommies lying in wait on the desert all was quiet. The orders said ‘No lights – no smoking – no talking.’
But there was bright electric light, smoking and talking, the buzz of field telephones and the rattle of typewriters back at Mackay’s headquarters, where staff officers and clerks were checking last-minute details. They worked on undisturbed for H.Q. was housed in two ancient Roman cisterns hollowed, like catacombs, out of the cavernous limestone plateau.
In one of these cisterns earlier in the evening I talked with an A.I.F. staff officer about the attack. ‘If it goes to timetable,’ he said, ‘it’ll be over in two days. It all depends on that first hour or so. If we take them by surprise, it’ll be all right. If not, well – it may be a stiff go. To-morrow morning’ll show us. They’re very quiet to-night. Maybe they don’t know; maybe they do.’
_____________
1 These tanks, known officially as ‘Infantry’ or ‘I’ tanks and popularly as ‘Matildas’, because of the skirt which protects their bogies and tracks, were the British reply to the pillbox. Mounting a 2-pounder and a machine-gun and protected by 3-inch armour, they had proved themselves almost invulnerable to enemy fire at Sidi Barrani and Bardia and had been a key factor in crushing enemy infantry resistance.
2 Thermos bombs are so called because they look like a thermos flask. They do not go off when dropped, but explode on the next impact or heavy vibration.
3 Of these, about 10 000 were anti-aircraft or coast artillery gunners, lines of communication troops and naval personnel.
4 He evaded the Australians at Derna too, but was finally caught in the last round-up by the 7th Armoured Division at Beda Fomm, south of Bengazi.
5 When Rommel eventually attacked Tobruk, he was never able to concentrate his full strength against it because of the diversion provided by the British forces on the frontier.
6 There were 116 25-pounders; 12 18-pounders; 12 4.5-inch howitzers; 16 4.5-inch guns (last war 60-pounders converted to fire a heavier, longer shell further); 2 60-pounders; and 8 6-inch howitzers.
7 Campbell’s subsequent capture in Crete was a severe blow to the A.I.F. He then commanded the 2/1st Battalion, which held Retimo aerodrome so long as its ammunition lasted.