After the failure of his two smash and grab attacks Rommel settled down to contain Tobruk. As the enemy rested on the defensive, Morshead and his men might well have done the same – sitting passively behind their defences. Had they done that, however, Tobruk would have played a much smaller part in the defence of Egypt in 1941; it might in fact have been lost. Morshead knew that the Battle for Tobruk – and even for Egypt – would be largely fought in the no-man’s-land outside his perimeter. The more offensive his garrison was, the greater the force Rommel would need to keep watching it, and the smaller the force he would have available to attack Egypt. ‘From the first day I determined that no-man’s-land would be our land,’ Morshead once told me.
Comfort, as well as security, made this policy necessary. He knew that if the Axis positions around other parts of the perimeter should ever be advanced as near to the garrison’s line as they were in the Salient, life would become extremely difficult. After the May battle the Salient posts were the only ones within easy range of enemy mortars and machine-guns. Only in that sector did the enemy have extensive observation of the area inside the perimeter. Elsewhere the forward troops could walk around in daylight with impunity, could drive their trucks almost to the Red Line, and were reasonably free from the danger of surprise attack.
They kept this freedom and made Tobruk a constant menace to Rommel by means of patrols, which struck almost nightly at the Axis positions around Tobruk.1 These patrols kept the enemy so far back that no-man’s-land remained anything from a mile to four miles wide. Technically, Tobruk was invested, but from May onwards the Axis forces outside were more on the defensive than the garrison inside.
The policy of patrolling no-man’s-land by day and night began early. At the Easter week-end the troops learned the need for patrols at night to stop the enemy from reconnoitring the anti-tank ditch, wire and minefields; to keep track of enemy movements in no-man’s-land, so as to gain warning of any preparations for attack or for the building of new enemy strongpoints. Consequently, an elaborate system of patrolling was established, particularly in the southern sector where the enemy’s forward positions were well back from the perimeter. The three battalions holding this sector normally had about three hundred men on patrol each night.
These patrols were divided into several classes. First there was the inter-post, which became known in the 2/17th Battalion as the ‘love and kisses’ patrol. This nickname arose in a strange way. The practice in the forward posts was for two men in, say, Post R53 to patrol to a point half-way between the posts on either side – R55 and R51. (The first line of posts bore odd numbers; the second even numbers.) It was very difficult, however, to time the meetings and so, to avoid one patrol having to wait for the other, a simple system of checking-in was arranged. On the ground at each half-way point they kept two sticks: crossed, they represented ‘kisses’ and lying side by side they represented the code word ‘love’. If R53’s code word was ‘love’, that for R55 and R51 would be ‘kisses’. Thus, if the patrol from R53 found the sticks were crossed, it knew that the other had been there, and laid them side by side to indicate that it had checked in since the other’s last visit. In addition to the inter-post patrol there were similar parties watching the anti-tank ditch and barbed wire. Farther out there were covering patrols consisting usually of an N.C.O. and half a dozen men, sent either on special reconnaissance to observe an enemy working party or position, or else to cover a certain ‘beat’ and give warning of enemy movement and also to shoot up anyone they encountered.
The offensive raids for which the garrison became famous were even more important than these defensive patrols. When the Germans and Italians began to dig themselves in, patrols discovered and mapped their positions, shot up working parties, and, even when the posts were finished, raided them in hard-hitting night attacks.
Once the enemy became established, however, daring daylight raids like those which Forbes, Rattray and Hutchinson had led in April became impossible. Nevertheless, the enemy still had to be closely watched by day, particularly during duststorms, for both sides had learned to use these to cover preparations for an attack. Consequently, the garrison maintained almost the same system of protective patrols during a duststorm as it did at night. These patrols were the most unpopular job in Tobruk, for the men had no protection except anti-gas goggles over their eyes and handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths.
On clear days no-man’s-land was policed mainly by ‘silent cops’ – parties of two or three men, who lay-up in small holes as far as three miles outside the perimeter. There they waited, watched, reported enemy movements by telephone, and sometimes directed the artillery or a Bren carrier patrol to a suitable target. These outposts were known by names such as ‘Plonk’, ‘Bondi’, ‘Bash’, ‘Jack’, and ‘Jill’. In the latter months of the siege the garrison even set up a 40-foot observation pole more than a mile out in no-man’s-land in the south-eastern sector.
In addition to these observation posts, the garrison frequently sent Bren carriers to patrol no-man’s-land. They were ideal for this task, being low enough to sneak up to enemy positions and observe without being observed; having sufficient fire-power to cause plenty of damage in a surprise raid and enough speed to get away from enemy tanks. They were used for all kinds of tasks – investigating suspicious movement; shooting up enemy positions or working parties; covering daylight patrols; acting as mobile observation posts for the artillery; or bringing in wounded.
After the Battle of the Salient the Tobruk defenders feared that the enemy might try to drive a wedge into the eastern perimeter as he had done in the west. He had already established himself astride the Bardia road, and now began strengthening and extending this position, particularly by placing field guns in the wadis between the road and the sea. To delay these preparations and to keep a close watch on them, Brigadier Godfrey, whose 24th Brigade was then holding the eastern sector, ordered his forward battalions to carry out offensive patrols with Bren carriers.
On May 9th a carrier patrol from the 2/43rd Battalion shot up an Italian strongpost and brought back two prisoners. Next morning another of its patrols surprised an Italian working party of about 300 and strafed them severely until enemy tanks drove the raiders back. The enemy replied by sending four tanks either to attack or to make a close reconnaissance of the 2/43rd’s front. These were driven off, but Godfrey decided that stronger action was needed to keep the enemy on the defensive.
Consequently, before dawn on May 13th, ‘D’ Company of the 2/43rd Battalion, commanded by Captain M. R. Jeanes and supported by eight tanks and seven carriers, set out to attack the positions astride the Bardia road a mile east of the perimeter. The attack was dogged by misfortune. The enemy was not caught unawares, for apparently he heard the tanks rumbling up in the still night air and was waiting for them.
To make matters worse, three ‘I’ tanks and three carriers, which were to silence an enemy strongpoint on the right of the attacking infantry, missed their way in the dark. Instead of going for the enemy position, they bore down on Jeanes’s troops as they lay-up waiting to attack, and opened fire on them. Luckily their fire was inaccurate, but it brought every enemy weapon into action. From the strongpoint, which the tanks were to have silenced, Jeanes counted no less than seventeen machine-guns firing. Disregarding the fire from our own tanks as well as the enemy, the infantry went in to attack, but were soon pinned down. Jeanes himself ran from tank to tank, trying to warn the crews of their mistake, but even though he smashed his rifle battering on their sides, he could not attract the crews’ attention.
Finally, the tanks turned away to deal with the unsubdued strongpoint on the flank, but in doing so ran into heavy anti-tank fire, which disabled two and damaged the third. Undeterred by this, the three Bren carriers attacked the strongpoint and kept it quiet while the tank crews were rescued. Two carriers, however, were destroyed and their gallant commander, Lieutenant L. J. Pratt, was killed.
A final mishap stopped the infantry attack before it reached the main enemy positions. As they moved forward, three green flares went up. ‘Three greens’ was the withdrawal signal for the tanks, and thinking that the latter must have fired this, the infantry began to retire. It seems now that the flares were sent up by the enemy, who had chosen the same signal as a call for ‘defensive fire’. Not suspecting this, the infantry continued to move back under increasingly heavy fire. Jeanes could not rally them in time and so ordered a general withdrawal under cover of a smoke screen laid by the carriers. This was so effective that in spite of the mishaps the 2/43rd lost only two men killed and seven wounded.
The enemy did not follow up this success, however, and Australian carriers by day and infantry by night continued to make no-man’s-land their own. The enemy by this time was devoting all his attention to strengthening his positions in the Salient and astride the Derna and Bardia roads. In mid-May he also set his infantry and engineers to complete a chain of strongposts in the west from the sea to the Salient and on to the El Adem road. Covering the 12-mile gap between the El Adem and Bardia roads, however, Rommel had merely mobile patrols from the Ariete Armoured Division.
Two events on May 30th abruptly reminded Rommel that it would take more than this to keep the garrison quiet in that sector. Five miles south of the perimeter that afternoon two enemy lorries were blown up as they ploughed through the deep dust of a by-pass track which led to Bardia. They were the victims of mines laid the night before by Lieutenant H. R. Beer and six men of the 2/48th Battalion. Between dark and dawn Beer’s party had tramped in thin sand-shoes more than ten miles over rough desert. They had evaded enemy patrols and outposts and laid six mines in the conveniently dusty track. Then for two hours they had lain in wait beside the road with their tommy guns ready to pour fire into any victim. Much to their disappointment no vehicle appeared before the time came for them to leave in order to be clear of enemy territory before daylight. But observers in no-man’s-land next afternoon saw the results of their work.
Late that afternoon enemy tanks ran into trouble in this sector. For some days they had been policing the area north of the by-pass road, so as to curb the activities of the Tobruk carrier patrols, which had been directing artillery shoots. The garrison did not ignore the challenge. Morshead sent out a British artillery observation officer in a cruiser tank with a roving mission to shell anything he saw, and with a covering force of three cruisers and three light tanks. Ten enemy tanks that tried to interfere were driven off, and the British officer continued to direct the artillery fire until the enemy brought up eighteen tanks. In a moving fight which lasted nearly till dark one of these was destroyed and two others damaged before the British tanks withdrew under a protective barrage.
This sortie inspired the 2/17th’s carrier platoon commander, Lieutenant L. C. Maclarn, to tackle some enemy tanks with his Bren carriers. Moving out through the wire a few mornings later he blandly told an inquisitive Digger in one post, ‘Just going out to get a couple of Jerry tanks, old boy.’ He ran into more trouble than he expected and his carriers came racing back in a cloud of dust. A number of enemy tanks had loomed up out of the heat haze at a range of 500 yards, but he had brazenly engaged them with machine-guns, even though the tanks had armament powerful enough to blow his carriers sky-high. It was sheer cheek, but without such impudence the garrison could not have established and kept the upper hand.
Apart from occasional skirmishes there was little contact with the enemy in the southern sector during May and June; both sides were busy strengthening their existing positions, and the wide gap in the enemy defensive system between the El Adem and Bardia roads remained. As we have seen, however, when the British attacked on the Egyptian frontier in June, the garrison got ready to fight its way out. Air reconnaissance must have revealed this intention to Rommel, for at once his troops began preparing defensive positions to close that gap. He evidently hoped that the completion of these would prevent a major break-out, and protect the by-pass road and the artillery batteries which he proceeded to amass in preparation for a final assault on Tobruk.
The first enemy move was to lay a minefield across the open desert about three miles south of the perimeter. At first this was not covered by fire from his infantry positions and it served mainly to provide the garrison with a much-needed supply of mines. On July 1st, for instance, under cover of the afternoon heat haze and a slight duststorm, Lieutenant-Colonel Allan Spowers, C.O. 2/24th Battalion, led a pirating party of more than fifty out to this minefield. Brazenly they drove three miles into no-man’s-land in three trucks, escorted by three Bren carriers. They brought back 500 German anti-tank mines and relaid them inside their own wire. There were many other mine-pirating sorties, although none on so large a scale. But the several thousand mines these yielded were a valuable addition to the garrison’s defences.
It took the Italians five months to complete the chain of defences covering this south-eastern gap. If they worked by day, they were harried by field guns and carriers; at night by infantry patrols. Consequently, their policy was to build an initial position far enough back from the perimeter to be reasonably safe from attack. From this they would send out working parties at night to dig a new position half a mile or so farther forward. When this was completed troops would occupy it and the work on the next position would begin. This leap-frogging process was slow and wasted much labour. But, unless they were first prepared to fight out the battle for no-man’s-land, there was no alternative.
To hasten the completion of these defences, the Italians some times worked by day, but that was risky, as one of their working parties found on August 1st. Before dawn Lieutenant E. M. Pinkney and seven men of the 2/13th established themselves in shallow trenches beside a track along which the Italians had been seen moving to a position that they were preparing a mile and a half south of the perimeter. After they had lain all day in the baking sun their patience was at last rewarded. Along came three parties of Italians, half a dozen in each, and one headed straight for the Australians. As Pinkney told me later:
When they were only twenty yards away we rose like ghosts out of the desert and told them to surrender. They replied by opening fire, but they hadn’t a chance against our Brens and tommy guns. We killed four and took one prisoner. The other two parties, which were some distance away, cleared out, pursued by our bullets.
Typical of the operations by carriers was a raid led by Lieutenant R. S. Rudkin of the 2/17th early in October. Before dawn three carriers moved out more than a mile and lay-up in a slight depression about half a mile from an Italian strongpoint. As soon as it was light they sneaked forward into open ground and turned their Bren guns on to the Italians, who were shaking out their blankets and making their beds before going to rest after a night’s vigil. These daylight attacks evidently made the Italians jittery, but it was never possible to get in close enough by day to be certain of inflicting severe casualties. However, darkness gave the Australian and Indian patrols the chance to hit hard at close range. To protect their working parties the Italians usually put out covering patrols with machine-guns on either flank of the position they were digging, but even these did not save them from frequent attack.
One moonlight night in October, for instance, Sergeant N. J. Smith and three men of the 2/17th, armed with two tommy guns and two rifles, were patrolling the El Adem sector when they saw fifty Italians near a minefield, digging energetically, and two covering parties, each about ten strong, moving out to the flanks. The Diggers decided to walk boldly towards them in the moonlight. The bluff succeeded; less than a hundred yards from the Italians the four men lay down and turned their tommy guns and rifles on to the massed working party. When the Australians found their ammunition running out, they dashed to safety followed by wild bursts of fire.
The enemy was not saved from such punishing night raids even when he had completed his strongposts. These were not easy to attack for they were well prepared for all-round defence. Each post was protected by mines, booby-traps and barbed wire, and defended by machine-guns, anti-tank and usually field artillery as well. Each was manned by anything from fifty to a hundred men established sometimes in strong sangars, sometimes in trenches, dug-outs and weapon pits, often drilled and blasted out of the rocky desert.
Attacks on these positions succeeded only because of thorough reconnaissance, good planning and great courage. In the flat, featureless desert, it was very difficult to find the way, even in moonlight. While an officer or N.C.O. kept direction by compass and the stars, another member of the patrol measured the distance travelled by counting paces. An error of only fifty yards in a 4000-yard trek might take the patrol past its objective. In the darkness it was also extremely difficult to keep control of a large raiding party. On rare occasions fifty men were sent out, but the usual number was anything from ten to twenty.
Before these raids there were generally at least two reconnaissances by an officer or N.C.O. and two or three men. They crawled to within fifty yards of the post, and studied the lay-out of the defences and the routine of the garrison. Often they lay doggo watching and listening for an hour or two. They noted the minefields, booby-traps and wire; the location and character of the weapons; the position of sentries and outposts; and the routes the enemy used for bringing in supplies. It was important also to note the habits of the garrison – when they fed; what patrols they sent out; what was their reaction to an alarm. Sometimes in order to test this, a patrol made a demonstration some distance out, while two or three men lay up beside the post to watch.
Reconnaissance patrols were dangerous and nerve-racking. Sometimes they ended badly. One night in August Lieutenant R. C. Garnsey and another man of the 2/17th were surprised behind the enemy lines. They made a dash for it. Garnsey got away but the last he heard from his companion was ‘I’m O.K., but I won’t be back.’
Sometimes they ended humorously. Another night Lieutenant H. G. Byron-Moore and a small patrol of the 2/23rd had nearly reached their objective when they heard a noise behind them. Down they went; looked round, saw nothing; listened, heard nothing. They went on. A few seconds later – that noise again. This time they traced it – to a donkey. With much shooing and throwing of stones they tried to drive it away, but everywhere the party went that donkey had to go. At last in desperation the Diggers turned for home, but it still trailed them right back to our minefield. As it trotted over the mines, the men threw themselves to the ground – just in time. When the smoke and dust of the explosion cleared away, the donkey was still there kicking up its heels, impatient at the delay.
From information gathered by patrols the Intelligence section produced sketches of the defences and a map with notes of what had been discovered as to the strength and habits of enemy posts near by. After the colonel and the officer chosen to lead the raid had worked out the plan of attack from this information, the raiding party were told the scheme in detail, and shown either on a map or a sand-table model exactly what each man had to do. Sometimes a model of the post to be raided was constructed inside the perimeter, and the attack rehearsed, first by day and then by night. This thoroughness was well rewarded.
On the eve of the raid the patrol was usually given a good hot meal and a tot of run before it set out. In the last few months of the defence, the troops were well equipped for patrolling. They had special boots – with thick, soft rubber soles; special patrol suits – one-piece, khaki overalls with reinforced elbows and knees to save them when crawling over stony and thorny ground. But before this they made the best of what they had. To deaden their footsteps, the Australians often wore thick socks over their boots; occasionally they attacked in stockinged feet. The Indians made themselves silent sandals out of strips of old motor-tyre.
Each man carried two or three grenades, and a patrol of a dozen normally had one man with a Bren, to be fired from the hip, as many as six with tommy guns, and the remainder with rifles and fixed bayonets. Almost invariably the raiders attacked without artillery support, relying on surprise; but often they withdrew under a protective barrage. Mortars and Bren carriers were usually sent out to positions half a mile or a mile from the enemy post so that they too could give covering fire as the attacks withdrew. The Bren carriers were also used for bringing in wounded. To guide any who were lost or cut off, single tracer bullets were fired every few minutes from the post to which the patrol was to return. One company in the 2/15th often guided its men home with music from the saxophone which Ted Donkin played in front line posts with all the persuasiveness he later revealed in Tobruk concerts. And never did the strains of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ reach such receptive ears.
Finding the objective was the hardest part of the patrol leader’s job. Often the men were saved much foot-slogging by being taken a mile or so outside the wire in trucks to some well-marked spot, from which an accurate compass bearing could be taken. But from there the leader had to rely on his pace-counter and his compass. It was not easy for the pace-counter to maintain steps of regular length while walking over rough ground, studded with camel-thorn, and it was seldom possible to follow one compass bearing direct to the objective. Usually, in order to achieve surprise, the enemy post had to be attacked from the flank or rear and that demanded a dog-leg approach, with considerable margin for error.
Sometimes, however, the enemy unwittingly guided our patrols to a post – in one case ‘by the strong smell of cigar smoke’, and in another by the strains of a gramophone which was providing an Italian labour squad with music while it worked. Often the Italians revealed their positions – and their nervousness – by excited chatter.
Once a patrol had reached the enemy position there was still the problem of getting into it. Even courage did not make up for bad reconnaissance as a patrol of the 2/10th found to its cost on the night of July 20th–21st. The battalion had been ordered to raid an enemy position, known as ‘Fig Tree,’ about a mile and a half south-west of the perimeter. There was only one preliminary reconnaissance and the four Australians who made it found the Italian garrison asleep. They could not resist the temptation to strike then and there. Crawling up to the enemy sangars they tossed hand grenades inside and followed in with bayonet and tommy gun. Enemy casualties were optimistically reported as twenty killed and ten wounded. The patrol stated that there was no barbed wire around the post and that it could easily be raided again.
On the strength of this a platoon, commanded by Lieutenant M. R. Ellenby, was sent out the following night to attack the post after a preliminary strafing by artillery and Vickers guns. Under cover of this, Ellenby and his men approached the post; seventy-five yards from it he called on them to charge, but the enemy was on the alert. They were met by heavy machine-gun fire from the post they were attacking and also from those on either flank. After thirty yards they ran into trip-wires; stumbling on another twenty, they were stopped short by a concertina wire fence. Only Ellenby and one of his tommy-gunners, Private George Booker, found a way through. While the rest of the men were freeing themselves from the wire, Ellenby and Booker dashed for the Italian machine-gun pits. Ellenby had nine hand grenades and had thrown seven of them before he fell – wounded in the arm and head.
Booker crawled over to him and was told – ‘Blow three blasts on my whistle – that’s the withdrawal signal. Don’t worry about me; get the others out.’ Booker blew the signal, and then, collecting another man, Mick Fallon, helped Ellenby back through the wire. As they got clear of it, Ellenby was hit a third time – in the leg.
Fallon, a wheat lumper in Port Lincoln before the war, said he would carry Ellenby in, while Booker went back for a stretcher. By this time the enemy was plastering no-man’s-land with shells, mortar bombs and machine-gun fire. ‘Whenever we heard a shell or a mortar coming,’ Ellenby told me later, ‘Mick would put me on the ground and crouch down to shield me. It took him two and a half hours to carry me a mile and a half to the stretcher party. But if it hadn’t been for him, I would have been out there still.’
Instead of misfiring as it did, however, this raid might have been a great success if the previous night’s patrol had done its reconnaissance thoroughly and found the barbed wire, rather than easy victims.
By contrast a raid by an officer and ten men of the 2/15th Battalion on the night of August 30th–31st gained a brilliant success – at a cost of two men killed and one missing – primarily because of the thorough reconnaissance, on which their C.O., Lieutenant-Colonel R. W. Ogle, always insisted. The objective was an Italian strongpoint east of the El Adem road, and the raiders were led by Captain F. L. Bode, a giant of a man, who had been a noted amateur boxer in Queensland. The hero of the attack was Sergeant R. A. Patrick, a slip of a lad, who barely looked his twenty-one years and who before the war had been a clerk in a country store. He made the two reconnaissances, which were the basis of the raid’s success, and was personally responsible for at least five of the fifteen Italians believed to have been killed.
The following day I sat in Ogle’s dug-out while the raiders were being interrogated. Patrick told his story just as if he were describing a football match:
About 3000 yards out we came to the enemy minefield a little to the west of the post we were going for. We crawled through that and then moved round till we were behind the post. Still crawling, we got over the low trip-wire behind it and were within forty yards of the post, when the Ities sent up a flare and opened with a Breda. We went down flat.
The firing stopped and Captain Bode said, ‘Come on boys, up and at ’em.’ We charged. Another flare went up behind us and the Ities must have seen us silhouetted against its light. They swung four machine-guns straight on to us and a volley of hand grenades burst in our path. For a few seconds the dust and flash blinded us, but we went on. In the confusion I ran past the machine-gun pit that I was going for, and a hand grenade – one of the useless Itie money-box type – hit my tin hat. The explosion knocked me down but it didn’t hurt me. As I lay there, the fight was going on all around, and I could hear Ities shouting and screaming and our tommy guns firing and grenades bursting.
I rolled over and pitched two grenades into the nearest trench and made a dash for the end machine-gun post. I jumped into the pit on top of three Italians, and bayoneted two before my bayonet snapped. I got the third with my revolver as he made for a dug-out where there were at least two other men. I let them have most of my magazine. Another Italian jumped into the pit and I shot him too. He didn’t have any papers so I took his shoulder-badges, jumped up and went for my life.
I cleared the concertina wire in front of the post, but caught my foot in a trip-wire. Luckily it brought me down, for just then a machine-gun burst got the chap next to me. I wriggled over to him, but he was so badly hit I couldn’t do anything to help. I took his last two grenades; crawled out through the booby-traps and then threw one grenade at a machine-gun that was still firing. As this burst, I made a dash for it, and a hundred yards out reached a shell-hole. I waited till it was all quiet again, and then came back.
This patrol did everything but take prisoners, although it nearly captured two. Bode was wounded early in the attack but kept his tommy gun going until he ran out of ammunition. He then caught two Italians in a trench, grabbed each by the scruff of the neck and was about to drag them out when a grenade burst in front of him. The blast spattered his face and chest with pieces of metal, so he ‘banged their heads together and threw ’em back’. Nearly blinded by the explosion, Bode came in singing, ‘My eyes are dim I cannot see.’
Sometimes attacks on enemy positions came about by accident. One night in July two officers (Lieutenants P. S. Hayman and J. T. Finlay) and fifteen men of the 2/24th Battalion went out to shoot up Italians who were laying a minefield three and a half miles south-east of the perimeter. In searching for them, the Diggers stumbled right into the undefended rear of a half-finished Italian strongpoint. They did not realize where they were until Italians rising from trenches at their feet began shouting ‘Australianos’. The ‘Australianos’ replied with grenades, tommy guns and bayonets, but enemy positions on either flank immediately turned all their fire on to this post. Finlay and Hayman were wounded but, when one of their men was hit, they went back to rescue him. Both were wounded again and they had to leave him behind lest they should prejudice their chance of getting the rest of the patrol back through the minefield. This was a ticklish job, but an engineer, Lance-Sergeant H. J. Spreadborough of the 2/4th Field Company, guided everyone safely through. ‘He almost put each man’s foot down for him – step by step,’ said one of the men when they got back.
The raid which evidently most impressed the enemy was that made by the 2/12th Battalion on the night of July 11th–12th. Led by Lieutenant A. L. Reid and Sergeant N. H. Russell, two parties, each of nineteen, raided a heavily defended enemy position astride the El Adem road. They attacked under cover of strong artillery and Vickers gun fire; dealt severely with one Italian strongpost and put a covering force to flight; and then withdrew leaving more than 50 enemy dead or wounded and bringing back five prisoners. Three men of the 2/12th did not return and one officer and nine other ranks were wounded.
On the Axis radio this successful, but not unusual, raid became an ‘attempt to break out with tanks’. Rome was so pleased with this line of talk that on July 15th it broadcast a long and entirely fictitious account which began: ‘During the past few days the British forces in Tobruk have repeatedly tried to attack the German and Italian troops and to break through their lines.’
It went on to tell how the Tobruk garrison had made three vain attempts on the 11th and 12th to break out, and added:
The enemy have been forced to realize the impossibility of changing their unhappy condition as besieged men. The progressive and systematic work of the Axis land and air forces, the destruction of warehouses and the blocking of supplies to the stronghold render the British situation at Tobruk more unsupportable, difficult and precarious with each passing day.
Rome’s outcry was evidence of the raid’s success and Morshead sent congratulations and the following message to Lieutenant-Colonel John Field, the 2/12th’s C.O.: ‘I am glad you are seizing every opportunity to inflict casualties on our unneighbourly enemy and to harass him. It is good for him and also for us. And remember what the Good Book says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”’
The following week, on the night of July 17th–18th, ‘B’ Company of the 2/28th Battalion on the Derna road sector showed that the garrison’s patrols could penetrate deep into the enemy defences if they wished. Led by Major M. A. Buntine, two platoons moved out at midnight to attack an enemy position known as ‘White Knoll’, a mile west of the defences. The raiders found White Knoll itself unoccupied but, as they pushed on, they ran into heavy fire from defences farther west. Undaunted, they advanced with mortar and artillery support and broke through three lines of Italian positions. After fighting their way half a mile into enemy territory, the attacking platoons withdrew only when their ammunition began to run short. Buntine’s sole casualty was one man slightly wounded, but nineteen Italians were killed for certain and twice as many wounded. Eight of them were killed by Corporal W. F. France; single-handed he accounted for two enemy machine-gun posts.
Another Australian patrol, which got behind the enemy’s forward defences in the Bardia road sector, had at least one prisoner to show for its efforts, although he was obtained in a rather unorthodox fashion. One moonlight night Captain R. Rattray, Lieutenant N. E. McMaster and 14 men of the 2/23rd Battalion were discovered by the enemy when they were halfway between the forward and the supporting positions which the Italians had constructed astride the Bardia road. The enemy at once sent out two strong fighting patrols of Germans and Italians to box Rattray’s party in. As one patrol came towards them, the Diggers held the fire of their ten tommy guns until it was only fifty yards away. The enemy patrol was stopped in its tracks and Rattray’s men began to crawl slowly backwards.
When the Australian fire ceased the Germans rallied the Italians and moved forward again. This time they were halted so sharply that they made no further attempt to come on. The Diggers continued to crawl backwards. Rattray told me afterwards:
As we went we saw the shadowy figure of a soldier moving out from the forward enemy position to the patrol, which we had pinned down. Every few yards he would stop and give a low whistle. When he whistled the third time, McMaster whistled back. The figure turned towards us and as he got nearer we could hear him calling, ‘Herr Leutnant! Herr Leutnant!’ McMaster called back ‘Si, si, Comradio!’ and the Itie walked right into our arms. We had been sent out to get a prisoner and so now we could go back. But we still had to crawl 600 yards before we were clear of the second patrol which was waiting to cut off our retreat. Next day we all had badly lacerated knees, hands and elbows, but we had the unusual distinction of having whistled a prisoner in.
Individually these raids were not of great military importance, but their combined result was to give the Tobruk garrison a remarkable freedom of movement, in addition to forcing the enemy on to the defensive. He was compelled to waste time, men and material making strong fortifications, and even when these were completed it took at least one German and three or four Italian divisions to man them and keep in check the one and a half divisions inside the perimeter. (Italian infantry divisions are only about half the normal strength of Australian infantry divisions – 7000 men as against 14 000. However, the Australian brigades in Tobruk were so much below strength that the total garrison between May and September was less than 23 000. The investing force in September numbered well over 40 000. It consisted of the 21st German Armoured Division, plus some infantry battalions of the German 90th Light Division; the 27th Brescia, 17th Pavia and 25th Bologna Infantry Divisions, plus part at least of the 132nd Ariete Armoured Division.)
If it had not been for these raids, Rommel could have left merely a light covering force holding Tobruk. As it was, he had three times as many troops outside it as he had on the Egyptian frontier watching the rising strength of the Eighth Army. As well as tying-up enemy forces, these patrols inflicted not inconsiderable casualties.
More significant than casualties, however, was the damage done to the enemy’s morale. The Italians became so nervous that the smallest alarm brought down defensive fire right along their front. One night when a raid was made on the Derna road sector, we recorded a running commentary on the action from Post S19. We could not see much but there was plenty of sound and fury for the Italians let fly with everything they had and wasted nearly a thousand shells, providing us with a lively broadcast.
Italian morale was not improved by the V for Victory campaign which the 20th Brigade organized in the southern sector in July and August. Murray had leaflets stencilled with ‘V Per Vittorio’ and ordered that these be attached ‘by the use of clips, string, nails, pins, etc., to enemy bodies, posts, wire, sandbags, sangars, etc., by patrols’. The result was to make the Italians even more nervous than before, as day after day they found these Victory leaflets stuck in their own defences by patrols which usually they had not heard.
The measure of the Tobruk patrol successes was indicated by the steps that both the Germans and Italians took to protect themselves. Early in the siege the enemy gave up counter-patrolling and stayed behind his defences. In July on the Bardia road sector Italian officers – in an attempt to force their men to patrol – ordered them to build cairns of stones at the end of each leg of their route. At first the 2/48th Battalion, which was then manning this sector, thought the cairns must be artillery ranging marks, or some new form of booby-trap. The first cairn was taken to pieces with much care. A sergeant tied a piece of cord round the top stone, withdrew a discreet fifty yards, lay flat, tensed his nerves for the expected explosion and pulled the cord. The stone flopped harmlessly to the ground. Stone by stone he took the cairn apart, his annoyance mounting all the time.
When a prisoner finally revealed why these were built, the Diggers decided not to disturb the Italians at work, but to go out after them and dismantle the cairns before daylight. Following this there must have been some rather tense scenes in the Italian trenches when bewildered N.C.Os tried to point out to their officers the cairns they had built the night before.
The best the Germans could do was to induce the Italians to attack the garrison’s outposts at dusk. They tried this several times in July on the sector between the sea and the Derna road, which was held by the 18th Indian Cavalry Regiment. On July 19th about 200 Italian advancing to ‘attack’ took to their heels when they ran into 24 Indians. A few days later they made another move. This time they approached the Indian posts shouting and talking excitedly, but when the Indians opened fire at a range of over half a mile, they hastily withdrew under artillery protection. Apparently they had advanced with so much noise either to cover their nervousness or else to give early warning of their approach in the hope that the Indians would open fire at long range and allow them to withdraw in safety without too much loss of face.
As a substitute for patrols the enemy established listening-posts a few hundred yards in front of his main positions. We have evidence of how ineffectively two of these were manned. On June 20th a small party from the 2/1st Pioneers sent in the following report: ‘Moving out we came on a hole in the ground in which there were two Italians. One was asleep, the other drowsy. We wakened them with the bayonet and had no further trouble.’
An Italian diary revealed the reactions of another outpost when its occupants heard suspicious noises on the night of July 12th. The author seems to have had a lively sense of humour, for his diary entries read:
Great alarm to-night at our O.P.
1. Suspicious noises are heard.
2. Patrol leaves O.P. in a rush; takes refuge in main post.
3. Capt. L. arms himself to the teeth with rifle, pistol, hand grenades, etc. and throws away the telephone.
4. Lieut. A. makes a heroic forward reconnaissance of about 300 yards.
5. Lieut. S. gets a good smack on the head with a rifle.
6. My batman takes refuge in the tent with a rifle in each hand.
7. It is established that there are no British in the area. The suspicious noises came from our own transport.
8. The O.P. is manned again. The telephone is recovered and a shot or two is then fired.
When the outposts failed to give protection, the Italians installed searchlights, with which they swept no-man’s-land. These provided a fine target for Australian machine-guns. Lieutenant L. C. Maclarn of the 2/17th dealt with them even more effectively one night by getting in behind the Italian lines and cutting a large section out of the electric cable that fed the lights.
The next enemy move was to attack the ‘silent cops’ which the garrison maintained several miles outside the perimeter in the southeast. He first tried to make them untenable by shelling; several times the men in the outposts had to withdraw but they always returned next day.
When shelling failed, Italian infantry were sent to attack the farthest outpost, known as ‘Jim’, and situated at an old well about three miles south-east of the perimeter. Late on the afternoon of August 9th this post’s garrison (Captain Ray Leakey, M.C., a British tank officer, Privates L. Bennett and C. Hayes of the 2/23rd Battalion) saw twenty-seven Italians approaching. Leakey called for artillery fire, but before the guns opened up the Italians attacked, closing in from three sides. Leakey and his two men held their fire until the enemy were less than a hundred yards away. Then they opened up with a Bren and a tommy gun. The Italians did not come on. Eighteen were killed outright and most of the remaining nine were wounded. Just before sunset the enemy brought up a larger force and Leakey and his men had to withdraw. That night the Italians came out and buried their dead, but did not stay. Next morning the 2/23rd manned the outpost again.
Apparently discouraged by this failure, the enemy made no further move against the silent cops during the next four weeks. Then on the night of September 13th–14th, while the 24th Brigade were making two raids on Italian positions near by, a force of German tanks and infantry attacked the outpost ‘Jack’ three miles east of the perimeter.
The first Australian raid on this night was made by Captain J. A. Johnstone and twenty-three men of the 2/28th Battalion. They went for an Italian position, known as ‘White Cairn’, three miles south-east of the perimeter. The enemy had not finished wiring and booby-trapping the post, and the patrol had little trouble in getting in and taking him by surprise. Out of the Italian garrison of about twenty-five, they killed ten, wounded another ten and brought back four prisoners. Two of the raiders were wounded.
This attack was simple compared with one made later that night by three officers and fifty-eight men of the 2/32nd Battalion on a very heavily defended Italian strongpost south-west of White Cairn. It was held by more than a hundred men armed with a dozen machine-guns and mortars, at least two 75 mm field pieces and two 47 mm anti-tank guns. Captain R. Joshua, who planned and commanded the attack, had led two previous patrols against this post. One night they lost their way; another night the attack misfired. But he and his men would not be beaten. They laid out a model of the enemy position inside the perimeter and rehearsed the attack by day and night, until Joshua was satisfied that they would not fail again.
Warned by the previous attempt, however, the enemy were on the alert and when the attackers were still seventy-five yards from the post they came under fire so heavy that they could not tell whether their engineers had blown the wire or not. When they reached the wire, Joshua found it still intact. He sent his men to ground while engineers blew the gaps, but by this time every weapon in the strong-post had been turned against them and fire from supporting positions came down on the Australians as they fought their way through to the guns they had come to destroy. They blew up one field gun with gun cotton and one anti-tank gun with grenades; at least twenty Italians were killed and two were brought back.
Joshua’s patrol was outnumbered two to one, but when the enemy this same night attacked the seven Western Australians of the 2/28th Battalion who were manning the outpost ‘Jack’, he sent half a dozen tanks and more than a hundred men against them. From this outpost at half past one in the morning came a telephone call: ‘Send help at once . . . for God’s sake hurry. They’re within twenty yards of us.’ Behind the speaker’s voice there was the sound of firing as the seven Diggers fought to hold the enemy back. Then there was silence. Bren carriers went out at once, but they found that the Germans were too strongly established.
The enemy held ‘Jack’, but he waited another month before striking again at any other outposts. Then he began a general forward move to clear the south-eastern and eastern sectors of no-man’s-land, and for this purpose brought up tanks to do the work his infantry would not tackle. This was his final admission of inability to deal with the Australian patrols.
On the night of October 9th–10th German tanks over-ran the outpost ‘Bondi’, manned by nine Tommies of the 2nd Queen’s, two and a half miles south of the perimeter’s south-eastern corner. From ‘Bondi’ about twenty German tanks headed north-west towards another outpost, ‘Plonk’, situated at Bir El Azazi, a mile south of the perimeter and two miles east of the El Adem road. The Tobruk garrison was ready for them. For the first time Morshead had some tanks to spare and a commander (Brigadier A. C. Willison) who was prepared to use them boldly. During the previous month gallant British auxiliary lighters had run the gauntlet from Mersa Matruh to Tobruk carrying the fifty-two ‘I’ tanks of the 4th Royal Tank Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel W. C. L. O’Carroll.
As the German tanks headed towards ‘Plonk’, fifteen of O’Carroll’s Matildas were already moving in its direction. On the previous night enemy troops had been seen working under cover of tanks on a new minefield south-east of ‘Plonk’. Consequently, on this night Morshead had ordered O’Carroll to cover the 2/17th’s standing patrol at ‘Plonk’, and attack any German tanks that appeared in the area.
As the British tanks moved out to ‘Plonk’ about 9.30 p.m., Captain I. F. McMaster, of the 2/17th, who was guiding them, saw two figures coming towards him. They were Tommies from ‘Bondi’, bringing the first news of its capture. Until then the tanks had been going slowly so that they should not be heard. Now they raced for ‘Plonk’ at full speed. There they found that the 2/17th’s patrol was still intact, though it had been very heavily shelled. There had been no sign of the enemy, but a few minutes later the rumble of tanks, coming from the direction of ‘Bondi’, gave warning of German intentions.
The British disappeared into the night heading south-east to meet them. One tank returned almost immediately with engine trouble. This was fortunate, because four enemy tanks soon approached from the south-west. By this time the lone Matilda was sitting hull-down in the middle of the four low mounds at ‘Plonk’. Its commander held his fire and the Germans did not see it until they were a hundred yards away. As they slowly closed in on ‘Plonk’, McMaster decided it was time to withdraw his small infantry patrol, which had no adequate anti-tank weapons. It was barely clear when the German tanks opened fire. By this time they had approached within fifty yards, but the ‘I’ tank held its ground and fired back. Sparks flew from the tanks as shells ricocheted from their heavily armoured sides. One enemy tank was hit point blank by an armour-piercing shell, but managed to pull out of the fight. The others followed it, little knowing that with one of their last shells they had jammed the turret of the ‘I’ tank and made it defenceless.
Meantime, east of ‘Plonk’ the other fourteen ‘I’ tanks were roaring across the desert in search of the main German force. Crew commanders, heads high above their turrets, strained their eyes to distinguish in the blackness the shapes that might be enemy tanks. The rival forces were only 150 yards apart when our tanks first saw theirs and immediately opened fire. The commander of one British tank later described the running dog-fight that followed:
We opened fire at a range of about 100 yards and the German tanks scattered. We spread out and chased them, each of us picking one to tackle. All we could see was a series of black blobs, blurred by smoke and dust. By contrast, the sudden flashes of guns and the flare of tracer shells were almost blinding. Their tanks had more speed and they used it – 200 yards away they were out of sight. Judging from the sparks that flew we scored some hits, but most of their fire was wild and they didn’t stay to fight it out.
The Germans made no further move against ‘Plonk’ that night and Morshead decided to garrison it with a platoon of infantry and two anti-tank guns and to protect it with wire and mines. The plan was opposed by Murray and by the C.O. of the 2/17th, Lieutenant-Colonel Crawford, who both felt that ‘Plonk’ could not be defended by so small a garrison and that Tobruk could not afford to place in such an exposed position a force strong enough to hold out against enemy tanks. Morshead, however, was always reluctant to see the enemy occupy any ground the garrison had once held and knew the importance of at least delaying the closing-in process that Rommel had evidently begun.
An hour before dark it became clear that the enemy, too, had designs on ‘Plonk’. The 2/17th’s advance party found no enemy near there but the battalion’s front was heavily shelled. At dark Captain Frank Windeyer tried to take out the main party with trucks carrying anti-tank guns, mines and wire, but they ran into very heavy artillery fire. One of the anti-tank trucks was knocked out and the other was disabled; Windeyer was mortally wounded and several others were hit. The party withdrew, followed all the way by a barrage of increasing fury.
Under cover of this the enemy moved in to occupy ‘Plonk’, closely observed by Lieutenant G. T. Reid, one of the ablest and most experienced patrol leaders in Tobruk, who had taken two men out through the shelling to within 300 yards of ‘Plonk’. From there he counted eleven tanks, five trucks and about forty men near the mounds.
These provided a perfect artillery target, but the Tobruk guns had so few alternative positions that they preferred not to reveal their location by firing at night. Consequently, they did not shell ‘Plonk’ until dawn, but then their fire was so accurate that the enemy garrison was thrown into confusion. Vehicles, hastily loaded with troops, tools and stores, were driven away at top speed. After an hour’s bombardment the outpost was again deserted.
The final round of the battle for ‘Plonk’ was fought on the night of October 11th–12th. By then Morshead had abandoned the idea of occupying it and had ordered the establishment of a new outpost nearer the perimeter. To cover this and harass the Germans, Reid and forty men prepared to raid ‘Plonk’ under cover of artillery and ‘I’ tanks. In their first attempt to get there, the tanks were late in starting and lost the advantage of the artillery concentration. At midnight eight Matildas tried again, but the enemy, warned of their approach, shelled them heavily as they moved out.
When they got near ‘Plonk’, they found eight or nine enemy tanks already there, covering infantry who were digging in. This time the Germans held their ground and the eight Matildas cruised past them in line ahead formation, firing broadsides at a range of about a hundred yards. As soon as they were abreast of the enemy they turned sharply and closed in.
The German tanks fought back stubbornly, supported by artillery which shelled German and British tanks indiscriminately. In spite of this, as the Matildas moved in with their machine-guns and 2-pounders blazing, the enemy infantry retreated, closely followed by their tanks. When the British reached ‘Plonk’, half a dozen fresh German tanks advanced from the west, but their attack was eventually beaten off. It was an hour and a half before the area was finally cleared, but the enemy shelling continued and made it impossible for Reid’s party to go in. The tanks having cleared ‘Plonk’, however, the infantry were not needed and before dawn the British tanks moved back to cover the new outpost, ‘Cooma’, nearer the perimeter. Soon after first light the enemy was again observed digging in at ‘Plonk’ under cover of tanks. British guns shelled it, but by this time the Axis infantry was well enough dug-in to stay there regardless of the bombardment. ‘Plonk’ passed into the hands of the enemy.
The threat from the south during the battle for ‘Plonk’ did not keep the garrison on the defensive elsewhere. In the Derna road sector, the 2/43rd Battalion, which was about to leave Tobruk, gave the Italians a parting shock. On two consecutive nights several small patrols struck deep into enemy territory, ambushed Italian working parties from ranges of 10 and 20 yards, and inflicted at least 75 casualties. One patrol, led by Captain W. E. L. Catchlove, killed 15 out of a party of 16 Italians and captured the survivor. Having roused the enemy’s fears and suspicions by these attacks, the 2/43rd lay low the following night, but on the next they had their final laugh.
They had already discovered what Very lights the enemy sent up as a signal for general defensive fire. Consequently, on this night the 2/43rd gave the enemy front a short, sharp strafe and when the Italians were thoroughly roused, a lone Digger, some distance out in no-man’s-land, put up the enemy’s own defensive fire signal. Along the whole sector every Italian weapon opened up. For the next hour and a half shells, mortars and machine-gun bullets were flying everywhere in no-man’s-land. The Italians wasted more than 700 shells, and the men of the 2/43rd – remembering the unfortunate mistake caused by the conflicting signals when they made their first attack in May – sat back in their concrete posts and grinned.
During the next five weeks the outposts that the Australians had maintained in the south and south-east all passed into the hands of the enemy.
This was probably inevitable, but the process was undoubtedly hastened by the withdrawal of the 9th Division. The units of the 70th British Division, which relieved it, were below strength, and could not maintain such an intensive system of patrols. Moreover they did not know the country and it was naturally some weeks before they were familiar with it. During this change-over period, the enemy, feeling less pressure from the garrison’s patrols, and knowing that the troops were new, moved his positions forward under cover of tanks, until virtually all the perimeter was within range of hostile machine-guns. The result was that by mid-November the Tobruk garrison was in a weaker position than it had been at any time since May. It had less freedom and Rommel was much better able to launch a surprise assault. It was clear that as soon as he had consolidated his control of no-man’s-land and gathered sufficient strength, he would attack Tobruk in force. For the garrison the vital question was – would he be ready to strike before the Eighth Army could launch its long-awaited offensive from the frontier? But the Australians could feel satisfied that by keeping command of no-man’s-land during so many months they had delayed Rommel’s preparations and given the Eighth Army time to recover from its severe losses in the June engagement and to build up fresh strength. They had also given it most value information about enemy dispositions and movements. The Tobruk garrison could peek into Rommel’s back-yard. Traffic on the by-pass road was closely watched from the perimeter and day to day fluctuations in traffic provided a useful index of future activity on the frontier. Patrols quickly detected any big movement of troops to or from Tobruk. Reports compiled by Morshead’s extremely able G.III (Intelligence), Captain L. K. Shave, told Eighth Army H.Q. much that it could not have learnt from any other source. Although the Diggers did not realize it, the scraps of information they picked up outside Tobruk were of great value to the British troops who were holding the frontier.
On the last night that the 2/17th Battalion were in the line I was at a forward post when their final Tobruk patrol went out. They took with them a rough wooden cross with a Digger’s name and number painted on it. Tied to it was a note in stumbling French, asking the Italians to place the cross over the grave of an Australian who had been killed in the battle for ‘Plonk’. The patrol left the cross in the enemy minefield where it was sure to be seen. In this gesture I felt they were paying their last tribute to all their mates who had fallen in the Battle for No-man’s-land.
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1 There were, of course, many patrols and raids besides those described in this chapter. The ones I have dealt with are chosen as typical examples and are therefore not referred to in strict chronological order. Most of these took place while I was in Tobruk, and the details were checked by personal interview at the time.