Larrikins in Khaki

by Tim Bowden

  They were in position about nine that evening, dug slit trenches and then settled down awaiting the dawn attack on the following morning. The evening provided quite a bit of entertainment. Infantry patrols were active all along the tank ditch.

  The fearless sappers of the 2/1st Engineers were right to the fore with Bangalore torpedoes ready to slip under the barbed wire beyond the tank ditch and blow gaps for the infantry—allowing tanks and trucks to follow through. They had the necessary tools and gear to bridge the tank ditch by filling it in with surrounding shale to make concourses across it so that tanks, Bren gun carriers and blitz buggies would not be halted.

  The night came alive with explosions, parachute flares and anti-aircraft fire aimed at RAF bombers, and shooting from the defences within the town of Bardia.

  Finally, we settled down in the bitter cold to await the dawn when we received a modest issue of rum. Just before dawn our artillery including the British—I believe we had about 300 field guns with the Italians in Bardia matching us in field artillery plus a fair wallop of emplaced heavy naval guns—opened a spectacular and rapid fire bombardment over the enemy wire, and we moved forward whistles blowing and infanteers singing.

  The engineers blew the gaps in the wire and, amid the dust and noise, the enemy counter barrage was directed back at the brigade, with the 2/1st Infantry, rifles and bayonets at the high port, racing across the ditch through the gaps in the wire and veering to the left as planned, a nucleus of brigade headquarters staff among them. At the wire both enemy shelling and small arms fire were heavy. Captain Bill Stewart was killed almost instantly as he stood up about 20 yards forward of the wire. Three machine-gun bullets went through his left arm and into his heart. When Clift turned him over, he discovered a small shrapnel wound on his forehead. Sergeant Hank Findlay removed his binoculars, map case and other gear carried by an officer. Captain Bill Stewart was a fine soldier, respected and revered by his men.

  The shelling became much heavier. My mate Butta and I ran a line about 300 yards to the 2/1st Battalion where Captain Dillan (commonly known as ‘Dillan the Villain’) was badly wounded. His leg was later amputated. The 2/1st Battalion ran into some stiff opposition and their advance was temporarily held up.

  Meanwhile the 2/2nd Battalion had breached the wire away over to the right as planned, and we managed to get their communications going but they, too, were coming under a lot of small arms fire and we were battling for cable. We decided to tee into their line and get some sort of phone set-up to the 2/3rd Battalion. The 2/3rd had passed through Brigade Headquarters and gone straight down the centre between the 2/1st and 2/2nd Battalions that could be plainly seen across the desert advancing at a great speed—those 2/3rd Battalion boys were always keen!

  I ran into B Company who reported that his mate, Tim Dempsey, had been shot. Despite Tim’s wound he was still grinning when the stretcher bearers carried him away. He died before they got him back, the bullet passing through his spine.

  A stocky lieutenant from the 2/3rd, ‘Slops’ Calman, bounded directly in front of the leading Italian tank, armed only with a Boys anti-tank rifle. He hit the tank at point-blank range, but was killed instantly. Scrutiny after the skirmish disclosed that the bullet only caused a groove about as thick as a man’s finger in the tank’s armour, proving that these weapons were completely useless in these circumstances. Calman’s bravery had been wasted.

  Two Portees (an anti-tank gun carried on a lorry) arrived at the top of the wadi. One Portee was hit and destroyed by the leading enemy tank, but the other swung smartly around and gave the gunner, Sergeant ‘Dead-Eye’ Dick Pickett, a good traverse and a perfect view of all five enemy tanks. Although hit by a shot from one of the tanks, Pickett promptly knocked out all five with rapid fire, a 2-pound shell going into each tank, stopping them all in their tracks.

  Looking down into the turrets of the destroyed tanks later was a horrifying sight even to the most hardened. The shell had gone around and around inside each tank, making mincemeat of the crew.

  Clift believed if ever a soldier should have received a Victoria Cross from his actions, Dick Pickett should have. As it was he got a Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) and his crew Military Medals (MMs). Had those five enemy tanks broken through from battalion to brigade, they might have caused serious problems to the whole assault. ‘This wadi became known as “Champagne Gully” because of the great quantities of grog obtained from the pillboxes after Bardia fell.’

  The 2/3rd cleaned up Champagne Gully and pressed on, capturing hundreds of prisoners. Dead Italians and Australians lay everywhere. By nightfall, all British and Australian battalions had gained their objectives and settled down for the final assault on the town of Bardia the following morning.

  Clift’s J Section had done a good signals job. Wireless vans attached to battalions had perfect contact with the brigade. His fellow signallers Tom Brown and Blue had kept division headquarters informed of all events, as had B Section with their cables even though the advance was faster than anticipated. They improvised with a lot of Italian cable to supplement their own and the field telephone communications were satisfactory. D3 phones were a small instrument in a leather case and carried by all signallers in a forward area. They were worked by a single line of cable, as it was necessary to get a return from sender to receiver to complete a circuit. The line was connected to one terminal and the current was made by a short piece of cable to a metal earth pin driven into the ground. In the dry dusty desert it was necessary to moisten the ground around the earth pin, so the signallers improvised. ‘Water was a precious commodity so every soldier near a signal point was requested to piss on the earth around the pins to keep communications running satisfactorily.’

  The following day the infantry attacked with courage and determination and Bardia fell, with thousands of prisoners of war and booty of all descriptions. The town was a sorry sight after the battering by air force and navy and finally the assault by ground forces. Afterwards, Clift reported, ‘The Brigade licked its wounds, buried its dead and in convoy, made for the outskirts of Tobruk where it deployed, and British armour went north to cut off an escape route on land between Tobruk and Derna.’

  With resistance in Bardia crumbling, Hooker Holt was surprised at the alacrity with which the Italians surrendered—particularly their officers.

  To our amazement a host of white flags went up and out came the officers, with their batmen following, struggling along under suitcases and bedrolls. They were followed by 500 greasy unwashed soldiers with the usual cardboard cases and parcels all packed and ready to go. We lined them up, sat them down and told them that after they moved, anyone with a weapon of any kind would be shot out of hand. There was no immediate shuffling around and when we moved them off five minutes later the ground was literally covered with their bright red tin hand grenades. This happened so often that I really believe the Macaronis had been packing them in their gear for so long they didn’t realise they were carrying them. [The red Italian hand grenades were not very powerful, but they could inflict serious injuries.]

  I had a haversack full of army badges and propaganda pictures, and was scratching around in a dugout. Our platoon sergeant (who was later captured in Greece and spent the rest of the war as a POW in Germany) took a dim view of my souveniring and as a punishment ordered me to take out a brigade of Italians back to the ‘cage’. I, like everyone else, was tired and protested bitterly until I saw an Italian brigadier asking one of our officers where he could plant his gold fountain pen.

  This was the only time during the war Holt had charge of a brigade. He lined up his men, shouted ‘Avanti’, and marched them briskly over a rise in the ground until they were out of sight of the sergeant. He then gave his second order, ‘Alto!’—‘Halt!’—and went through the officers’ clothes and gear. ‘It was like having an open go in a jewelry shop. The first article I found was a gold fountain pen on the inside pocket of the Italian brigadier and then I relieved the officers of thei
r watches and rings.’

  They marched a few miles until they came to a water point, where Holt pulled his team up for a rest. At the rear of the column were a few walking wounded, including a young Italian with a leg wound who was being pushed along in a wheelbarrow by his mate. ‘I pulled the wounded man out of the column, as I knew that eventually following Transport would pull up at the water point. The Itie in the wheelbarrow whimpered and cried and the tears rolled down his cheeks. I believe he thought he was going to be shot out of hand for slowing down the column.’

  While they were sitting down, Captain Calman’s batman, Charlie Hughes, came along. Holt was exceedingly pleased to see him. He asked Charlie if he’d take the Italians back to the POW cage. ‘My bloody oath I will. I’ll march the bastards alright. Just where is the cage?’ Bob didn’t know where it was any more than Charlie, but said it wasn’t too far away. So Bob’s Italian brigade got a new brigadier on the spot and away went Charlie with his troops. But if he thought he was going to get any loot, he was sadly mistaken as Bob had gone over the whole lot of them with a fine-tooth comb. ‘He would not have found one watch. I returned to my unit and I never did tell the sergeant I’d surrendered my command to Charlie Hughes.’

  One of Holt’s platoon, ‘Tissie’ Teasdale, ratted the Italian headquarters and picked up a solid silver Sam Browne–style belt embossed with Italian insignia and with a gold scabbard for the dagger. It was such a work of art he reckoned it belong to General ‘Electric Whiskers’ Bergonzoli, the Italian commandant at Bardia. It must have been worth a fortune, Bob said.

  With the fighting finished, B Company pulled up and was preparing to camp alongside an Italian bakery near the water. Holt heard bugles and round the bend between the hills came ‘some hobo blowing Boy Scout calls on an Italian bugle he’d picked up. He was followed by a couple of characters drumming on kerosene tins. Another company in parade order was marching behind them and was really stepping it out in style.’

  Holt’s section was not to be outdone in the gracious living stakes, and found a sack of flour and a can of olive oil that was lying around the bakery. Charlie Johnson had liberated a bag of coffee beans and a grinder. The section lived like plutocrats for a couple of days on hot coffee and pancakes cooked in olive oil. They were delicious but the aftermath was not. All of them finished up with diarrhoea. They had been used to army rations of three men to a tin of warm bully beef that could be poured from the tin, and so they helped themselves to Italian tucker from a nearby ration dump. ‘The tuna was really something, but the Italians’ bully beef was even worse than ours.’ They indulged themselves with porridge made from crushed army biscuits covered with lashings of Italian Nestlé condensed milk.

  There was wine in abundance in the dumps around the area, and on the following day it was decided to hold a platoon drinking contest. They put a barrel on the platoon truck and drank pint for pint. Holt was one of the first to pass out, and someone threw a blanket over him.

  Seasoned drinkers weren’t so lucky, as they soon ceased to take an interest in the proceedings, the good drinkers couldn’t have cared less. When I woke, it was daylight and there was Clarrie Burke and the platoon sergeant still at it, drink for drink. The camp was in a mess with three parts of the platoon lying drunk in heaps of spew and vomit. There were some sick and sorry soldiers, with thick heads, and to top it all we were ordered to go out and bury dead Italians who were starting to stink. I remember one fellow we buried was really on the nose. We lassoed him by the foot and dragged him into an old trench. He was wearing a king-sized gold wristlet watch, but he was really ripe and we buried him, watch and all. It was a waste—later in the war we wouldn’t have been so finicky. We’d have been arguing the point over who was going to have the watch.

  After a few days, much to the troops’ disgust, one of their senior officers had them out training, staging platoon and company attacks on the old Italian positions. This went against the grain, as they considered themselves ‘peerless among fighting men’. Holt said the grumbling didn’t get off the ground as Colonel Viv England had a sharp and rough tongue when roused. Besides, he had earned the admiration of the battalion for his courage as they saw him going around the companies during the fighting with no regard for his own safety. ‘His driver had been killed alongside him and that would have cured most officers of his habit of standing up on his Bren carrier during the heaviest shell and rifle fire, but not Viv England.’

  When the Italians surrendered at Bardia on 5 January 1941, two days after being attacked, the Australian and British forces took 40,000 prisoners. This success was quickly followed up by attacking the fortress and port of Tobruk to the west of Bardia, in what was then called Cyrenaica, on 21 January—capturing another 27,000 Italian prisoners.

  Hooker Holt was again in the thick of the action with his 2/3rd Battalion: ‘The Italians were mighty road builders and we drove 100 miles to Tobruk in captured transport in comparative comfort though we finished as dry as chips and covered in inches of dust. We immediately proceeded to dig our slit trenches and found the same set of rules as in Bardia—solid rock about a foot down.’

  A little after midnight on 18 January, they marched to the assembly point for the attack on Tobruk on a bitterly cold night. Barring an occasional burst of machine-gun fire and some light Italian shelling, the night was quiet and lit up occasionally by an intermittent flare. Right on time a single artillery gun signalled for the attack to begin, and with an earth-shattering roar the British massed artillery opened up behind with a terrific bombardment. The immediate horizon was lit up with gun flashes and the noise was tremendous.

  Our company was already lined up and a platoon of C Company was settling in alongside us on the start line when there was a series of explosions as they touched tripwires on a heap of booby-traps. We could see men being thrown into the air by the explosions and the moaning and groaning was horrific until the stretcher bearers got to work and cleaned up the mess. The C Company platoon lost about 20 men killed and wounded.

  Despite that setback, C Company were the first Australians into Tobruk. The men of the 2/3rd Field Company and the 2/1st Pioneers suffered casualties, and five sappers received decorations for placing the Bangalore torpedoes under the barbed wire under fire. There was some confusion at the start, as only four of the five torpedoes exploded, but the three platoons charged through the gap in the wire closely followed by B Company. One of Holt’s unit, ‘Garney’ Crew, was caught up in the barbed wire and tore his pants off. He spent some hours in his long-john underwear, ‘until he took a replacement from a Dago officer’.

  The battalion took all their immediate objectives by daylight. In the half-light some Italians came out of a strong-point that was showing the white flag. Their officer still had his pistol in his hand, whether he had forgotten it or was going to give it to Ned ‘The Glut’ or was just plain confused will never be known. ‘Ned brought his bayonet down, stuck the officer, wiped his bayonet on the leg of his pants, picked up the Ities’ pistol and left him gurgling. Ned was one of the most cold-blooded characters I’ve ever run into, yet he always wore a huge grin under almost any circumstances.’

  The battalion marched right around the perimeter. They took numerous concrete positions and underground posts as they went. As in Bardia their colonel ‘The Black Panther’ (Colonel Viv England) popped up all over the place, standing up in his Bren carrier even under the heaviest fire. He was completely unafraid. ‘Just to see him standing up, cool and calm, giving advice and saying “good day” occasionally, put heart into the most chicken-hearted of us. He was a man among men.’

  There were plenty of spoils for the soldiers, as Holt recalled:

  We were always encumbered with heaps of prisoners and I for one had wristlet watches up both arms and a pocket full of money and rings lifted from Dago officers. We went through the dugouts looking for stragglers. Lots of these dugouts were perfumed and holy pictures and pornographic postcards were usually littered around the floor.
Lots of the officers had .22, .32 and .38 calibre pistols, highly decorated with mother-of-pearl and these were much sought after. I had so many wristwatches that I eventually got big hearted and allowed the Macaronis to keep their pocket watches. They probably kept them until they got back to the prisoner of war cage, where the Provosts would almost certainly have helped themselves—if the Ities had managed to hide them from the support troops.

  There was one blond-headed six-foot Alpini officer who stood on his dignity and refused to give up a magnificent ring to Jack Kelly. He was horrified at being stood over by an unwashed digger and kept insisting he was an officer. ‘Je suis officier, je suis officier.’ I took over from Jack and gave him a whack in the mouth, whereupon the Alpini tore off his ring and threw it on the ground. I gave him a kick up the arse for his trouble and took his wallet as well.

  Once Holt’s unit was caught in the open and strafed by Italian biplanes and although his battalion had no casualties, he said, ‘It was one of the few times I really had the breeze up.’ After the planes made a couple of passes, Holt was more than happy to see them take off and transfer their attentions to any battalion but his.

  On the last day of the fighting Holt’s unit was up on the hills overlooking Tobruk harbour, which was littered with many sunken ships including the cruiser San Giorgio, which was still burning and belching black smoke over the harbour and foreshores.

  They moved to the waterfront and made themselves temporary shelters of Italian groundsheets and blankets. Someone fixed up an Italian truck and for a few days they helped themselves to loads of Vichy water, wine and tins of tuna which were dumped alongside their makeshift humpies. The truck was eventually reclaimed, but by this time they had all the necessities for good living, including a 4-gallon aluminium water tank of arrack. This fiery, colourless liquid turned milky when mixed with water and was very potent. It was well known all over the Middle East under different names: arrack in Palestine, zibib in Egypt, ouzo in Greece, anise and anisette. The drink was treated with respect by the indigenous people, but not always by Australians.