Once Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies told Australia, in his melancholic and dutiful way, that his country was at war with Germany on 3 September 1939, battalions sprang up everywhere with an anticipation which demonstrated that memories of the Great War 1914–1918 were short. More than 160,000 Australians had been either killed or wounded in that brutal conflict mostly 20,000 kilometres from home. Yet barely a generation later, tens of thousands, including many who had served in World War I, were quick to join up again. Could they have been driven by a belief that brutal dictatorships everywhere had to be stood up to after the invasion of Poland? Well, that was the idealistic propaganda, and many would respond to it. Was it to preserve the British Empire? That was a bit of it. Was it a sense of boredom for some and a sense of adventure through travel overseas for others? This had to be another motivation. Humdrum lives would galvanise into the disciplines and hardships of armed forces at war. Yet a sense of camaraderie for young men with a grand common cause—to defeat fascism—was an over-arching drive.
One of the first outfits to form up and consolidate at Sydney’s Victoria Barracks on 14 December 1939 was the 2nd Australian Imperial Force’s 1st Machine Gun Battalion. The battalion, which was part of 6th Division, marched through Sydney streets on 4 January 1940, taking the same route as the 1st AIF soldiers had in 1914. After the training period, the battalion of about 500 members embarked aboard the Orford and left for the Middle East in May 1940. But it was diverted to Britain to bolster that country’s defences and it reached Gourock in Scotland in mid-June. The 18th Brigade and the Machine Gunners next took a train to England and camped at Salisbury Plain while the Battle of Britain raged in the skies above them. In November 1940, the Battalion sailed on the Otranto from Colchester for Egypt in the Middle East. On 29 December 1940, it docked at Kantara on the Suez Canal, a name that evoked memories for some of the men who had been with the victorious Anzac Light Horse under General Harry Chauvel from 1916 to 1918 in the desert war that saw the Turks pushed out of the region after 400 years of rule.
The next day the men disembarked and were pleased to leave the overcrowded ship. It was better even in the dry desert where they were accosted by locals wanting to sell them everything from cheap miniature pyramids to uninviting food and drink. The next day, New Year’s Day 1941, the battalion left by a train of cattle and goods wagons for a journey 30 kilometres west of Alexandria, as the crow flies. The men wished they had wings after the wearying 14-hour journey with many tiring stops en route as the wagons were shunted this way and that. They eventually encamped, still on the first day of the year, at Ikingi Maryut on the fringe of Libya’s desolate Western Desert. Once at the destination, the fatigued Machine Gunners were to await orders to join the battles against the fascist armies of Italy, and Germany if it entered the region too.
The battalion units began by erecting a series of tents on the barren landscape, which evoked a scene like a travelling circus. But there was little fun to be had. The Western Desert was a dull area, if not forsaken by the gods then definitely by water, for there were no rivers running into it from the Mediterranean. The vast desert region south, west and east of the nonexistent Ikingi city was an ancient underground necropolis with a patchwork of catacombs harbouring decaying remnants of civilisations long disappeared. The only sign of life among the rock and never-ending sea of sand was the occasional camp of the Bedouin, who wandered the desert as they had for thousands of years.
But for the moment, early in 1941, two close mates and despatch riders of the Gunners’ Signals Platoon, Jim Moody, 29, and Don Gill, 22, were doing their best to make their experience in the wilderness more lively by combining their love of motorbikes with practice for their fast-approaching role in delivering messages from headquarters to the front and vice versa.
Fit, lean-as-a-drover’s-dog Gill gunned his Norton motorcycle through the desert looking for Moody, maintaining a top speed of more than 100 kilometres an hour. Every day, while waiting for their call to the battle zone further east, he and Moody went through a riding routine that they hoped would stand them in good stead for what lay ahead. For, although they would not always be on the front-line with their machine-gun–toting mates, they would be expected to ride into the war zone and deliver vital messages to commanders. Similar to ambulance men and others, they would risk their lives as much as the soldiers perched in trenches behind their weaponry. On open tracks, wadis and oases, through ravines, down and up hills and mountains and into trenches, the despatch riders would attempt to deliver their often vital messages. They would run the gauntlet of planes spitting bullets and dropping bombs, hidden snipers and the pot luck of running into an umbrella of artillery shells, along with the even more hideous stretches of landmines. Somehow on their roaring bikes, pushing them to the limit, and ‘hidden’ behind goggles, they had an instant sense of invincibility, in a similar way the Australian troopers had on their mighty Walers two decades earlier. Those hardy horsemen trotted, galloped and thundered through the deserts of the same region with a similar increased sense of bravado or courage afforded by their fearless mounts. Now the horses had been overtaken by mechanisation: by speedy motorcycles, cars, trucks, armoured vehicles, tanks and planes. It made the war zone seem far smaller—and more dangerous.
Gill and Moody had both ridden motorbikes in Australia since they were young teenagers. They competed in racing competitions in the decade before the war and were members of ‘bikey’ clubs, the more innocent forerunners to the later ‘gangs.’ Moody had developed exhibition tricks and they both loved their jobs now. If they were going to be in the thick of war, they very much appreciated the thought of hitting it, being in it and at times running from it, on bikes in what they regarded as ‘sport.’
‘Better than sitting in a bloody trench waiting like my uncle did on the Western Front through freezing winters,’ Gill said often, ‘or stuck in a sea of mud unable to withdraw while artillery rained down on your skull.’
He and Moody loved speed and feeling some wind against their faces, even in the near breezeless desert, as they bounced over rocks, ploughed on sand or zoomed over gullies, unworried by a crash or breakdown, for each despatch rider knew his bike better than his own body. They spent hours each day fixing, rebuilding, polishing and nurturing these most precious two-wheeled vehicles, among their best ‘mates’ in the desert, nearly as important to them as the lifeblood of the desert itself: water. Motorbikes were the Walers of World War II.
On this day, 19 January 1941, Gill was pushing his machine harder than ever to catch up to Moody in their daily game of acclimatising to the desert. The lead rider would charge ahead on a dead straight course and after a specified time put compass instructions on a piece of yellow lined paper under a pile of six rocks—always six. The follower would have to find the rocks and pursue the course again, dead straight until the next rock pile and so on.
Gill spotted Moody’s bike first as he careered over a dip in the desert. Then he saw him standing, pipe in hand, about 80 metres away examining something. At first Gill thought it must have been a rock. The nuggety Moody, an amateur geologist, had a fascination with any formations, even carrying stone fragments in his kit in the hope of taking them back to Australia. But this time Moody was stock-still, watching. Gill approached. Moody turned and waved as he heard the roar of the oncoming bike.
‘What’s up, mate?’ Gill asked as he stood his bike and removed his goggles.
Moody pointed to a small white animal about twenty metres from him.
‘Looks like a … ’ Gill began, ‘a pup.’
‘Yeah. It’s got floppy ears. I’d say it’s only a few months old.’
‘I saw one like that in Alexandria. Some sort of Gypo terrier. Got bowlegs like a bulldog, but the face says terrier. And that long body looks like some sort of sausage dog. That stub of a tail says he’s been doctored.’
The dog was no more than a foot high. It seemed oblivious of the company it had attracted. His mind was on catching geckos. He would lay flat and wait until he noticed movement in the sand. His floppy ears straightened and fell as it picked up sound in the near-soundless terrain. Then he would pounce. But his quarry seemed to be too quick. For a moment the dog had been distracted by a bird of prey circling high above. It would have been looking for snakes, asps or other reptiles. Or perhaps it was waiting for the little dog to tire.
‘What’s the bloody little beggar doing out here, miles from anywhere?’ Gill asked.
‘Might have been abandoned by Bedouins.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Or Italian refugees fleeing west?’
Gill moved close.
‘Eh, bambino!’ he called in a nasally drawl. The dog ignored him and did not look his way. ‘Can’t be Italian.’
‘With your vowel-crunching Aussie accent?’ Moody said with a laugh.
They moved close. The pup noticed. It looked up. He was alert. His body language was defensive as he backed away a few paces and then stood his ground. He growled. He bared sharp, strong incisors for such a modestly sized mutt. Experiences with humans may not always have been good.
Moody took a sandwich from his pack and offered it to him. The dog was suspicious. He didn’t even sniff it.
‘I like his attitude,’ Gill said, ‘this little fella can’t be bought, even if he’s starving and by the look of his rib cage, he’s not far off.’ Gill dropped to his knees, as if he too were searching for lizards. Soon both men were copying the dog in its predatory games. They noticed the anguish in his face as his attacks proved fruitless. He was weak but determined. Yet he persisted trying to lift stones with his nose to find the disappeared geckos, which were several wriggles ahead of him. After a few minutes, he took a breather, looking plaintively at his new companions whom he was still not prepared to trust. There was a frown of frustration in his look. His tongue was out.
Moody took a water bottle from his kit and a small bowl. He put water in it and placed it a few metres from the dog. He looked at it, then back at Gill and then the dish again. He waddled over to the bowl. He sniffed it for several seconds before drinking in such haste that it was obvious he had not had water for some time.
‘Flat-out like a lizard-hunter drinking,’ Gill commented with a gentle laugh. ‘I really like the little bastard.’ He looked at Moody. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
Moody nodded. The drink had won over the dog. He wagged the stub of his tail and licked both men in turn, who sat in the sand with him. The dog rested his tired little head on Moody’s arm. This sign of affection, but also pathetic resignation for his plight, touched both men.
‘Can’t leave him out here,’ Gill said, looking up at the hawk-like creature, circling lower. ‘That damned buzzard is easy big enough to whisk him away in his claws.’ He glanced at Moody. ‘What do you reckon?’
‘Let’s take him back to camp,’ Moody smiled.
‘Good idea,’ Gill said, ‘we can work out what to do with it there. At least we can give the little bloke a decent feed and drink.’ He looked up at the big bird above. ‘And deprive something else of a very decent feed.’ They wandered close to their bikes. The little dog waddled after them, his tail wagging. He looked up with a querulous, even hopeful expression.
They decided that it would be dangerous to ride with one hand free and one holding the dog. Instead Moody picked him up. The dog did not object but instead tried to lick Moody’s face. Then Moody rode pillion with the dog as Gill started his machine with a roar that had the big bird above winging away higher.
They would come back for Moody’s bike later.