Meanwhile, the VIPs in Berbera had been evacuated and the town garrison was also embarking. As day broke on 17 August at Barkasan, peace was disturbed only by a stray couple of platoons of Punjabi soldiers who were looking for a home.
David Rose: ‘Then some Italian motor cyclists appeared, followed by trucks of troops. If only we’d had machine guns, we could have done for the lot of them. As it was, we opened up with rifle fire and caused chaos, with lorries reversing and motorcycles charging about, but more trucks were coming up behind.’
The Italians tried to advance against D-Company on the other side of the road, but were sent back and the day settled into a long process of Italian build-up and infiltration, with the occasional action from the Jocks if the enemy came too close.
David Rose: ‘I shouted to the men to fix bayonets and come with me. Then we were all shouting, and charging at the enemy. It was very exciting. My hands were shaking which made reloading my pistol difficult, not that it mattered much because nothing seemed to happen to anyone I shot at. I vowed to bring a rifle next time. We went on and on, killing some but not many. I wondered if my whole company were just as bad shots as I obviously was.
‘Somebody on the other side was better because I went arse-over-tip with a bullet through my shoulder. The “Blackshirts” (the better Italian troops) we had overrun started to pop up and fire at us, so we retreated to our trenches and I had to have my wound seen to.’
The value of the bayonet charge was not so much in the casualties inflicted, as in the psychological effect that fifty screaming mad Jocks had had on troops who had not experienced such a thing before. The enemy was now reluctant to engage until success was guaranteed, and so more and more reinforcements arrived, including tanks, machine guns and truckload after truckload of men.
Had the Italians deployed their greatly superior forces properly, there can be no doubt that the Second Battalion, almost out of ammunition and almost surrounded, would have been wiped out and/or forced to surrender. In fact, the news back at HQ, later on, was that they had been.
The enemy’s modus operandi seemed to be to send in conscripted local troops pushed from behind by regular Italian soldiers, while tanks ran up and down the line to no positive purpose. The Black Watch could hold firm against such tactics, but not for ever. As the enemy forces increased, so did their confidence. Tanks were brought to bear and the Blackshirts were featuring more. In all, the Italians built up to five brigades.
The order came at 5.30pm for the Second Battalion to withdraw two miles down the road. The Italians did not follow and, with new orders, the Jocks kept on going all the way to Berbera. Piper Bill Lark was there, with C-Company:
‘I had never before seen a soldier on a camel that was in full flight. It was a great sight to see at ground level, but must have been very hard on the backside of the poor jockey. If they had gone any faster they would have ended up in the Yemen.’
Thirty-six hours later, Lark, McNeilly, Rose and the rest, were all in Aden, and a week after that they were in Suez, except for the wounded, including Rose who was on a hospital ship. They took him to Delhi, where he heard the news from The London Gazette of 29 November 1940, that the King had been pleased to approve the award of the Distinguished Service Order to Captain David McNeil Campbell Rose of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment).
‘In my opinion I was over-decorated for a very junior officer, and I was rather shy about it.’ The full citation perhaps emphasises David Rose’s modesty:
‘Captain David McNeil Campbell Rose in Somaliland for conspicuous gallantry during the action at Barkasan on August 17 1940. Captain Rose was commanding ‘A’ company. His company was hard-pressed by greatly superior enemy forces and it appeared that his company’s locality would be overrun and the centre of the Battalion pierced, giving the enemy access to the main Berbera road. With great presence of mind and showing the highest courage this officer personally led a bayonet charge with his HQ and 1 Platoons and effectively routed the enemy. This action succeeded in checking the enemy and had a direct bearing on the result of the battle, enabling the original front to be maintained. His coolness, resource and high courage set an outstanding example to his men. During the bayonet charge Captain Rose was wounded in the shoulder. He remained in command until the situation was restored and was then evacuated to RAP (Regimental Aid Post). Recommended by Major A. Gilroy commanding 2nd Battalion Black Watch, signed A. R. Godwin-Austen and A. P. Wavell.’
After a few weeks of security duties in Cairo, the Battalion, minus Captain Rose, was sent to Crete on 19 November. At first, this seemed like an idyllic posting; no fighting in paradise, with all the locals anxious to be as hospitable as possible. There was work to do, of course, preparing the defences, but stressful it was not.
Bill Lark: ‘There was a piper assigned to each Company, who had the rank of Piper. There were others who piped in the band but not with that rank. In action, they put their pipes away. Only the Company Piper kept his pipes. I was C-Company Piper. Our Company Commander was George Garden Green, just a Captain then. Later on I was made up to Pipe Lance Corporal and Pipe Corporal. HQ Company had a Pipe Major and a Pipe Sergeant. Willie Michie was on D-Company, Chan McCulloch on C, and I took over from Chan; Willie Morrison A-Company, Jake Ogilvie B-Company. We played the calls, jankers, lights out, reveille and all the rest of it. We played “A man’s a man for a’ that, though a man gets sixty days he’s still a man for a’ that”. Sometimes on Crete there was an early air raid, so we had to wait for that to finish before we could play reveille.
‘We had a man called “Sixty Scott” – that’s how you knew him from the other Scotts – so we all called him “Sixty”; never knew him by any other name. We had a McGoff and a McGough, so on pay parade one was “McGoff eff eff”, and the other was “McGough McGooch”. They all called me “Brother Lark”, because I was religious, didn’t smoke or drink or go with women. I used to go to the local Christian mission in the town. They’d take me in and feed me. I had a great time there, but the other lads, they were going into town to get boozed up and meet the girls.’
In the spring, as matters became more and more desperate on mainland Greece, the defence of a fabulous island became a very serious business. Reinforcements arrived but they didn’t seem to equate to the amount of effort the Germans were putting in. Although the original garrison at brigade strength, about 3,500 troops, was greatly amplified by Empire and Greek forces retreating from the mainland, so that eventually there were ten times the numbers, these could not be classified as combat ready. There was little or no equipment for a major defensive action. Even more important, there was no air force to speak of. German air superiority was almost total.
The defenders had another, unquantifiable disadvantage, in that they were being commanded from far away. The new man on the ground was General Bernard Freyberg VC, who had come to Crete from Greece with his New Zealand Division, but the C-in-C, General Archibald Percival Wavell, and his staff, were in Cairo, where they looked all around them and wondered how on earth they were going to defend the entire Middle East, north Africa and the Mediterranean with so little in the way of resources.
On 2 May Freyberg signalled Wavell that his forces ‘can and will fight, but without full support from navy and air force cannot hope to repel invasion’. Wavell’s reply cannot have heartened anyone:
‘The Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, is prepared to support you if Crete is attacked. I have most definite instructions from the War Cabinet to hold Crete and, even if the question were reconsidered, I am doubtful if the troops could be removed before the enemy attack. The difficulties and dangers of your situation are fully realised, but I am confident that you and the magnificent troops at your disposal will be equal to the task. We have very anxious times ahead in the Middle East for the next few weeks.’
Commanders-in-Chief rarely say ‘Stop bothering me and get on with it’ directly, but the message was received and understood. Near-daily German air raids
resembled the artillery barrage before the big advance, concentrating on their main objectives, the naval base at Suda Bay and the aerodromes. The Jocks were detailed to look after Heraklion aerodrome, recently completed, but with only a very few friendly aircraft stationed on it. It would be a prize for the enemy but not much of an asset to the defenders.
The air raids increased with bombs and strafing. Surely, everyone thought, something must happen soon, but the barrage went on. At last, on 16 May, came the biggest air raid yet, followed by several days of relative quiet. In the afternoon of 20 May, a message came through that parachutists were dropping at the other completed aerodrome, Maleme, where the Battalion had previously been stationed.
It was a late message. Around 2,000 paratroops had descended on Maleme, with additional infantry landing on the beaches and elsewhere by glider. By the middle of the day, they had the airfield and could welcome German transport planes onto it.
Meanwhile, another massive air raid had to be suffered at Heraklion, with very little possibility of response. When that cleared, the biggest fleet of enemy aircraft anyone had seen rolled in like a black tidal wave. If that was not astonishing enough, eyes opened even wider in disbelief as the aerial cargo was discharged. The Battalion’s War Diary describes what happened next, in poetical vein:
‘The relief of the defenders was unbounded and a hail of fire greeted the enemy slowly descending like gigantic snowflakes on a breathless day. The fight was now on greater terms of equality. Within 24 hours, the Germans who had fallen inside the perimeter were dead or prisoner, and those outside had been badly mauled. It was no uncommon sight to see two men marching a dozen Germans with their hands up, through our lines.’
The drop carried on for two hours, and many Germans landed beyond the immediate reach of the Battalion, making themselves secure for the moment. Next day was a repeat performance, and the next and the next, except that the enemy now knew where not to drop. From information gathered later, it seemed that they had not expected the aerodrome to be occupied.
There were eight days of it. Heraklion aerodrome and its surrounding positions held firm, but everywhere else the battle had been lost. The mood among the officers and men of the Black Watch changed, from exhilaration at inflicting huge damage on the enemy, to that kind of fatalism which is usually described as ‘grim determination’. They were going to have to fight to the last, and there was no expectation of getting away.
In that bleak outlook they were wrong. The Royal Navy was coming to get them at night on 28 November. The Germans were not to get a sniff of the evacuation or it would fail, and somehow, most of the Battalion did reach Heraklion harbour along with their reinforcement comrades of the Argylls and the Yorks and Lancs. Some outposts could not be contacted so they had to be left to fend for themselves.
The navy destroyers and cruisers had to run for it, in easy reach of the Luftwaffe stationed on Rhodes and mainland Greece. The attacks were incessant and successful, in particular two hits scored by Stuka dive bombers on cruisers HMS Orion and HMS Dido, which caused many casualties.
The Battalion’s losses on Crete were fifteen men and two officers, with no ground given. On the journey back to safety in Alexandria, 200 were killed and more wounded. Even so, it can be said with certainty that the German score was far greater – many times greater. So big were the losses that Hitler never again tried such an airborne invasion.
We can also say that had the evacuation not been achieved, as in Somaliland there would have been nothing left of the Battalion for any further part in the war.
Bill Lark: ‘The Dido steamed in to Alexandria at night, and one of my fellow pipers – Collins he was called – somehow got himself up on the bridge and began playing. He had his kilt on too; what was left of it. Some of the other ships put searchlights on him, and kept them on as the Dido came in. Not a dry eye in the house.’
After some leave and time to regroup and re-equip, the Battalion was ordered to Syria. The expectation was a fierce battle against the Vichy French who were installed very securely in a mountain fastness, but it never happened. After losses elsewhere, the Vichy French offered armistice terms and an oasis of peace appeared in the Middle East which was otherwise in turmoil. From mid-July to mid-September 1941, the Jocks managed to acclimatise to Syrian summer as they had managed in Crete, but the bill for their holidays was about to come in.
Axis forces were in the ascendancy in north Africa and had besieged Tobruk, on the Libyan coast near the Egyptian border. The Battalion was to relieve the Australian garrison in this most unpromising position; a natural harbour that had no natural defensive features inland. Fortifications were all man-made, and the town was a dump.
After a dangerous but unmolested run-in – courtesy of fast navy warships – the rapid handover had an unusual aspect.
Bill Lark: ‘It had been decided to keep the pipers quiet, so that the enemy wouldn’t hear us and know we’d arrived. So instead of the usual, Jake Ogilvie played on just his chanter, pianissimo, you might say. Our time would come, though.’
Tobruk had become a symbol of British and Empire bravery and cussedness, but it was a dismal posting. Everything was in short supply. Hardly a day passed without a dust storm and an air-raid. Living conditions were foul, so the latest news – that the Battalion was to be a spearhead of a breakout – was regarded as good, on the whole.
The Eighth Army was coming and the Tobruk garrison was to attack various entirely flat bits of desert, with tank support, while the enemy was in a state of utter confusion. Positions were silently taken up on the night of 20 November, ready for the strike at 06.30.
The time came, but there were no tanks. The Jocks went in, the tanks turned up but got lost, and men were mown down by machine guns as if it were the Somme all over again. Bayonet charges overran enemy positions but at huge expense. The attack slowed, as it was bound to, and might even have come to a stop but for the pipes.
Bill Lark: ‘The Pipe Major struck up with “Hielan’ Laddie”, and we joined in with that, and I remember “The Black Bear”, which was always played when a gee-up was needed. It seemed to work, but I also remember the dreadful effects of the German machine guns in their fixed line as we advanced. They caused us a lot of casualties. I was told by one officer to put away my pipes and pick up a rifle. His comment was “This isn’t 1914”, which made me very cross at the time. But there was a sort of sense in it, because we pipers were targets to be hit.’
A great many men were hit; so many that the order to stop where they were until tanks arrived was given. According to the War Diary, the Battalion was thirty officers and 580 men when the break-out began. As a controlled fighting force it was now down to five officers and 160 men who, with the armour reinforcements, took their final objective after an advance of three miles.
Black Watch casualties altogether in these few hours of action were eight officers and 108 men killed, and seventeen officers and 200 men wounded. It is not possible to say what the score was on the other side, but surely the enemy lost as many if not more, and the Jocks we know took almost 500 prisoners.
The Black Watch stayed in the old Italian and German positions for eighteen days, during which time Tobruk was again briefly isolated, but by 9 December it was clear that the Allies had won a victory and the Axis forces were in retreat. The Battalion moved back into Tobruk and, as New Year dawned, they were taken by motor transport to Egypt.
Ten days was the standard amount of leave, followed by another trip to Syria, where a German attack was always expected but never came. It was a short stay; too short, it would seem, for certain matters to be properly resolved in the officers’ mess:
‘TO THE HEAD QUARTER OF BRITISH
GOVERNMENT, DAMASCUS.
Sir, I undersigned Ibrahim Akkad living at Damascus, Souk El Atik No 6, contractor of vegetables and fruits, has the honour to state that I have purveyed the Officers of the second Black Watch with different food stuffs, and this Unity having moved recently to an
unknown place, without discharging its debts, specified as below. I beg your Excellence to make your order that my debts will be payed.’
The poor man had indeed supplied foodstuffs on six consecutive days in February, worth over 90 piastres. The bill was checked by a representative of His Excellence and marked ‘Forward to 70 Division’, with consequences we cannot know but can probably guess. Worse was to follow, placed at the door of one particular and famous officer of this unity, Bernard Fergusson:
‘Damascus, July 7th 1942.
Dear Sir,
On February 1942 Major B E Fergusson of 2nd Bn Black Watch ordered me to make a silk flag for his Bn but on the 22nd of February I received a letter from him saying that he was leaving Syria but I had to forward to him the said flag as soon as it was done and that he was ready to pay the cost of the flag and all expenses.’
The writer, whose name has been lost, finished the flag, took it into the office of military police and paid 75 piastres for postage to the Major.
‘On April I wrote a letter to the Area Commander explaining the case, and there they told me that my letter would be forwarded to Major Fergusson as soon as possible. Five months have already passed and I am still waiting for an answer. The cost of the flag and the embroideries done amount to Syrian 125 plus the expense of the postage. Being a poor worker this sum is for me a small capital. I trusted blindly the Major ... but we are in war time and nobody knows what may happen.’
You never said a truer word, Mr Flagman. Ibrahim Akkad’s last fruit and veg delivery was on 21 February, 1942. Rommel was pushing forward against the Allies and regaining lost ground in north Africa, and when the Battalion got its movement orders everyone was quite sure that’s where they were going; back to Tobruk or some equally welcoming hellhole. They boarded the train on 22 February at Damascus but it didn’t take them to Cairo. Four days later they were sailing down the Gulf of Suez and into the Red Sea, on board the Mauretania.
Jocks in the Jungle Page 3
