Larrikins in Khaki

by Tim Bowden

  We were eventually escorted to the train by the Australian Picket. At Helman Railway Station the Egyptian police had a picnic working us over with their belt buckles. We arrived back at camp, sick, sore and sorry for ourselves. We were even more sorry for ourselves later when we lost 28 days pay and Jack Humphreys went to the English Detention Barracks at Abbasia for 28 days.

  Chapter 5

  HIGH JINKS IN EGYPT

  The desert war was starting to hot up and in October Bob Holt’s infantry unit was moved to Amiriya, a dry and dusty camp outside Alexandria.

  The Italians bombed Alexandria regularly and it was a picturesque sight when the searchlights caught one of the high-flying Italian aircraft in their web. The Egyptian anti-aircraft gunners were enthusiastic but not very successful at bringing any of the Italians down. An Australian battalion provided anti-aircraft protection on the supply trains which travelled regularly from Alexandria to the British base at Mersa Matruh and all stations in between. The ack-ack guard consisted of two men with a Bren gun on a special compartment built on a carriage in the middle of the train. The return journey would take two to three days. Holt said the gunners would be issued with bully beef and biscuits and some tea and sugar and were then on their own.

  At lunch-time the troops could pour the bully beef out of the tin and the water would be nearly hot enough to brew tea. With rations like that it was an incentive to scrounge edible food and drink whenever possible.

  On one occasion I managed to have a look through some crates in a British NAAFI canteen at Mersa Matruh and we won some tins of Australian pineapple to supplement our ration of warm bully beef. As a bonus we liberated a case marked ‘whisky’ but didn’t open it as we intended to host a party when we returned to our section. We sat on the case on the return journey to Amiriya. Dirty, tired and weary we dragged our gear, equipment and the whisky case over the desert to our section’s tent and told them of our luck. Everyone got out their dixies and we opened the case—to find it contained bottles of ink! The air was as blue as the ink and the language awful. It was quite a while before we were allowed to forget that incident.

  In December 1940, the British and Indians routed the Italians at Sidi Barrani. The Sixth Division had moved up and were occupying the Mateen Bagush defences. Holt’s 2/3rd Battalion was occupying a World War I–type trench system. They then moved again, and finished up below the escarpment at Solum on 19 December. B Company had been taken by bus alongside an old cemetery. The Italian bombers appeared and gave them ‘a pretty decent sort of going over’.

  We were pleased to hug the deck in and amongst the sunken and dilapidated graves. Some ghoulish chappies decorated their foxholes with a collection of old skulls and bones which were lying around the ground in great profusion. We didn’t believe there had been any casualties, but a call to stretcher bearers went up. One of our platoon, ‘Troubles’ Black, had suddenly discovered he had developed flat feet and couldn’t walk another step! (To say the stretcher bearers were sour would be an understatement.)

  That night the battalion marched over Halfya Pass to its positions outside the enemy-held coastal town of Bardia, when they were startled to hear two rifle shots from another company. It turned out that a soldier named Galway had shot his brother then himself in the foot. ‘We didn’t hear what happened to the cowardly creature as a result of the self-inflicted wounds, but the next thing we heard was that Galway had joined the Military Police, and was a provost at Central Railway Station in Sydney. He made quite a name for himself, even among these creatures, for his viciousness and this would really take some doing.’

  Holt believed that the vast majority of the military police had neither the heart nor the stomach for joining a combat unit. This damning judgement was from a man who encountered the wrong end of a copper’s truncheon. But an army, like any society, needed policemen—especially with larrikins like ‘Hooker’ Holt and his mates.

  With the so-called ‘Phoney War’ over in Europe, and Italy joining the war in June 1940, the impending reality of action was uppermost in the minds of Australian troops in the Middle East. Signaller Ken Clift was attached to the Sixth Division’s 16th Brigade, which quickly moved to Egypt where it was camped outside Cairo at Helwan, but not for very long.

  We were quickly packed off to the edge of the Western Desert to a camp called Amiriya some miles out of Alexandria and on the edge of a salt marsh. This proved to be a wonderful interlude. We still trained hard on the fringe of what was later to be a battleground, and got leave to Alexandria. Tiny, Harry, Blue and I gate-crashed a theatre in Alexandria. It was exclusively for officers and warrant officers—a flashback to the Victorian era, a setup which must’ve had many setbacks whenever the AIF arrived. We saw an Australian girl under a spotlight singing softly and waltzing to ‘Wonderful One’. She was dressed in blue and we were completely entranced! At this moment we felt very homesick. I think the only reason we weren’t thrown out was that we looked rather formidable and perhaps the management felt that compromise in this case was the better part of valour.

  The Fleet Club in Alexandria was well established, a comfortable place in which to eat and drink, and gifts to send home were good value. Ken sent some filigree home to a girlfriend and to his sister. Unfortunately, some scrapping between Anzac groups saw them banned from the club and they had to resort to local dives.

  The signs of war, however, were never far away now. Most nights they could sit in their slit trenches and enjoy displays of ‘fireworks’ while drinking their quota of Aussie beer. Practically every evening at about 9 pm, high-level Italian and German bombers would fly down the coast to bomb shipping thronging Alexandria harbour, including, of course, its naval installations. Searchlights would probe the sky until they caught one or more of these intruders. Bombs would be crumping in patterns from time to time, and pom-pom tracers would rise up in a continuous stream to mingle with the ack-ack bursts. Clift and his mates called the pom-pom tracers ‘flaming onions’. He recalled the whole show was most spectacular and afterwards they would ‘trot off to our tents feeling thoroughly entertained’.

  Because of the frequency of the raids, Alexandria was, for a while, placed out of bounds except for men stationed in the city and signalmen carrying dispatches from the various camps. Ken and Blue decided to ‘borrow’ a signals truck, wear signals armbands and go absent without leave for a weekend in the city. They bluffed their way through the military police roadblocks, entered Alexandria then left the truck in an alley, hoping no inquisitive provost would find it, and plunged into a dive rejoicing in the glamorous name of ‘Paradise’.

  They had a few arracks plus peanuts, popcorn and other tit-bits which were always served in dainty dishes with each drink, when the enemy bombers came over in force. The crump of bombs, plus the air raid sirens wailing like banshees, sent all the locals, including the proprietor and staff, off in haste to the air raid shelters, wherever they were. At this point, most troops were trained to make lightning-like decisions and so the two Australians immediately emptied the bar of its complement of grog, including Scotch, gin, rum, Advokaat and the like, stacked it in their signals truck and made off for camp. But true to form they did not make it back to camp—not for a few days anyway.

  On the way to Amiriya was a Polish camp of refugees who had escaped from occupied Poland to fight the Germans. Ken’s mate Blue referred to the Poles as the ‘Sticks’ and knew a few of them. The Poles spoke very little English and the Australians’ Polish was confined to Gin dobra, ‘good day’, Dobra vetchen, ‘good evening’, and Skule which, when drinking, is ‘good luck’. But they were friends and allies, so magnanimously the renegade signallers decided to shout their friends a drink at the expense of the Paradise. The party went on all night.

  ‘We slept a few hours the next day, then the Sticks produced some powerful schnapps which ironed us out for another 24 hours or so,’ Ken said. ‘At last we decided that the powers-that-be back in Amiriya must be missing our company, so we drove
back, but halted the truck on the outskirts of the camp and reported in.’

  They were charged and penalised for being AWOL (absent without leave). The truck was found but it could never be proved that they had used it, so nothing came of the illegal use of a vehicle—a lesson Ken and Blue had learned well on a previous occasion when they ‘borrowed’ Captain Rusty Reeve’s utility.

  Preparing for action, the signals men exercised in the desert with the brigade for several days and were visited and reviewed by General Archibald Wavell—a very impressive-looking military man with a black patch over one eye. Blue remarked that Wavell reminded him of Lord Nelson: ‘one h’eye, one h’arm and one h’arsehole!’

  British politician Anthony Eden was also scheduled to review the signallers the next day and Blue made the mob rock with mirth at his plum-in-mouth, mock recitation of what he anticipated this upper-class Englishman would have to say to the colonials. However, Mr Eden proved a charming and inspiring visitor and Ken recalled, ‘Even the roughest and toughest liked his informal and comradely manner.’

  For six months Italian and British Empire forces had fenced in Egypt’s Western Desert. As 1941 began, all felt that the desert war would soon rage. The artillery received the latest 25-pounder field guns, while new signals gear and kit reached the signallers. As Ken Clift put it, ‘We were now ready to go.’

  Chapter 6

  FIGHTING IN THE DESERT

  Australia’s soldiers, sailors and airmen fought in North Africa and the Mediterranean intensely for almost two years—from the time Mussolini’s Italy entered the war in June 1940 until late 1942. There was the fast-moving desert warfare of Australian troops in North Africa against first the Italians and then Germany, when Hitler ordered Rommel’s Afrika Korps into the campaign to prop up the faltering Italians. The Australians first fought at Bardia, then Tobruk (and the lifting of the siege there), as well as the fighting and withdrawals from Greece and Crete, and the short and bloody campaigns in Lebanon and Syria.

  The first major fighting that Australian troops saw in North Africa was at Bardia, an important Italian military coastal garrison. The 16th Brigade broke through Bardia’s western defensive perimeter at dawn on 3 January 1941, when the 2/1st Battalion smashed through the barbed wire defences.

  The Australians were allocated positions outside the wire and tried to dig slit trenches, but it was just not possible because 6 inches down they struck solid rock. They dug long trenches and lay full-length in them. It was as hot as Hades through the day, but bitingly cold during the night. They were issued with sleeveless leather jerkins to be worn under their greatcoats. They were appreciated, as were the balaclavas from the Comforts Fund.

  Gunner Bob ‘Hooker’ Holt of the 2/3rd Infantry Battalion was with them in the thick of the action:

  In the early hours of 3 January sappers lined up outside the Italian wire. If donkeys had been loaded up as we were, the RSPCA would have prosecuted their keepers. We were dressed and equipped in underclothes, sweaters, woollen uniforms, overcoats, leather jerkins, tin hats, extra ammunition, grenades, web equipment, gas masks and a pick or shovel. On our backs, we had sewn a patch of white cloth so that our own troops following in the dark would recognize us. (I understand this device was first used by Australians at Lone Pine on Gallipoli in 1915.)

  The engineers blew a hole in the wire with their Bangalore torpedoes and we followed the 2/1st Battalion through the gap. We passed a huddle of Libyan prisoners who were shivering and shaking, as if they had St Vitus Dance—the result of the Allied artillery bombardment. To this day, I do not know if the sappers filling in the anti-tank ditch were drunk, but they certainly sounded and looked like it. The fellows from the 2/1st Engineers were supermen that day. They were toiling like beavers, covered in dirt and dust from the Italian shelling and lathered in sweat. During the brief lulls in the noise you could hear them singing, ‘Ho ho, ho ho, we dig, dig, dig’ and roaring and shouting. Our own artillery barrage was still going on, the Italian guns were firing at the gap in the wire and it was bedlam.

  You could not hear yourself shout. I was more than pleased to get away from the wire. We came onto the first position the 2/1st Battalion had taken and our artillery had given the Italians the business. There were dead strewn around as Charlie Johnson and I came through. Charlie said, ‘Jesus don’t look over there.’ Of course I immediately did and saw one of Musso’s men cut in halves and sliced down the chest like meat in a butcher shop. I came very close to heaving, but in the next few days we saw a lot more shocking sights and it’s remarkable how blase a man can become in a short space of time.

  Holt’s 2/3rd Battalion saw a lot of fighting in the next three days but they found they were more highly trained than they realised, and out of the 700 men in the battalion at Bardia they lost five officers and 56 men. The division and the British troops alongside them put 40,000 of Mussolini’s men into the cage and ‘I suppose we did them a good turn, for most finished up eating their heads off in Australia.’

  The Italian artillery was at its strongest that first day and they shelled the Australians as they came on in extended order. The dust was so thick that on occasions Holt found it impossible to see the man on either side of him, as the troops marched along shouting and singing. ‘There must’ve been something wrong with the Ities ammunition, for I’ve seen men knocked head over tip, but get to their feet, staggering and silly in the head, but unhurt.’

  At one point C Company put in an attack on a stone wall while B Company gave covering fire. The Italians fired their weapons until the Australians got to within 40 yards. C Company had been coming forward with their rifles at the high port and when they lowered their bayonets and charged forward, bellowing and shouting and cheering, Holt said, ‘it was a sight to see’.

  There was an old and excitable Polish officer who had previously served in the French Foreign Legion—Count de Telega. The Count balloted himself out of the charge and was standing on a small mound all by himself roaring in Polish French and English, ‘Neffer haf I seen nodding like it’, and ‘Tres magnifique’. Here was C Company charging, B Company firing flat out and the Count in a world apart.

  C Company got to the wall and the white flags came out shortly afterwards all along the line. In no time at all, about a battalion lined up in marching order, ready to go to the prisoner of war cage—the officers in their flash uniforms leading a horde of undersized, shambling Dagoes in their drab ill-fitting uniforms. The Italians fought hard on occasions from behind their sangars [improvised barriers] and stone walls, but in the main when we got close enough to charge, out would come the white flags and they would emerge with their cardboard suitcases already packed.

  C Company spent a good deal of time on the third day of combat in sections and platoons wandering round positions in the wadis and gullies near the coast, rooting out the Italians still positioned there. Holt recalled that they meandered around shouting ‘Hands up—throw down your arms’ in pidgin Italian, and ‘it wasn’t very long before nearly every section had a dozen or so prisoners in tow. It was hoped they would reveal where more of their troops were holed up.’

  During this mopping up operation, Holt saw an Italian sitting just inside the entrance to a dugout and, as he took no notice of him, he fired a shot close to him to bring him out. ‘He just kept looking at me which was strange, so I rushed at him to kick him. He didn’t move or even blink. He was as dead as a doornail, with not a wound or mark on him. He might’ve had a heart attack. Or perhaps he died of fright at my handling of the Italian language.’

  The battalion attacked the last Italian position on a hill against the coast. It was strongly held by Blackshirts with machine guns and artillery. Holt looked along their line at the battalion advancing with bayonets at the high port. ‘The silent men of the battalion appeared giants in their leather jerkins with their bayonets glistening in the sunlight.’ Not a shot was fired and it might well have been a scene from a World War I movie. It must have been unnerving to th
e Italians. Holt looked back over his shoulder to see the supporting lines following, but there weren’t any.

  They got to about 45 yards from the Blackshirts, who were milling around excitedly arguing the point with one another. Someone must have made the decision to fight, for a machine gun opened up in front. It fired only a burst or two, when battalion mortars put a 3-inch bomb into the position, which blew gun and gunners high into the air. This knocked the fight out of the Blackshirts and the white flags went up.

  Signaller Ken Clift, 2/3rd Battalion, was also in the thick of the action.

  While deployed outside Bardia, we had a grandstand view from our slit trenches of a bombing attack on our brigade by our old mates the lumbering Italian biplanes. They dropped their eggs, circled in formation to return to their base when out of the blue came our first sight of a Hurricane. It swooped on a trailing bomber with two or three solid bursts and down it came crashing in massive flame and smoke, hitting the ground near our slit trenches. Three parachutes blossomed from another plane—but failed to open as the silk had burned and so the airmen plummeted into the desert within 100 yards or so of our position. The third parachute did operate and the navigator was taken prisoner a mile or so away. The plane hit the ground with terrific force. We walked over to inspect it and found it a charred mass, the pilot and co-pilot still sitting strapped in their cockpit, burnt to a cinder.

  On 2 January 1941 Clift’s unit was issued with extra ammunition and grenades and they checked and double-checked their weapons and equipment. The whole brigade moved up under cover of darkness to a white-taped start line running parallel with the Italian’s tank ditch and barbed wire about 500 to 600 yards away.