The platoon commander in Post 33 was a 23-year-old Sydney Lieutenant, Austin Mackell. He was short, slight, quiet and seemed to the rough and ready Diggers under him little more than a schoolboy. But the prompt and determined action he took was that of a seasoned and gallant leader. He knew the enemy must be dislodged, and without hesitation took a corporal and five men to drive them back at bayonet point.
This is the story of their attack as he told it later – after much persuasion:
About a quarter to twelve we set out, Corporal Jack Edmondson, five men and myself – with fixed bayonets and two grenades apiece. The Germans were dug in about a hundred yards to the east of our post, but we headed northwards away from it, and swung round in a three-quarter circle so as to take them in the flank.
As we left the post there was spasmodic fire. Then they saw us running and seemed to turn all their guns on us. We didn’t waste any time. After a 200-yard sprint we went to ground for breath; got up again, running till we were about fifty yards from them. Then we went to ground for another breather, and as we lay there, pulled the pins out of our grenades. Apparently the Germans had been able to see us all the way, and they kept up their fire. But it had been reduced a lot because the men we’d left in the post had been firing to cover us. They did a grand job, for they drew much of the enemy fire on themselves.
We’d arranged with them that, as we got up for the final charge, we’d shout and they would stop firing and start shouting, too. The plan worked. We charged and yelled, but for a moment or two the Germans turned everything onto us. It’s amazing that we weren’t all hit. As we ran we threw our grenades and when they burst the German fire stopped. But already Jack Edmondson had been seriously wounded by a burst from a machine-gun that had got him in the stomach, and he’d also been hit in the neck. Still he ran on, and before the Germans could open up again we were into them.
They left their guns and scattered. In their panic some actually ran slap into the barbed wire behind them and another party that was coming through the gap turned and fled. We went for them with the bayonet. In spite of his wounds Edmondson was magnificent. As the Germans scattered, he chased them and killed at least two. By this time I was in difficulties wrestling with one German on the ground while another was coming straight for me with a pistol. I called out – ‘Jack’ – and from about fifteen yards away Edmondson ran to help me and bayoneted both Germans. He then went on and bayoneted at least one more.
Mackell scrambled to his feet at once, grabbed his rifle, bayoneted one German, but broke his bayonet in doing so. Then he used his rifle as a club. Meantime Edmondson and the others had killed at least a dozen Germans and taken one prisoner. The rest fled leaving their weapons behind them. They had sat resolutely enough behind their machine-guns while the Australians charged, but had cracked at the sight of the bayonet.
Edmondson had continued fighting till he could no longer stand. His mates helped him back to the post, but he died early next morning. Jack Edmondson’s death was a sad blow to his battalion, for he had already made his mark as a man and a leader of men. He was only twenty-six, but considerable experience on his father’s grazing property near Liverpool, New South Wales, had made him older than his years. His heroism did not go unrecognized. He was posthumously awarded the V.C. – the first won by any member of the 2nd A.I.F.
After seeing his men safely back to his own post, Mackell reported the result of the attack to Balfe’s H.Q. Speaking from there to his C.O. (Lieutenant-Colonel J. W. Crawford) he said with expressive brevity – ‘We’ve been into ’em, and they’re running like –––.’
Crawford had already sent two fighting patrols out under Lieutenants W. B. A. Geikie and C. G. Pitman. They had driven back small parties of Germans and had each brought in a prisoner from the 8th German Machine-gun Battalion as well as reports of extensive enemy movement right along Balfe’s front. Crawford now moved his reserve company (under Captain C. H. Wilson) to a position just behind Post 32 ready for a strong counter-attack at dawn.
The offensive action taken by the 2/17th’s patrols, however, had disorganized the enemy’s schedule. Mackell’s charge had routed the German advance guard and it was a couple of hours before they sent forward another force strong enough to hold the gap near 33. About 2.15 a.m. some 200 German infantry moved through the wire and soon established a bridgehead extending several hundred yards inside. At 2.30 Balfe sent up a Very light calling for artillery fire on the ditch, wire and forward posts around 33. Two regiments of the R.H.A. shelled the area heavily; the posts fired everything they had, but this time the Germans could not be dislodged, though they had many casualties. In the moonlight the Diggers in the forward posts saw ambulances picking up wounded some distance outside the wire.
At 5.20 – half an hour before dawn – the first German tanks moved through the gaps their engineers had made, and headed straight for Balfe’s Company H.Q. at Post 32, about half a mile inside the wire. The British gunners were still shelling the area heavily, but the forward companies had orders not to attract the tanks’ attention, to let them pass if necessary, and wait for the enemy infantry.
Consequently, the Australians lay low, even though the leading tank came within thirty yards of Post 32 before it swung to the right and, with a dozen tanks behind it, headed for the town eight miles away. Behind each tank there were groups of fifteen to twenty machine-gunners, some of them riding on the backs of the tanks. They dropped off inside the perimeter, their job being to hold the bridgehead while the tanks pushed on north-east towards the El Adem crossroads, 4½ miles inside.
Soon after 5.45 a.m. thirty-eight German tanks of the 5th Tank Regiment’s 2nd Battalion were forming up for attack about three-quarters of a mile inside the perimeter wire. Meantime, a couple of miles outside, that regiment’s 1st Battalion was moving towards the gap, preceded by field and anti-tank guns and additional German infantry. The attack was going exactly to the plan that had so often shattered defences in Europe. For the 5th Regiment, which had fought in Poland and France, this would be another ‘push-over’. The break-through had been made; now the deep armoured thrust, and then the exploitation by further armoured and mechanized troops who would pour through the gap, fan out behind the defences and roll them up.
As the 2nd Battalion’s tanks assembled for attack, the dust-cloud they raised could be picked out in the fading moonlight and gathering dawn by the gunners of the 1st R.H.A., whose 25-pounders were behind the embryonic Blue Line about a mile south-west of the El Adem crossroads. At once they switched their fire from the gap to the tanks and increased it as these moved forward. The Germans also came under fire from several of the 3rd R.H.A.’s anti-tank guns, which were dug in behind the forward posts, but it was still too dark for the guns to engage the tanks effectively.
The Germans, however, were already impressed by the British fire. One of their tank officers (Lieutenant Schorm, of the 5th Tank Regiment) wrote later in his diary: ‘Slowly, much too slowly, the column moves forward. In this way the enemy has time to prepare resistance. In proportion as darkness lifts the enemy strikes harder. Destructive fire starts up in front of us now. Five batteries rain their shells on us.’
By this time the German tanks were two miles inside the wire and British guns on either side of the El Adem road were putting down a steady barrage in their path, but they replied with machine-guns and their 75 and 37 mm cannon. ‘The air was lit with tracer shells and bullets until it looked like Blackpool illuminations,’ according to Sergeant-Major Reg Batten, who was commanding one of the 1st R.H.A.’s guns. Later he said:
Their tracers put us right on to them, but so long as they were a mile or so away we couldn’t stop them because they were so well dispersed. They kept their machine-guns going as they moved, but when the Mark IVs used their big ‘75’, they stopped, took deliberate aim at our flashes and then came on again. They seemed to work to a plan. Some fired while the others kept moving. The bulk of their tanks headed straight for the gap between two
troops of our guns, but two Mark IVs tried to go round our flank, past the gun where I was.
As they came up within half a mile we engaged them over open sights. At about 600 yards we hit one and then swung the gun to deal with the other. Our first round fell short, but we saw sparks fly as splinters1 struck the side of the tank. We were about to fire again when a 75 mm shell hit us square on the shield. The gun was knocked out and all the crew, except myself, were either killed or wounded. I managed to fire the round that was still in the gun and the tanks turned tail and withdrew. It’s a good thing they didn’t know that we couldn’t fire again and that no other gun near by could have tackled them if they’d kept going. But they turned back and later the tank we’d hit lost its track.
No other tanks got even as far as these. As the main force tried to thrust its way through the line of guns it was stopped short by the barrage. The British gunners had never engaged tanks directly over open sights before but they did not falter. One troop of four guns fired more than a hundred rounds per gun in twenty minutes, as the Germans kept attacking in a determined effort to silence the British fire and smash through. But they had little chance of knocking out guns dug in almost flush with the ground.
At a point-blank range of five to six hundred yards the 25-pounders were irresistible. Seven tanks were knocked out – one, a 22-tonner, which was simultaneously hit by two shells, had a massive turret blown clean off. Leaving several tanks blazing on the battlefield, the survivors swung eastwards and tried to get round the field batteries, but they came under fire from two guns of the 3rd Australian Anti-tank Regiment as they got near the El Adem road. (These two guns claim to have knocked out four enemy tanks in this area, but there seems to be some duplication between their claims and those of 1st R.H.A.) Several more enemy tanks were hit, but managed to struggle back.
Thwarted and battered, the German tanks retired beyond the open sights range of the 25-pounders and the anti-tank guns in the Blue Line. But as they went the 3rd R.H.A.’s mobile anti-tank guns attacked them from both flanks. These guns, mounted on the backs of of 30-cwt. trucks, had no protective armour, but this did not deter their crews. They employed what they later described as ‘mosquito tactics’. At one stage three guns engaged three heavy German tanks. Heading their truck straight for these, the drivers raced across the desert at break-spring speed till they were within half a mile of the tanks; there they swung round, fired half a dozen shells from their 2-pounders and then raced out again. At first the tanks were taken by surprise, but on going in for the second and later attacks the trucks ran into heavy machine-gun and shell fire. Several were hit, but none was put out of action. One had a remarkable escape. A German armour-piercing shell went right through the reserve petrol tank under the driver’s seat without setting the truck on fire. By attacks like these the enemy was harried as he withdrew and several of his tanks were hit.
Before 7 a.m. about a mile south of the Blue Line the Germans rallied and tried to form up for another mass attack, but the British gunners continued to shell them. The tanks were helpless without the anti-tank and field guns and the 8th M.G. Battalion, all of which should have followed them; but there was no sign of these supporting arms. Actually they were still trying to get through, in the face of tactics they had never before encountered. As we have seen, the Diggers in the perimeter posts had not engaged the tanks. Apparently the Germans expected the Australians would give in as soon as the tanks had gone past; some of them had even called on the Diggers to surrender, shouting out that the tanks had broken through and Tobruk had fallen. The answers they received were hardly printable. Once the tanks had moved on, however, the troops in the perimeter posts opened fire on the infantry with everything they had. Some Germans had got through in the darkness, but the rest were now forced to take refuge in the anti-tank ditch outside the wire.
At dawn when the Germans began bringing up anti-tank and field guns Balfe’s men held their fire. ‘As it got light,’ said Balfe, ‘we saw them dragging three anti-tank guns towards the gap. We let them come on till they were within fifty yards of my H.Q. Then we sniped the crews and, though they did fire back, we eventually killed every man. The Germans next brought up some heavy, long-barrelled guns2 to the anti-tank ditch, but we knocked out their crews before they had fired a round. The same thing happened to a 75 mm field gun. Nothing got past us after daylight.’
Meantime heavy shelling of the area outside the wire well south of the bridgehead was disorganizing German attempts to get further reinforcements forward, and the few hundred infantry of the 8th M.G. Battalion, who had slipped through the perimeter posts in the darkness, were soon dealt with. Some of them had taken refuge from the British shelling in shallow wadis on the sloping ground behind the forward posts, but one party had established itself with half a dozen machine-guns in a ruined house a few hundred yards north of Post 32. At 6.30 a.m. Colonel Crawford sent two platoons to clean up this area.
They drove some of the enemy back through the wire and then dealt with those in the ruined house. The attack was made by two sections, led by Sergeant R. M. McElroy, who told me later that, while the other sections gave them covering fire, his men went in with the bayonet. This fire kept most of the German machine-guns quiet and McElroy’s party was able to advance in dead ground until they were within fifty yards of the house. Then they charged, under cover of a hail of grenades. ‘As these burst,’ McElroy said afterwards, ‘the Germans practically stopped firing. Some came running out to surrender; some did not. We got at them with the bayonet. Eighteen were killed and eighteen captured. Few escaped.’
Because of these operations, no guns or infantry came forward to support the German tanks, and by 7 o’clock they were being attacked from all sides by artillery, anti-tank guns and finally British tanks. Long before the first German tanks got through the wire Morshead had taken steps to deal with them. The enemy had made no attempt to conceal the point and direction of his thrust, and during the night, when it became clear that he meant business, the mobile reserve of tanks and anti-tank guns had been moved into position to meet the attack. By dawn two groups of cruiser tanks – half a dozen in each – were disposed to the east of the El Adem road, so that they could attack the enemy’s flank with the early morning sun behind them. They had been ordered to let the enemy armour first batter itself against the field and anti-tank guns, and then to fall on it from the flank. The plan worked well and now, while the Germans tried to re-form for another advance, they came under heavier fire than ever. The British tanks then moved in to attack. From the Germans’ eastern flank five cruisers of the 1st R.T.R., commanded by Major A. E. Benzie, opened fire on them at about 1800 yards. Although they were out-numbered five or six to one, the British closed in to a range of less than half a mile, firing into the mass of milling tanks, which replied strongly. Benzie’s tank was disabled by two direct hits. ‘I ordered the crew to get out and just as they did so, it was hit again and caught fire,’ said Benzie in telling me the story later. ‘I hopped on the back of my second-in-command’s tank and he continued to engage the Germans with me hanging on to the turret, until his tank was hit too.
‘My other tanks kept fighting. During the battle it was almost impossible to tell what was happening. All I could see was round after round of tracer going into the cloud of dust and smoke where their tanks were. But we could tell we had them on the run, and as we followed up, there were four German tanks abandoned on the battlefield.’
By this time the combined British fire plus the failure of his own infantry and guns to appear had been too much for the enemy. As the British tanks, now reinforced by four Matildas, continued their attack, the Germans turned and raced for the perimeter. Evidently they fled in some panic, if the description of the battle written by Schorm, the tank officer already quoted, is any guide. He wrote:
Our heavy tanks fire for all they are worth, just as we do, but the enemy, with his superior force and all the tactical advantages of his own territory, makes heavy gaps in
our ranks. We are right in the middle of it with no prospect of getting out. From both flanks armour-piercing shells whizz by at 100 metres a second . . . On the radio – ‘Right turn!’ – ‘Left turn!’ – ‘Retire!’ Now we come slap into the 1st Battalion which is following us. Some of our tanks are already on fire. The crews call for doctors who alight to help in this witches’ cauldron. English anti-tank units fall upon us with their guns firing into our midst. My driver, in the thick of it, says: ‘The engines are no longer running properly, brakes not acting, transmission working only with great difficulty.’
We bear off to the right. Anti-tank guns 900 metres distance in the hollow, and a tank. Behind that in the next dip, 1200 metres away, another tank.
Italian fighter planes come into the fray above us. Two of them crash in our midst. Our optical instruments are spoiled by the dust; nevertheless I register several unmistakable hits. A few anti-tank guns are silenced; some enemy tanks are burning. Just then we are hit and the radio is smashed to bits. Now our communications are cut off. What is more, our ammunition is giving out. I follow the battalion commander.
Our attack is fading out. From every side the superior forces of the enemy shoot at us. ‘Retire.’ We take a wounded man and two others on board and other tanks do the same . . .
With its last strength my tank follows the others which we lose from time to time in dust-clouds. But we have to press on towards the south. It is the only way through. Suppose we don’t find it? Suppose the engines won’t do any more?
Close in on our right and left flanks the English tanks shoot into our midst. We are struck in the tracks which creak and groan. At last the gap is in sight. Everything hastens towards it. English anti-tank guns shoot into the mass. Our own anti-tank and 88 mm anti-aircraft guns are almost deserted. The crews are lying silent beside them. Italian artillery which was to have protected our left flank is equally deserted. We go on. Now comes the gap. Now the ditch. The drivers cannot see a thing for the dust, nor I either; we drive by instinct. The tank almost gets stuck in the ditch but manages to extricate itself after a great struggle. With their last reserves of power the crew get out of range and we return to camp. I examine the damage to the tank. My men extract an armour-piercing shell from the right-hand auxiliary petrol tank. The auxiliary tank – three centimetres of armour plate – is cut clean through; the petrol had run out without igniting. We were lucky to escape alive.
Tobruk 1941 Page 14
