Tobruk 1941

by Chester Wilmot

  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.

  OFFENSIVE PATROLS

  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.