Tobruk 1941

by Chester Wilmot

  Leading them was Sergeant L. W. C. Batty, whose carrier overran one gun-position and went on to deal with another, but was stopped by an anti-tank shell. Batty was wounded, but his gunner, R. G. Daniells, kept nearby Italians quiet. When he was hit, the driver, J. L. Spavin, engaged them until the infantry arrived. To continue Kimber’s account:

  We covered the last few hundred yards firing our Brens and rifles from the hip. By the time we were fifty yards from their nearest sangars every Italian was well out of sight and not one weapon was firing on my platoon. In the first sangar I came to there were three Dagoes – with their heads buried in a corner and their tails sticking up in the air. After that it was just a matter of gathering up prisoners and dropping hand grenades in the breeches of the guns we couldn’t move.

  They brought back 16 Italian officers and 354 men; a number of anti-tank and machine-guns; several vehicles and motor-bikes. Having been ordered to return within two hours, Forbes could not stay to collect or even complete the destruction of all the booty. Sights and instruments, however, were removed from guns that had to be left and these were soon being used by the hitherto ‘sightless’ Bush Artillery. Primarily because of Forbes’s bold handling of the raid, the Australian casualties were slight – two killed and seven wounded.

  The troops who attacked on the Derna road, however, had a harder fight and far heavier casualties. Here the 2/23rd sent out two raiding parties – each of two officers and forty-four other ranks. The enemy held a strong position astride the road, and the plan was for one party to outflank this position north of the road while the other worked round it on the south side. Then both were to turn in towards the road, join forces and roll up the position from the rear.

  The northern party under Captain Rupert Rattray advanced at dawn up a wadi that led westward from the perimeter. They struck no opposition in the first mile, but then came under intense machine-gun fire from enemy sangars at the head of the wadi. They moved for cover into a small side wadi on the right, but the enemy immediately searched this with mortar-bombs and shells. Rattray said later:

  We couldn’t stay there and we couldn’t attack straight up the main wadi, so we decided to move against them across the top of the plateau. When they saw us come over the skyline, they turned their guns on us, but while one section gave covering fire, the other dashed in with the bayonet, pitching hand grenades ahead of them. As they got to the sangars the Italians brought out white handkerchiefs. We took nineteen prisoners and about as many more were killed by grenades and M.G. fire. Meantime the reserve section had collected another twenty-one prisoners at the head of the side wadi.

  We had intended to push southwards from here along the enemy line, but now we were coming under heavy fire from both flanks and the ground ahead was bare and flat. It would have meant throwing away good lives to go on, so we came back with our forty prisoners.

  The fight was long and bitter, south of the road, where the Italians had one A.A. anti-tank battery with two batteries of field guns behind it. All were well protected by machine-gun posts. The enemy, however, held his fire until Lieutenant R. W. James and the two leading sections were less than 500 yards away. Then ack-ack guns, mortars and artillery caught James and his men on a forward slope and kept them there. Seeing their acute danger, the patrol leader, Lieutenant J. A. Hutchinson, hurried the other two sections round to take the Italians in the flank and split their fire. He led his troops forward in short rushes, and four carriers came up to support them.

  At last his leading troops got near enough to charge and – to quote Hutchinson himself:

  The combined effect of the bayonet, grenades and carriers was too much for the Italians. They ran out of their stone sangars with their hands up, and I don’t think they stopped until they reached the perimeter 3000 yards away.

  This gave us our first objective – the ack-ack battery. But most of James’s two sections had been either killed or wounded and the rest of us now came under point-blank fire from artillery batteries and infantry 300 yards farther west. These guns were our second objective and, although we now had less than half our original strength, we decided to push on in the hope of linking up with Rattray’s patrol. Working forward along a wadi, we got to within fifty yards of the nearest gun-position. With Lance-Corporal W. Crummey, I made a dash for the gun and the crew abandoned it, but Crummey was hit and fell. A grenade he was holding ready to throw exploded, killing him and wounding me in the leg so badly that I could not move.

  Sergeant J. W. Barnard and the ten men Hutchinson had left in the wadi tried to get forward to the next gun-position with supporting fire from four carriers. But Barnard was already badly wounded, two of the carriers were hit and set ablaze and any further advance became impossible in the face of the scorching fire the enemy was putting down. Thinking Hutchinson had been killed, Barnard decided to withdraw protected by his remaining carriers. When they too were hit, the crews dismounted and gave covering fire with their Brens from the ground.1 Withdrawal was not easy. The enemy fire grew more intense and the ground offered no cover to the retiring troops. Nevertheless Bren carriers made several trips from the perimeter forward to pick up wounded. They also brought back captured weapons and Barnard’s party destroyed those they could not take with them.

  Of Hutchinson’s patrol 80 per cent had become casualties by the time they reached the perimeter after a 4-hour fight. The losses for the two parties were – one killed, twenty-three missing (most of them in fact killed), twenty-two wounded. But even though it was costly and had not succeeded in cleaning up the entire enemy position, the raid was justly described by Morshead as ‘an epic worthy of the finest traditions of the A.I.F.’. Eighty-seven prisoners had been taken and as many more killed or wounded. One prisoner, captured later, stated that out of his company of more than a hundred only ten were left after the battle. Shaken by the strength and daring of the Australian attack, the enemy at once reinforced the Derna road positions.

  Two days after this the Italians made a belated attempt to restore their confidence. At dawn Kimber’s platoon on Hill 209 came under fire from a force that had established itself in the wire between two perimeter posts. According to Kimber, there was a fierce machine-gun duel for about a quarter of an hour; ‘then their white flags came up; we sent out a patrol, gathered in 107 Italians and buried nearly 40.’ Later that morning German infantry appeared on the western sector for the first time. Machine-gun fire stopped them 300 yards from the wire and a 2/48th patrol chased them back. Several were killed and seven captured. One of these was an officer, who knew enough English to proclaim with vehemence, ‘–––Hitler!’

  This brought the total of prisoners captured on the 26th Brigade’s front in ten days to more than 1700.2 But so many were a decided embarrassment to the garrison, whose water ration at this time was half a gallon per man per day – eight cupfuls for all purposes. Nevertheless these patrol successes were encouraging. They gave the troops experience and confidence, and delayed the enemy preparations for attack. Lest success should make them over-confident, however, Morshead warned all units to ‘remember that continued vigilance is necessary and that most of our patrol successes have been against the Italians’.

  Behind this slightly comic facade provided by Il Duce’s heroes, Rommel had been preparing for an all-out attack. Reconnaissance aircraft reported continuous movement along the road from Derna and heavy concentrations of enemy tanks, guns and vehicles around Acroma, five miles west of Hill 209.

  The R.A.F., operating from bases inside Egypt, did its best to hinder enemy preparations by bombing and strafing. Although few aircraft were available these raids caused the Germans some concern, as is shown by these extracts from Schorm’s diary. For April 16th he wrote: ‘The airmen get on our nerves. Ten raids or more a day. No A.A., no fighter planes to meet them. We remain on the alert. At night two raids.’ For April 17th: ‘The day begins with the usual bombing and shelling. . . . No German troops up to the present have had such a drubbing as we.’<
br />
  By this time Schorm, who had already fought through the campaigns in Poland and Western Europe, had changed his ideas about the nature of war. In his diary for the 16th he wrote:

  The war in Africa is quite different from the war in Europe. It is absolutely individual. Here there are not masses of men and material. Nobody and nothing can be concealed. Whether in battle between opposing land forces or between those of the air or between both it is the same sort of fight, face to face; each side thrusts and counter-thrusts. If the struggle were not so brutal, so entirely without rules, one would be inclined to think of the romantic idea of a knight’s tourney.

  Meanwhile Rommel’s preparations went on, and in anticipation for a new assault Morshead’s troops worked day and night to strengthen the defences. By the end of the month captured weapons had been liberally issued to the forward posts; existing minefields had been strengthened and new ones laid; gun-positions had been camouflaged and stocked with ample reserve ammunition; new signal lines and reconditioned Italian phones had given forward posts the means of communication they had lacked. Telegraph poles, which lined the four main Tobruk roads providing prominent finger-posts on a featureless horizon, were cut down so that if enemy tanks should break through they could not be guided by them. The garrison had eight new ‘I’ tanks, but this gain was more than cancelled out by the unavoidable withdrawal on April 26th of the remaining R.A.F. fighters.

  In the previous three weeks No. 73 Squadron had lost twenty-seven of its thirty-two Hurricanes, and it would have been suicidal to leave the remaining five in Tobruk. At this time the total British fighter strength in the Western Desert – from Tobruk to Alexandria – was thirteen Hurricanes! All available fighters had been sent to Greece in a desperate attempt to check the German attacks on the roads along which the British and Anzac forces were now fighting their bitter rearguard action. No reinforcements for Libya could be quickly obtained. In a last-minute effort to get Hurricanes from Britain several attempts were made to fly them out, using Gibraltar and Malta as intermediate stopping places. This proved costly. Some lost their way; some were shot down; some crashed in the sea when they ran out of petrol. I was at a fighter drome in the desert in May, when one group of these fighters came in, and pilots told me that of thirty-two that had left Britain only fifteen reached the desert. Because of this critical shortage of fighters, the Germans had complete air supremacy over Tobruk and the frontier from mid-April to mid-May, and British air strength in the Western Desert then was lower than it had been at any time during the war.

  While they were in Tobruk, No. 73 Squadron, led by Squadron-Leader Peter Wykeham Barnes, fought an almost continuous battle at odds of anything up to ten to one. They seldom had half a dozen aircraft serviceable, and against this handful of Hurricanes the Germans could send as many as thirty ME 109s at any time. From any one of six airfields within twenty-five miles of Tobruk they could launch attacks almost before the Hurricanes were off the ground, and there were never enough British planes to maintain a standing patrol.

  The pilots were in action several times a day. As soon as a plane landed, ground personnel refuelled and rearmed it and another pilot took it over. Pilots were shot down, bailed out, and went up to fight again next day. Wykeham Barnes was brought down twice. The second time he landed outside the perimeter but managed to get back safely. Because of their superior numbers the Germans were able to continue fighting until the Hurricanes were out of ammunition and almost out of petrol. Then, as the British pilots made a last-minute dash for the Tobruk drome, German fighters would follow them in for the kill as they landed. They were equally in danger when taking off.

  In their final battles, however, they took heavy toll of the enemy. On April 23rd they destroyed four German planes for the loss of two. Next day three Hurricanes brought down eight Germans before they were inevitably overwhelmed. Although the fighters were then withdrawn the R.A.F. maintained, throughout most of the siege, one or two Hurricanes inside Tobruk by housing them in underground hangars. The pilots made daily reconnaissance of enemy positions and brought back valuable information, even though they could stay only long enough for a ‘quick look’.

  Having driven out the Hurricanes, the Luftwaffe was able to turn its full fury against the anti-aircraft guns and in the last four days of April its attacks reached a new intensity. On the 27th more than fifty dive-bombers concentrated on the town and the main A.A. positions. Four of the sixteen heavy guns attacked were damaged, but none was knocked out. The gunners found that if they fought the Stukas all the way down, they were comparatively safe.3

  Next day the harbour and the ack-ack guns were dive-bombed by nine planes in the morning and thirty-five in the afternoon, and another heavy raid was made on the field gun-positions near Pilastrino that evening. On the 29th the sky throbbed with enemy planes almost all day. They concentrated most of their fury on the forward posts near Hill 209 and on the gun-positions west of Pilastrino. In five raids more than 150 aircraft blitzed these areas, while Stukas bombed the harbour again and sank a small merchantman laden with outgoing mail.

  In spite of the ferocity of these attacks the ack-ack gunners fought staunchly back. In the last three weeks of April, 677 aircraft took part in 52 raids on the harbour and ack-ack defences, and several hundred more attacked the field guns and perimeter posts. But the guns were never silenced and by the end of the month, in addition to some 30 planes brought down by the R.A.F., the ack-ack had certainly destroyed 37, probably destroyed 16, and damaged 43. Disregarding this evidence of the gunners’ invincible spirit and good shooting, Rommel apparently considered that by April 30th the garrison had been softened up enough for him to attack again.

  For the Germans this was the time to strike. The British and Anzac Expeditionary Force had been unceremoniously driven from Greece. Admittedly most of the troops had escaped, but they had lost all weapons except their personal arms. The survivors were either stranded in Crete or back in Egypt somewhat disorganized. The tanks and aircraft, which might have given the British effective striking power in the Western Desert, had all been lost in Greece, where the Germans were now mounting forces for another major thrust.

  By April 26th Rommel had re-established himself on the frontier by re-capturing Sollum and Halfaya, from which he could effectively check any British diversion designed to help Tobruk. He could now give undivided attention to crushing its ‘impudent’ resistance. He could employ twice the tanks and aircraft he had used on April 14th; he now had two German armoured divisions instead of one, and three Italian divisions as well. R.A.F. reconnaissance planes brought back daily reports of greater and still greater German concentrations around Acroma. It was clear that Tobruk’s hour had come. On one of the last days of the month, an enemy plane was shot down over the Fortress; in it was a map marked with a red arrow, which ran from Acroma through Hill 209 to the very heart of Tobruk.

  _____________

  1 After Barnard’s party had withdrawn Hutchinson tried to hobble back, but was taken prisoner. Nearly a year later, however, he was released in an exchange of prisoners of war.

  2 During eighteen days in the line at this time, the 2/48th Battalion alone captured 1375 prisoners, for the loss of 15 men killed and 20 wounded.

  3 See Chapter 18.

  CHAPTER 11

  BATTLE OF THE SALIENT

  PHASE I. THE PENETRATION AND THE FIRST THRUST

  ALL day long on April 30th dust-clouds billowed up from the desert between Acroma and Hill 209 in a steadily thickening pall. Through the haze Australians in the perimeter posts caught glimpses of enemy infantry debussing from lorries, and of tanks and guns being assembled two miles beyond the perimeter astride the Acroma road. Much the same thing had been happening almost daily for the past fortnight, but this time the dust-clouds were heavier and the enemy forces continued to mass regardless of spasmodic shell by British guns. During the afternoon the posts near 209 were heavily shelled and dive-bombed. The sun dipped down towards the horizon, glarin
g an angry red through the curtain of dust. In the evening glow the Stukas struck again.

  Roaring down out of that ominous sky at 7.15, twenty-two of them unleashed their fury with bomb and machine-gun on Hill 209 and Australian posts to the north of it. Back and forth they went along the perimeter until their ammunition ran out. As they swung away another twenty came in to strafe 209, and the posts immediately south of it. In fifty minutes of intense attack the two waves of Stukas concentrated their bombs on the barbed wire and their machine-guns on the infantry positions.

  The chatter of the last burst had barely died away when, at 8 p.m., the full force of Rommel’s artillery was turned against the positions which the 2/24th Battalion was now holding on Hill 209 and to either side of it.

  [The 2/24th, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Allan Spowers, was holding a 4½-mile front from S11, south through Hill 209 to R10. (The numbers of the posts north of 209 were prefixed by the letter ‘S’; those south of it by the letter ‘R’.) Three companies (‘C’, ‘A’, and ‘D’) were manning twenty-two concrete posts on the perimeter, and ‘B’ Company was in reserve, a mile east of 209. On its right the 2/24th had the 2/23rd; on its left the 2/15th, and behind it in the Blue Line, the 2/48th. It was supported by the 51st British Field Regiment, plus Vickers guns of the Northumberland Fusiliers, and anti-tank guns of the 3rd R.H.A. and the 24th and 26th Australian Anti-Tank Companies.]