Tobruk 1941

by Chester Wilmot

  The failure of the June attack in the desert gave Blamey a second argument. There was then little chance of the British forces on the Egyptian frontier gathering sufficient strength to attack again much before December. In June the garrison was to have fought its way out to meet the relieving forces. After that, however, the question arose whether it would be fit to carry out this role in the next offensive if the men were left in Tobruk for another four or five months.

  By July the hard conditions were beginning to tell. The infantry and ack-ack gunners were particularly war-weary, and lack of vitamins and of fresh food generally had increased the sickness rate. Australian infantry battalions, which would have to bear the brunt in any break-out, were much below strength and sufficient reinforcements for the A.I.F. were not immediately available, for the 6th Division’s severe losses in Greece and Crete had barely been made good. (On May 25th the Australian units in Tobruk were about 30 per cent below strength, for they were 128 officers and 3891 other ranks short – the equivalent of more than a complete infantry brigade. The position improved after this but few infantry battalions ever had 75 per cent of their full numbers, and several of them had to be reinforced with A.S.C. personnel.) The Australian Government supported Blamey’s request and made a direct application to the British War Cabinet. In London and Cairo the weight of the two Australian arguments was appreciated, but it was feared, with good reason, that relief on such a scale would be costly and extremely difficult. It involved taking in more than 15 000 British and Polish troops and bringing out as many Australians through a port which had few facilities and was regularly bombed and shelled. But Morshead, who made two special trips to Cairo to see Blamey about this, was convinced that his staff could handle its share of the responsibility.

  When the Royal Navy undertook to provide the warships to transport the troops, G.H.Q. finally agreed to withdraw, in August, one Australian Brigade group consisting of the 18th Infantry Brigade, the 16th Anti-tank Company, 2/4th Field Company, 2/4th Field Ambulance and the 51st British Field Regiment, plus the 18th Indian Cavalry. The 18th Brigade was chosen because it belonged to the 7th Division and not – as some of its members later proclaimed – because it had borne the brunt of the fighting at Tobruk. This group was to be replaced by the Polish Carpathian Brigade group, which for over a year had been itching for a chance to fight the Germans. G.H.Q. agreed that, if the move were successful, the remaining Australians would be withdrawn.

  Few people in Cairo, however, thought that the dangers and difficulties could be overcome. So large a move could hardly be hidden from Axis spies in Alexandria. The ships could not afford to stay in the harbour much more than half an hour. In that time they would be fine targets for enemy bombs and shells. Even if no ships or troops were hit, enemy interference might delay the unloading and loading so long that the warships would not be clear of Bomb Alley off Sollum before dawn.

  During the change-overs in August and September, however, Axis bombers were not very troublesome and, by bringing in eight mobile 3.7s from the outer areas each evening, the harbour barrage was made strong enough to divert most of the Axis pilots from the danger zone. In August, as we have seen, the enemy tried to clear the way for his night raiders by severe dive-bombing of the ack-ack gun-positions shortly before dark. These attacks failed and the protective barrage over the harbour was even heavier than before. ‘Bardia Bill’ was kept quiet by counter-battery fire.

  The arrival of the Poles in the third week of August caused a stir among the rather bored troops. The Poles were marked out at once by their pith helmets; their dull grey shorts and shirts; their silver insignia of rank and their very formal behaviour. They are invariably sticklers for courtesy. Privates salute corporals; lieutenants salute lieutenants. And their saluting is quite a performance – even in the field. Two officers meet – salute, shake hands, salute again. They carried this politeness into the front line. A British artillery officer told me that one day he and a Polish officer were manning an O.P. in the Salient only a few hundred yards from the enemy. The Pole put his guns right on to a target; the Englishman congratulated him. The Pole stood up, saluted and sat down only just in time to escape a sniper’s bullet. After that he was less demonstrative.

  They had no politeness where Germans were concerned, but they were not at all interested in the Italians. This same British officer summed up the Poles’ attitude by saying: ‘If they see an Italian working party of fifty, they ignore it; but one German shaking out his blanket brings “three rounds gun-fire”.’

  More than half the men in the Carpathian Brigade had fought against the Germans in 1939. The rest were civilians, who had left their homes and families so that they could take up the fight in the Middle East. But they reached there only after considerable dangers and hardships. Those who had been soldiers had to escape from internment camps in Hungary and Rumania or from German prisons. Some even fought their way out of Poland. Many had walked or hitch-hiked half-way across Europe in escaping.

  They had originally been organized into a fighting force in Syria, but when France collapsed the Poles, defying Vichy’s orders, marched into Palestine taking all their French weapons, equipment and transport with them. Then for more than a year they trained, and prepared defences, in Palestine and Egypt, but it was not till August 1941 that they got their chance at Tobruk. They made the most of it.

  The Poles relieved the 18th Brigade group in August and the 24th Brigade group1 was replaced in September by the 16th British Brigade group. Both moves went so smoothly that G.H.Q. decided to withdraw the two remaining Australian brigades on nine nights in the last half of October when the moon was changing. It was expected that Rommel would do his best to interfere; for the sake of prestige, if for no other reason, he could not allow them all to ‘escape’.

  He was baffled only by good timing and co-operation between Navy, R.A.F. and Tobruk garrison. In the late afternoon as the warships came within the range of the dive-bombers, a swarm of R.A.F. fighters gave them cover until it was nearly dark. When the warships were an hour or so out from Tobruk, British bombers and long-range fighters took off from airfields in Egypt and headed westward for enemy bases. The R.A.F. knew that Axis airmen did not operate when there was no moon, unless they used flare-lit runways. During the critical hours when the enemy’s bombers might have been taking off for Tobruk, the R.A.F. dropped a few bombs over his airfields and then cruised around above them, confident that he would not dare to light his flares so long as he could hear the drone of the British aircraft overhead.

  As the warships approached Tobruk the 60-pounders and 25-pounders opened fire on ‘Bardia Bill’ and the other ‘harbour guns’. With smoke and star-shells they provided a beacon that guided warships and bombers to the enemy gun-positions. An escorting destroyer broke away from the convoy and standing offshore shelled the big guns while British bombers dropped parachute flares above the positions and added their bombs to the Navy’s shells. These three-way attacks were not made every night. Sometimes only bombers were used with the 60-pounders; sometimes only warships; sometimes both. But the result was always the same.

  When the ships slipped into harbour, ‘Bardia Bill’ was silent and the enemy bombers absent. There was only one jetty for the three destroyers and the mine-laying cruiser, which came in each night, but that did not worry the Navy. Two destroyers slid alongside half-sunken hulks that had been turned into ‘wharves’. The cruiser was unloaded and loaded in mid-harbour from barges. After half an hour, having disembarked a thousand men, dumped anything from 100 to 200 tons of stores, and taken a thousand men aboard, the warships steamed out again into the night.

  These combined attacks kept the enemy quiet while the ships were in the harbour; but on the last nights of the move, when the moon did not set for several hours after dark, ‘Bardia Bill’ and enemy bombers attacked the waterfront in the early evening, evidently hoping to catch the waiting troops in the open. Stukas even dive-bombed by moonlight and by the light of parachute flar
es, but they were no more effective than the high-level bombers. This reappearance of the Stukas under cover of darkness was the final confession of their own defeat.

  On the third last night of the relief, there was some excitement before the destroyers arrived. In the afternoon the departing troops, who had been in the front line until the night before, packed their kitbags, haversacks and packs till they bulged, leaving out clothes to make room for precious souvenirs fashioned out of shell-cases, grenades and fragments of wrecked planes.

  About five o’clock they had their last dust-laden meal of Tobruk stew, irrigated with chlorine-tainted tea. At dark they piled into trucks and made their final journey to the harbour. On their way they passed several heavy ack-ack guns going in to strengthen the night’s barrage. As the Australian trucks crawled by, a Digger called to the gun-crews, ‘Good on yer Tommy; give it to ’em to-night!’ The Tommies waved an envious farewell.

  The guns were certainly needed. As we followed one party down to the harbour after dark, bombers were coming over, as they had been every ten minutes or so for the past hour. At the roadside on the outskirts of the town the large red air-raid flag was hanging limp, as if tired out from flying for more than 1600 ‘red warnings’. (Tobruk’s only other air-raid warning devices were the blowing of a muffled siren with a note like a bugle at Admiralty House, the Naval H.Q., and the showing of a red flag by day and of a shielded red light by night from the top of that building. Early in the siege, the Italian siren in the town had been used, but its blood-curdling note, wailing almost continuously in those days, was more nerve-racking than the bombing itself.)

  The guns were going now, but the trucks, laden with silent Diggers, kept on; there was to be no stopping for anything to-night. We lumbered on slowly in the moonlight. At a bend in the road a shadowy figure waved us round a fresh bomb-crater which engineers were already repairing. We crept along to the waterfront, where another gesticulating figure stopped us. It was one of the ‘bomb disposal boys’ with a warning: ‘There’s a dud 500-pounder right in the middle of the road here – a Stuka dropped it half an hour ago – keep well over and for Gawd’s sake keep moving. The last lot of trucks was banked up here for ten minutes and I was sure they’d cop another.’

  We edged past the small round grave the bomb had dug for itself, and parked the truck at the end of the jetty where there was a broad shelf between the sea and the cliff. Here guides and M.Ps were busy hustling the troops out of trucks and back to shelter either against the cliff or in one of the deep tunnels the Italians had burrowed in its face. Inside these there was a heavy fug but they were bomb-proof and provided the troops with a chance to smoke and sing as they waited impatiently for the ships to arrive.

  We walked along the waterfront; it was quiet now as the drone of the trucks going back for the next load died away. Then suddenly to the east we saw two bright flashes a short distance inland. Almost at the same moment a voice from a lookout post called – ‘Two from “Bardia Bill”.’ There was a scurry as everybody dived for cover. We seemed to wait twenty minutes, not twenty seconds, before we heard the high-pitched whine of the oncoming shells. With a final screaming swish they plunged into the water, fortunately clear of two lighters packed with troops about to be ferried out to the wrecks that were used as landing-stages.

  Quiet again – and we walked along to the Movement Control Office where clerks were busy checking the final arrangements. In the house behind the office we found a ghostly O’Shaughnessy, powdered a dirty white from head to foot with dust and plaster. A bomb had shattered an empty building across the street, but had done no other damage beyond shaking a couple of square yards of plaster off O’Shaughnessy’s roof and on to Tobruk’s Movement Control Chief himself. He was now sweeping out his bedroom.

  ‘Good evenin’ boys,’ he said. ‘You’re just in time to help me wash the dust out of me throat.’ He produced the inevitable brandy and Recoaro. We were just drinking to his good fortune when the ack-ack started again. O’Shaughnessy drained his glass, dashed out the door and down the steps to his precious Lewis guns. The planes were so high that the Bofors were not bothering about them. O’Shaughnessy, ever optimistic, loosed a couple of bursts from his machine-guns, but it was the heavies that turned the raiders away. We did not even hear their bombs crash. O’Shaughnessy left his post in disgust. ‘They stay so high,’ he said, ‘they don’t give a fellow a chance’ – and back he went to his sweeping.

  We were in the middle of the town when the last raiders came over just before the moon went down. The battered buildings loomed grotesquely in the half-light. We might have been in the heart of a ghost town until two bombers drew near again. In an instant Tobruk was alive and fighting. From the ruins came the harsh crack of several machine-guns and, with the full barrage going, the sound of the guns seemed to be amplified many times in the town’s empty shell. Then above the noise of ack-ack, the steady drone of engines suddenly rose to a roar as two planes dived towards the harbour. They pulled out and the roar died away, but the whine of on-coming bombs increased as the roar faded.

  The bombs fell so wide that we could not tell where they had hit, but the walls of the nearest buildings shuddered. The fury of the ack-ack was soon spent and two columns of smoke and dust spiralling up from the bare hill behind the town were the only evidence that the Stukas had been over again. On top of Admiralty House the red warning light went out and across the harbour the long steady note of the ‘all clear’ bugle sounded like a distant foghorn. The moon set and that was the last of the bombers, but the next two hours of waiting dragged by like a wet week-end.

  At last the destroyers slid out of the darkness, their guns pointing skyward, their gun-crews alert beside them – in case. At fifty gun-pits round the harbour guns and gunners were equally ready. As one destroyer tied up alongside the wreck at the end of Tobruk’s main wharf, British Tommies began streaming down the narrow gangway, across the wreck and on to the jetty. There was no clank of iron heels on the steel plates because they all wore rubber-soled desert boots. They needed them. The gangway was narrow and they were more heavily laden than an Arab mule. Nevertheless 300 padded off in ten minutes.

  At the same time, on the destroyer and the wreck men of an Indian Labour Company were lumping huge boxes of ammunition from one ship to the other. Although the orders to the Diggers read ‘no noise’, the Indians made a great clatter, shouting all the time and crashing the metal ammunition cases down on the steel deck. At last everything was clear and 300 Diggers had ten minutes in which to scramble aboard. They were on in five.

  The destroyer began to throb. Slowly she slid out into the stream. Until this moment the Diggers had been quiet, but as they broke contact with Tobruk first one whistle then another and another shrilled out from the destroyer and from the shore came others in reply. Then a hush, until across the water echoed their own farewell – a long coo-ee.

  Night after night the moves went smoothly through. It was excellent staff work and clearly showed the efficiency of Morshead’s H.Q., and particularly of the officer most responsible, Major N. G. Dodds. There was no hitch until the very last night – October 25th–26th. Before then there had been no serious attacks on the harbour or the warships en route to Tobruk during the October moves. But on the evening of the 25th the enemy attacked the waterfront strongly and bombs fell perilously close to the waiting troops.2 Finally the bombers went but the ships did not come in.

  Late that afternoon they had been spotted by a reconnaissance plane. Shortly after dark enemy bombers began coming over in the moonlight. The ships successfully fought off and evaded the early attacks, but at last a direct hit sent the minelaying cruiser H.M.S. Latona to the bottom. One of the destroyers was damaged by a near-miss, and by the time the others had picked up Latona’s survivors it was too late for them to go on to Tobruk.

  It was almost dawn before news reached the Diggers waiting on the Tobruk waterfront. Their disappointment deepened when they found that they could not leave be
fore the second week in November, when the waning moon would allow the destroyers to come in again. Then, with the Eighth Army’s offensive about to begin, G.H.Q. asked the A.I.F. to leave the 2/13th in Tobruk so as to give General Scobie another battalion. The 2/13th blamed their unlucky number, little realizing then that they would soon be proud to have been left behind.

  In spite of the disaster on the last night the relief of the Australians was a final insult to Rommel. For six months the German Radio had been boasting that the Australians in Tobruk were caught like rats in a trap with no hope of escape; it had sneered at them as ‘self-supporting prisoners’. It had boasted that the Stukas had made the British Navy powerless to come to their aid.

  Now the same powerless Navy, which had kept the garrison supplied throughout the siege, had carried more than 150 000 men in and as many out again. The Australians whom Rommel had threatened to drive into the sea in April had thrown back all his attacks, defied and harried his forces for over six months and finally had been withdrawn to rest, refit and come back for their revenge at El Alamein in 1942.

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  1 The 2/43rd Battalion remained, but the 2/1st Pioneers, the 2/12th Field Regiment, the 3rd Anti-tank Regiment, the 24th Anti-tank Company, the 2/7th and 2/13th Field Companies, the 2/3rd Field Ambulance and the 8th Light A.A. Battery were withdrawn at the same time. Some British units were also relieved. The 16th Brigade was part of the 70th British Division, commanded by Major-General R. M. Scobie.