Tobruk 1941

by Chester Wilmot

  As the German tanks fled through the narrow gap, they had to run the gauntlet of British anti-tank guns dug in near the perimeter. Shells fell and whizzed all around them and six more were destroyed, bringing the total knocked out by artillery, tanks, and anti-tank guns to seventeen.

  By 7.30 a.m. the Germans were struggling madly through the wire in complete rout. In a vivid description of their exit Balfe said:

  There was terrible confusion at the only gap as tanks and infantry pushed their way through it. The crossing was badly churned up and the tanks raised clouds of dust as they went. In addition, there was the smoke of two tanks blazing just outside the wire.

  Into this cloud of dust and smoke we fired anti-tank weapons, Brens, rifles, and mortars, and the gunners sent hundreds of shells. We shot up a lot of infantry as they tried to get past, and many, who took refuge in the anti-tank ditch, were later captured. It was all I could do to stop the troops following them outside the wire. The Germans were a rabble, but the crews of three tanks did keep their heads. They stopped at the anti-tank ditch and hitched on behind them the big guns, whose crews had been killed. They dragged these about 1000 yards, but by then we had directed our artillery on to them. They unhitched the guns and went for their lives. That was the last we saw of the tanks, but it took us several hours to clean up small parties of infantry who hadn’t been able to get away.

  This mopping-up had been going on since dawn, as we have seen, but it was the middle of the morning before the last of the Germans were gathered in. One particularly troublesome party of nearly a hundred established itself in a wadi behind Post 28. It was not silenced until Captain C. H. Wilson led part of the 2/17th’s ‘B’ Company against it in a bayonet charge. Some Germans were killed, seventy-five were captured and a few got away, though they were probably picked up later by the patrols from the 2/15th and the Indian Cavalry who collected nearly a hundred more bewildered Germans during the morning.

  While the battle was raging between the guns and the tanks there had also been heavy scrapping in the air. Shortly after dawn German and Italian fighters had joined in the battle striving to knock out Tobruk’s few remaining Hurricanes. One Hurricane and two Italian fighters had spun to earth in sheets of fire in the midst of the German tanks, and added their flames to the ‘witches’ cauldron’.

  At 7.30, just when the German tanks were making their retreat through the wire, forty Stukas and Messerschmitts attacked the harbour and ack-ack guns. The Hurricanes shot down six; the ack-ack got four. Apparently the Germans had estimated that by this time their tanks would have been approaching the town and the Stuka attack was intended to be the final blow!

  In addition to the 12 planes, the Germans left inside the defence 17 tanks, 110 men killed and 254 taken prisoner. But they must have had many more casualties outside the perimeter in the preliminary encounters and in the disorganized retreat, and possibly a number of the tanks that were hit never fought again. Schorm’s company, which had led the attack, lost ten tanks and five 75 mm guns which had been sent up to support it. ‘It went badly,’ he wrote, ‘for the anti-tank units and the light and heavy A.A., but especially for the 8th Machine-Gun Battalion. It is practically wiped out.’ The garrison’s casualties were incredibly few: 20 killed, 60 wounded, 12 missing; two tanks and one 25-pounder gun knocked out; two aircraft shot down.

  The Germans were shocked at their defeat. Captured diaries show what they thought. The commander of one troop of tanks wrote: ‘We simply cannot understand how we ever managed to get out. It is the general opinion that this was the most severely fought battle of the war. The survivors call this day ‘Hell of Tobruk’ . . . 38 tanks went into action, 17 were knocked out and many more were put temporarily out of action.’

  In their diaries the Germans made various excuses for their failure. The commander of the tank battalion which led the attack wrote:

  The information distributed before the action told us that the enemy was about to withdraw, his artillery was weak and his morale had become very low. We had been led to believe that the enemy would retire immediately on the approach of German tanks. Before the beginning of the third attack3 the regiment had not the slightest idea of the well-designed and executed defence of the enemy nor of a single battery position nor of the terrific number of anti-tank guns. Also it was not known that he had heavy tanks. The regiment went into battle with firm confidence and iron determination to break through the enemy and take Tobruk. Only the vastly superior enemy, the frightful loss and the lack of any supporting weapons, caused the regiment to fail in its task.

  The prisoners were equally bewildered and bitter. They had expected that the attack would be a walkover and the 8th Machine-gunners had even brought their battalion office truck, complete with files, right to the wire expecting to drive it straight into Tobruk. Characteristic of the prisoners’ comments was that of a German doctor, who had served throughout the campaigns in Europe. ‘I cannot understand you Australians,’ he said. ‘In Poland, France and Belgium once the tanks got through the soldiers took it for granted that they were beaten. But you are like demons. The tanks break through and your infantry still keep fighting.’

  That was a prime cause of the garrison’s success. When the tanks broke through, the Australian infantry held their ground and their fire until the German infantry and gunners appeared. The result was that the tanks were left to advance without the support they had expected. The further they advanced, the more intense became the fire which they encountered but could not answer. They were defeated by defence in depth. Checked by frontal fire from the 25-pounders, they found their flanks assailed by tanks and mobile anti-tank guns before they could re-form for another attack.

  After the battle Lavarack issued a Special Order of the Day, in which he briefly summed up the causes of the enemy rout. He said:

  I wish to congratulate all ranks of the garrison of TOBRUK FORTRESS on the stern and determined resistance offered to the enemy’s attacks with tanks, infantry and aircraft to-day.

  Refusal by all infantry posts to give up their ground, and prompt counter-attack by reserves of the 20th Bde, skilful shooting by our artillery and anti-tank guns, combined with a rapid counter-stroke by our tanks, stopped the enemy’s advance and drove him from the perimeter in disorder. At the same time the R.A.F. and our A.A. defences dealt severely with the enemy in the air.

  Stern determination, prompt action and close co-operation by all arms ensured the enemy’s defeat, and we can now feel more certain than ever of our ability to hold TOBRUK in the face of any attacks the enemy can stage.

  Every one can feel justly proud of the way the enemy has been dealt with. Well done TOBRUK!

  This Order of the Day was actually Lavarack’s farewell message to Tobruk. As the Fortress was no longer in touch with the frontier, the place for the desert headquarters was Egypt. Consequently that night Lavarack handed over complete command to Morshead and ‘Cyrcom’ H.Q. was transferred to Maaten Baguish, twenty miles east of Mersa Matruh. There it was absorbed by ‘Western Desert Force H.Q.’, which was soon commanded by Lieutenant-General N. M. Beresford Peirse. He had led the 4th Indian Division in the desert the year before, when the Italians were checked and defeated at Sidi Barrani, and he knew the ground and the problems. This appointment, however, was in no way a reflection on Lavarack, as Wavell made clear. Lavarack, one of the finest military brains Australia has produced, was soon appointed to command the 1st Australian Corps in Syria, and what Wavell thought of his work at Tobruk was expressed in the signal he sent to him after the Easter Battle: ‘Most grateful your invaluable services in stabilizing situation in Cyrenaica.’

  _____________

  1 Because they had no A.P. (solid armour-piercing ammunition), which the 25-pounders generally use when engaging tanks at close range, the R.H.A. were using H.E. (high explosive shells). With A.P. it could have done much greater damage.

  2 These guns were actually 88 mm anti-aircraft guns, which the Germans were using in an anti-t
ank role, even at this stage. See Chapter 12.

  3 The one on April 14th.

  CHAPTER 9

  TOBRUK COMMANDER

  ON April 25th, 1915, when the 1st A.I.F. landed on Gallipoli, a ‘dark, dapper, little schoolmaster’ was second-in-command of a company of the 2nd Battalion. According to the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–18 this young captain was in the forefront of the battle to gain a foothold on the ridges above Anzac Cove and, in the bitter fight that afternoon to hold the hill the Anzacs named ‘Baby 700’, he took command of a platoon that fought to the last. He was one of the very few surviving officers in this sector at the end of that costly day.

  It is as well that he lived through it, for one year later the captain had become a lieutenant-colonel, commanding the 33rd A.I.F. Battalion at the age of twenty-six. Now he is Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie James Morshead. He well earned both his knighthood and his lieutenant-generalcy by his gallant conduct of the defence of Tobruk Fortress which he commanded from the Easter week-end until October 23rd when the G.O.C. 70th British Division, Major-General R. M. Scobie, took over from him.

  Morshead is a citizen-soldier in the Monash tradition. Although between the two wars he was a business man, who rose to be Sydney manager of the Orient Line, his peacetime soldiering was no mere hobby; it was an all-absorbing spare-time interest. Even when he went to Britain on holiday in 1937 he spent much of his time visiting British Army Training Schools and attending manoeuvres. He was thus able to keep in touch with developments during a period of great change in Army thinking; his mind remained youthfully receptive to new ideas. Youthful, too, in appearance, at fifty-one he looked nearly ten years younger, and set himself the same rigorous standard of fitness that he demanded of his troops.

  In his history of the first A.I.F., Dr Bean has a graphic character sketch of Morshead whom he then described as:

  A battalion commander marked beyond most others as a fighting leader in whom the traditions of the British Army had been bottled from his childhood like tight-corked champagne; the nearest approach to a martinet among all the young Australian colonels, but able to distinguish the valuable from the worthless in the old Army practice . . . he had turned out a battalion which any one acquainted with the whole force recognized, even before Messines, as one of the very best.

  And Bean’s estimate is as true now as when it was written.

  Right through his military career Morshead has been a fighter. After six months on Gallipoli, he was wounded and invalided back to Australia. At home he was soon given command of the 33rd Battalion, formed it, trained it, took it to France and commanded it right through with rare distinction, particularly at Messines, Passchendaele and Villers-Bretonneux. By the end of the war he had been wounded twice and mentioned in dispatches six times, and he wore the ribbons of the C.M.G., the D.S.O., and the Légion d’Honneur.

  He did not return to teaching, but even to-day in civilian clothes he might pass for a schoolmaster. He is still something of a martinet, as Bean observed; precise, meticulous and straight to the point, he is now known to his troops as ‘Ming the Merciless’, because he is never content with anything but the best and is a strict disciplinarian. He is, however, just as critical of himself as of his men. One day, speaking to me of the fighting early in May, he said: ‘I didn’t handle my tanks well. I should have kept them concentrated and used them all together. I didn’t know as much about handling tanks then as I do now.’ Another time, discussing something I had written about one of his battalions, he said: ‘You’re making excuses for them. Don’t excuse them: they didn’t do well.’

  Much of this self-criticism was explained by his own modesty. No persuasion of mine could induce him to record a broadcast, although every other senior A.I.F. commander had done so and he freely allowed his brigadiers and other members of the garrison to record broadcasts about operations. He helped correspondents to obtain a first-hand and accurate picture of events, but insisted that the importance of Tobruk and the difficulties of operations and living should not be exaggerated. He wanted his men to get their due, but no more. He read nearly all dispatches by correspondents before they were sent to Cairo, and read them very carefully – even to the extent of suggesting grammatical alterations. He disliked slang and one time suggested that a Digger in a broadcast should talk about ‘men’ not ‘chaps’ and about ‘devitalizing’ minefields and not ‘delousing’ them.

  I can see him now coming out of his office with a script of mine in one hand, pencil in the other, glasses on the bridge of his nose, and saying to me: ‘Just a moment, Mr Wilmot. There’s one thing here that’s not quite right.’ He fixed me with a stern look; we might have been in the classroom – and perhaps we were.

  Morshead is no airy military theorist; he is a hard, practical commander. A stickler for accuracy, he gives close attention to detail, though he never loses himself in it. Before making a decision he likes to master all the facts, study all the implications and see his final position clearly and exactly. This characteristic proved valuable at Tobruk, where several times a precipitate decision might have been costly. Morshead had the courage and patience to ‘wait and see’ and then to decide. He is not a man of swift, bold or spectacular decision, but once he has made up his mind on the right course of action he sticks to it.

  It is popularly believed that the Australian soldier chafes under strict discipline, but Morshead has always held that without it there is nothing to bind the strong individuality of the Australian soldiers into an organized fighting force. His troops have responded to discipline because they have proved its value in battle. Captured diaries showed that after the attack of April 14th the Germans were amazed at the discipline of the men who fearlessly stood their ground after the tanks broke through.

  Although holding Tobruk was a defensive task, it was actually held by offensive tactics. From the first days Morshead ordered active patrolling of no-man’s-land and regular raiding of enemy posts. In his own words, ‘I determined we should make no-man’s land our land’. I remember his being incensed on one occasion by an Australian newspaper headline, which read: ‘Tobruk can take it.’ ‘That’s one of the most dangerous phrases coined in this war,’ he said. ‘We’re not here to “take it”, we’re here to “give it”.’ Because he instilled these principles into his men, they kept the initiative and gained a moral ascendency over the enemy which they never lost.

  He inspired everyone in Tobruk with the firm conviction that there could be no yielding; that if every man fought without flinching the garrison was invincible. When the Germans forced a salient in May and made it extremely difficult to hold the original perimeter on either side of it, some of his advisers suggested withdrawing from the Red Line to the Blue Line in this sector. ‘I couldn’t listen to these counsels of fear,’ Morshead told me. ‘We will never yield a yard unless they take it from us.’ Nor was he content to see the enemy remain in possession of any ground we had once held. Any other spirit might have lost Tobruk.

  Tobruk might also have been lost if the General had not been so thorough in supervising in detail the strengthening of the defences and the building up of reserve supplies. He was unrelenting when he had to deal with anyone who, he was convinced, had let him down. One senior staff officer was packed off to Palestine for a mistake which, in less serious circumstance, might have brought only a rebuke. He would tolerate no inefficiency, no slackness. He could demand this of his staff and his troops because he demanded it of himself. Both in Tobruk and out of it he lived austerely. The troops admired him because they knew that he had been through it as they had, and that before he was thirty he had commanded an infantry battalion in the line for three years.

  They knew that he did not direct the defence from the security of the deep tunnels in the escarpment near the Pilastrino road, which housed his H.Q. He regularly visited all parts of the perimeter, and examined for himself the positions in the Salient. He was most critical of the amount of work which had been done on these
posts and his criticism struck home because he spoke from personal observation.

  The possible hostility of his troops would never deter him from any course he believed necessary. In Tobruk as the stalemate dragged on and boredom increased, so did gambling. Troops were frittering away their savings at two-up schools of doubtful probity. Morshead banned two-up and took severe disciplinary action against those who disregarded the order. The ban was most unpopular, but the troops respected the man who issued it.

  Between the two World Wars Morshead rose to command an infantry brigade in the A.M.F., and when the 6th Division was formed he was one of the original brigade commanders. But his brigade (the 18th) went to Britain, and there he was able to work with those who had learned much from the fighting in France before Dunkirk.

  In January 1941 he arrived in the Middle East with his brigade in time to be an observer at the capture of Tobruk. Six weeks later he was appointed to command the 9th Division, which was to garrison Cyrenaica, and complete its training and equipment. But, as we have seen, he had barely moved his men there before he had to extricate them from a most perilous situation. His quality as a divisional commander was established at once. At the very outset his division would probably have suffered crippling losses had it not been for his foresight in anticipating Rommel’s outflanking move; his tenacity in battling against Neame and going beyond him to Wavell regarding the withdrawal of the 20th Brigade from the El Agheila area; and his excellent control and direction of his troops during the withdrawal.