Ralph Honner was a company commander in Libya. He had been convinced a war was inevitable and made his commitment early, as his service number shows – WX15. (That means he was the 15th to join the AIF from Western Australia: each recruit’s state was signified by the first letter – N=NSW, V=Victoria etc – while the X signified the AIF. Militia recruits simply had the state initial then their service number.) Ralph Honner’s company had remarkable success in Bardia:
My 100 men took 25,000 prisoners at Bardia, running all the time through the attacks, taking half of Bardia. We did have the only six tanks left in Libya in the British Army and they were a great help. We didn’t think we had many casualties but they mounted up.
The total of 40,000 prisoners taken at Bardia included four Italian generals. The 6th Division lost 130 killed and 326 wounded. Its performance had given the Diggers great heart as they confirmed themselves the equals of their fathers who had last fought in France in 1918. At home the victory brought forth celebrations and relief, which grew after the Diggers’ successes at Tobruk, Derna and Benghazi. But it proved a false dawn.
The Allies realised that Hitler could not abandon Mussolini’s embattled troops and expected the Germans to reinforce the Italians. At the same time they decided they must support their last surviving ally in Europe that was still resisting the German advance, Greece. In a move still debated by historians, Churchill demanded that Australian troops be moved from Libya to Greece. In so doing he took advantage of confusion between Menzies and General Blamey, each of whom expressed misgivings but were told the other had approved. (Inexplicably, they apparently didn’t confer directly.) The 6th Division, together with substantial British forces, was withdrawn from Libya and sent to Greece. The Australian 9th Division took over from the 6th in Libya. At the same time the Germans’ Afrika Korps, under the legendary Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel, arrived in Libya. The balance of power had shifted.
The German fight-back was powerful, enhanced by tanks, artillery and air support. The Diggers were forced to withdraw from Benghazi and fall back on Tobruk. By early April the Australians had established defensive positions in the ancient fortress there and were under siege.
From the start, the Germans exhibited their traditional confidence. Despite suffering some costly rebuffs when they unwisely came too close to the Aussies’ perimeter, they dropped leaflets calling on the Diggers to surrender:
AUSSIES
After Crete disaster Anzac troops are now being ruthlessly sacrificed by England in Tobruch and Syria. Turkey has just concluded a pact of friendship with Germany. England will shortly be driven out of the Mediterranean. Offensive from Egypt to relieve you totally smashed.
YOU CANNOT ESCAPE
Our dive bombers are waiting to sink your transports. Think of your future and your people at home. Come forward. Show white flags and you will be out of danger!
SURRENDER
The Diggers’ response, as mentioned in the history of the 2/13th Battalion, Bayonets Abroad, typified their attitude:
To the eternal regret of everybody very few floated into the Battalion area as they were to command a high price as souvenirs. If the German Intelligence could have seen and heard the efforts expended to procure even one of these pamphlets to read and keep they would have been extremely flattered.
There was never any chance of the German propaganda leaflets working. From the start the Australian commander, General Morshead, gave this message to his brigade commanders:
There’ll be no Dunkirk here. If we have to get out, we shall fight our way out. There is to be no surrender and no retreat.
When the Afrika Korps tried to take Tobruk they were not prepared for the resistance they met with. Their victorious journey across North Africa led them to anticipate further easy conquests in Egypt. Their propaganda told them the Australians defending Tobruk were ill-disciplined, poorly armed and could not withstand the armoured might of the acclaimed Afrika Korps.
Instead they met troops with the courage to patiently lie in their trenches under the assault of tanks, then rise and counterattack the accompanying infantry. The Germans had never endured ice-cool gunners firing their 25-pounders at point-blank range. They were quickly shocked into the reality that their tanks were not the unassailable weapons they imagined.
The Diggers at Tobruk also surprised the Germans with their aggressive patrolling. In the tradition of their forebears in World War I in France and their ‘peaceful penetration’ they harassed the attackers, often moving a few kilometres out from their perimeter as they used the swirling sandstorms (or the khamsin, as it was known locally) as camouflage. As the 2/13th Battalion’s history reports:
Far from proving a deterrent, the enemy tanks patrolling the front provided a target, and it became an ambition to ‘bag’ a tank under cover of the sandstorm. It was on one of these daring patrols that we had the misfortune to lose Sgt Rod Cutts, who, with one of his five men, was surprised at close quarters by his quarry when the dust ‘lifted’. These clear periods in a perfectly good sandstorm were something of an enigma and caused a great deal of embarrassment to those depending on the swirling dust for concealment.
The Germans began night patrolling to try to find weaknesses in the Diggers’ defences. But the Aussies countered this tactic by sending out their own standing patrols as soon as darkness fell. They would then shadow the incoming Germans and attack them to great effect on their way out. This effectively denied the Germans access to no-man’s land and to the vital intelligence they were seeking about the defensive position:
The pattern that life was to follow for the weary months to come was being established – digging and sleep during the day; digging and patrolling during the night. The enemy, for his part, was confining his activity to shelling the forward posts and gun positions while the Luftwaffe, with high level and dive bombing, sought to destroy dumps and guns.
The Diggers were becoming accustomed to the desert heat. In fact, it was the least of their worries. It was the dust that caused the most problems, coating the men in their shelters, matting their hair, covering their blankets, irritating their eyes, clagging their weapons and ruining their food. And, of course, water – or the lack of it – was a constant, overriding problem for the men of the 2/13th:
Nor was an ample water ration forthcoming to alleviate their lot. The ration at first was half a gallon per man per day, but after June 19th it was increased to three-quarters of a gallon. The greater part of this ration, however, did not get beyond the various B echelons. The quartermasters made it into tea and used it liberally (we suspect) to make the monotonous bully-beef stews go further than they should have.
The man in the front line usually got his water-bottle filled each day. From it he was expected to quench his thirst, wash his body and his clothes, shave himself daily and, if he had any left over, he was quite welcome to brew a cup of tea!
In these early days the other major discomfort manifested itself in the form of fleas (prolific breeders in the dust) and other forms of vermin with which the Italian posts abounded. Taken by and large, however, no-one was complaining.
It was in the early fighting at Tobruk that Corporal Jack Edmondson gave an example of the highest peaks to which any Digger could aspire. The Germans had broken through the southern perimeter during the night and had taken a position which Lieutenant Austin Mackell realised could be used as a bridgehead that enemy tanks could penetrate. He took six of his men and, under the covering fire of his neighbouring platoon, attacked the Germans, aiming at driving them back before they could penetrate. Jack Edmondson was wounded in the fighting but pushed on, bayoneting at least five of the enemy, including two who were attacking Lieutenant Mackell. Edmondson continued fighting until he could no longer stand. The Germans fled, leaving 12 dead and one prisoner. Jack Edmondson died from his wounds the following day. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his remarkable bravery and selflessness – the first for an Australian in World War II. That fine war corresponde
nt Chester Wilmot noted in his book Tobruk 1941 on Lieutenant Mackell’s return from the action:
‘We’ve been into ’em, and they’re running like — —!’ Mackell reported to his CO in classically laconic Digger style.
Time and again, the Australians’ patrolling kept the Germans off-balance, and their steadiness in the face of tank attacks astounded the enemy. When Rommel threw his tanks against the Tobruk defences they met with British and Australian artillery and anti-tank guns. The 1st Royal Horse Artillery duelled with the tanks with its field guns firing ‘over open sights’ (or at point-blank range), knocking out seven tanks and sending the others retreating into the fire of the anti-tank weapons. The final result saw the Germans withdrawing, leaving 17 destroyed tanks, 150 dead and 250 wounded. The defenders lost 26 killed and 64 wounded.
On another occasion, on the night of 16 April, patrols from the 2/48th Battalion stunned the attackers by capturing 803 prisoners, including virtually an entire battalion of the Italian 62nd Regiment, while suffering just two casualties themselves.
Rommel simply underestimated the spirit of the Diggers (and the British soldiers with them) when he began his assault on Tobruk. He was to stretch them to their limits but he never broke them, as Chester Wilmot explained:
The German makes a very good soldier but a very poor psychologist. In this war, as in the last, his most costly errors have sprung from an inability to appreciate the character of the men he is fighting. When the Germans pushed the Tommies and the Diggers back into Tobruk, they little realised that they were packing in dynamite and that the harder they thrust, the more explosive it became.
The Germans’ persistent attempts to break down the defenders’ morale by calls for their surrender and by mocking them in Goebbels-inspired radio broadcasts by the Nazi stooge ‘Lord Haw Haw’ had the opposite affect of that desired. Lord Haw Haw dubbed the defenders ‘rats caught in a trap’. The Diggers grabbed it as a badge of honour, calling themselves the ‘Rats of Tobruk’. Wilmot:
The longer the odds Lord Haw Haw offered against the Diggers’ chance of getting out, the more heavily the Digger backed himself. He and his father before him had gambled on the outcome of a drought or a strike. They had defied the bullying of man and nature and had gambled with their livelihood. It was a small step from this to gamble now with their lives. Tho’ odds would be long, the fight would be hard, but they knew what was at stake.
The fortitude of the Diggers’ was exemplified by Private Jenkins of the 2/13th Battalion. He had been cut off from his mates during the first skirmishes of the Diggers’ withdrawal at Er Rejima. Jenkins had evaded the Germans, then, with two British soldiers, set out for Tobruk, which friendly locals had told him was held by the Allies. It took them 41 days to travel more than 400 kilometres on foot, avoiding both German and Italian patrols before finally making it through the perimeter at Tobruk to rejoin their comrades.
By August of 1941 Blamey had persuaded his government, and his military superiors, that the Australians, who had been in constant combat since March, should be relieved. Blamey wanted to consolidate his Australian Corps and he believed the Rats of Tobruk needed a chance to recharge their batteries. His request was granted, despite Churchill’s resistance, and the Australian units were replaced gradually from early August. The 2/13th was the last out on 16 December, about a week after Rommel had finally accepted his task was impossible and withdrawn his forces to the west.
The Rats of Tobruk showed the Germans were far from invincible – but at a cost: the 9th Division lost 832 killed and 2177 wounded with 941 taken prisoner. The commander of the British Eighth Army, General Sir Claude Auchinleck, later described the Rats’ efforts:
Our freedom from embarrassment on the [Egyptian] frontier area for four and a half months is to be ascribed largely to the defender of Tobruk. Behaving not as a hardly pressed garrison but as a spirited force ready at any moment to launch an attack, they contained an enemy force twice their strength. By keeping the enemy continually in a high state of tension they held back four Italian divisions and three German battalions from the frontier area from April until November.
The feats of the Rats of Tobruk turned the tide of war in the Middle East. They stand with great feats of arms of the Australian Digger. The Rats’ endurance, courage, resilience and ingenuity have earned them an honoured place in our history.
Chester Wilmot always believed Tobruk to be a crucial element in the eventual defeat of Hitler:
The belief that Germany’s power was irresistible had been disproved at Tobruk, and Hitler’s crack troops had been defeated and driven back in both Russia and Libya. But in April and May of 1941, between Hitler and a great politico-military triumph in the Middle East there stood little but Tobruk.
While the Rats held on grimly at Tobruk, much was happening elsewhere in the world. The Australian troops committed to defend Greece had fought staunchly but had been overwhelmed by German numbers and firepower. Many were withdrawn to Crete, although 2000 were left behind as POWs. Those who were hurriedly moved to Crete had little time to establish their defences and very few heavy weapons with which to combat the rampant German forces. But the Diggers, once again, drew on their inner reserves of strength. Ralph Honner remembered the remarkable fortitude of two of his men on Crete:
They were in an exposed position and, of course, the Germans had all the air power and although their bombing didn’t hurt us because you can always see the bombs dropping from low level and you can always dodge them but their strafing was very telling and cost a high proportion of our men there.
I remember these two men on a Bren gun. They stayed on throughout the day to stop any German advance and the German advance was thrown back. But one of them died before he could be relieved on the gun and the other one was severely wounded. One died in the evening and the other was wounded but they wouldn’t leave the gun all that time. You couldn’t pull them off it.
Now people like that were dying all the time. I never heard anyone screaming. I remember one at Derna beside me. He said quietly: ‘I’m hit … I’m hit again … They’ve got me again’. That’s all. He died.
Crete was eventually surrendered to the Germans, but they paid dearly for it. At least 4000 of their elite forces were killed and more than 200 planes lost. The Australians lost 204 killed, 507 wounded and 3102 taken prisoner.
In December 1941, just as Rommel was leaving Tobruk, half a world away the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor. Australia’s approach to the war changed abruptly. So did the role of our Diggers. Our only battle-tested forces – the 6th, 7th and 9th Divisions – were in the Middle East. Two brigades of the 8th Division were awaiting their baptism of fire in Malaya.
Suddenly, Australia itself was vulnerable. This was more evident by the hour as reports poured in of the extent of the Japanese attacks. They not only bombed Pearl Harbor but simultaneously attacked Malaya and southern Thailand, the Philippines, Guam, Hong Kong and Wake Island. Not only was Australia in peril, despite the warnings and the time since the war in Europe began, it was not prepared to defend itself.
CHAPTER 9
The Bloody Track
Isurava battle site, Kokoda Track, Papua New Guinea
The first thing you notice is the darkness: it’s almost beyond dark. The tree canopy in the deep jungle of the Kokoda Track blots out the stars and the moon and brings a nightfall straight out of a horror movie. One Digger said it was as black as the inside of a cow.
We are at the site of the old village of Isurava, about a day’s march south of Kokoda township, towards Port Moresby along the Kokoda Track. This is where one of the critical battles that turned the tide of the Pacific War was played out. The Track itself is an ill-defined, meandering native walking pad, which winds its way from the swampy north coast, near the villages of Buna and Gona, to the south coast at Port Moresby. In doing so it traverses the Owen Stanley Range, the mountainous spine running east–west across Papua New Guinea. The Track exists in most places only because
of the constant use of the local people, who chip back rampant vines and undergrowth with their jungle knives as they walk from village to village. In this way the Track is a living thing, which shifts according to the demands of the terrain and the people who have inhabited it for 30,000 years – diverting around fallen trees, swollen rivers and rockslides, and changing direction to accommodate movements by villages and their gardens. This is some of the toughest terrain in the world. When people say they’ve walked the Track, they really mean they’ve climbed it – up and down shark-toothed ridges, valleys and watercourses, across raging whitewater rivers and streams and through dense rainforest jungle.
At Isurava, the eerie darkness that falls like a curtain each night hints at what it must have been like during the titanic battle fought here six decades ago. Then, rather than bringing relief to the Diggers, night brought heightened tension and the need for constant vigilance against Japanese insurgency. The Japanese who fought along the Track were battled-hardened, having fought more or less continuously since they took part in the invasion of Manchuria in 1937. They developed into skilled jungle fighters and caused many casualties by creeping through the Australian defences after dark. Many Diggers had no idea what hit them. That’s not surprising, as you can’t see your hand in front of your eyes.
The Spirit of the Digger Page 17