Back in Tobruk, from the beginning of the siege, he was responsible for the defence of the perimeter, and after the Easter Battle, when ‘Cyrcom’ H.Q. moved to the Western Desert, he was in complete command of the Fortress. Thus from being a brigade commander in March he found himself virtually a corps commander in April. Though still only a Major-General he had under him more than a division and a half plus a number of Fortress troops, R.A.F. and naval personnel. From commanding 2500 Australian soldiers, he had risen in a few weeks to command 25 000 British, Australians and Indians; soldiers, sailors and airmen. But Morshead made his task easier for himself by building up a first class staff.1
As his ‘G.1’ he had one of the ablest staff officers and most colourful characters in the A.I.F., Colonel C. E. M. Lloyd, universally known as ‘Gaffer’. Big and bluff, Lloyd has a manner that is a strange mixture of bluntness and friendliness. His initial bluntness springs from a dislike of humbug and a desire to come straight to the point; but those who stand up to him and have something to say find him most approachable. He is no respecter of persons and is essentially a realist who sees a job to be done and goes about it in the most direct way.
His capacity lies in his ability to make an immediate decision, his readiness to shoulder responsibility and the fact that he never becomes ruffled. Although a permanent soldier, Lloyd found time to graduate in Law at Sydney University. This, and his keen interest in non-military affairs, have given him a breadth of outlook that life in the Regular Army tends to discourage. These qualities have made him an outstanding staff officer and he fully deserved his promotion between 1940 and 1943 from Major to Major-General. This rise carried him from a second-grade staff appointment on 6th Divisional H.Q. to the key administrative post of Adjutant-General of the Australian Military Forces. When he became a general he was the youngest officer of that rank in the Australian forces, and the first of those, too young for service in the last war, to attain it.
The thorough staff work that Morshead demanded was an important factor in his success as a leader. At Tobruk he made his name as a fighting commander in defensive warfare, renowned for his determination, thoroughness and guts. A year later at El Alamein he was to be greeted by Churchill with the warm tribute – ‘Well done, Morshead! You’ve stemmed the tide again.’ He showed there that he was – if anything – even more able and successful in command of an attacking force. His troops have complete faith in him. In Tobruk he won their respect and admiration; to-day they worship him. In Morshead Australia has found another fine citizen-soldier – a man with a profound sincerity, honesty and strength of purpose and with more experience now as a fighting commander in this war and the last than any other Australian. In April 1941, however, this reputation was still in the making.
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1 The principal officers of this staff were: Chief of Staff (G.1.), Colonel C. E. M. Lloyd; Chief Administrative Officer (Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster-General, to quote his official title), Colonel A. P. O. White, and later Colonel B. W. Pulver. Other branches and services were commanded as follows: Engineers, Colonel J. Mann; Medical Services, Colonel H. G. Furnell; Signals, Lieutenant-Colonel D. N. Veron; A.S.C., Lieutenant-Colonel J. A. Watson; Ordnance, Lieutenant-Colonel A. L. Noton.
CHAPTER 10
OFFENSIVE DEFENCE
THE Easter Battle was a severe shock to the Germans, but it was by no means a crippling defeat. The German units involved suffered heavily, but the losses were light in relation to the total Axis strength in Cyrenaica. Because of the speed with which the garrison had snapped off the spearhead of the attack, the bulk of the forces that the enemy had intended to send against the Fortress that Easter Monday had not been brought into action. Tobruk was still in great danger, especially as fresh German and Italian forces were arriving outside the perimeter every day. The garrison, on the other hand, had little chance of being reinforced. In view of the German threat to the frontier and Egypt all Wavell could send immediately was eight new ‘I’ tanks.
Wavell could, however, force Rommel to divert German troops from Tobruk to the frontier. On April 13th they had captured Sollum and Halfaya Pass, but Brigadier Gott’s force, backed by a most effective bombardment from H.M.A.S. Stuart and a British destroyer and gunboat, had stopped them going farther into Egypt. Before Rommel could consolidate his gains, Gott struck back. He had been reinforced by the 22nd Guards Brigade and a few tanks, and on April 15th he sent a mobile column around the enemy’s open desert flank to attack Capuzzo, while other columns went for Halfaya and Sollum. This combination of direct attack and outflanking movement forced the Axis troops from those positions though they held Capuzzo. Five nights later British commandos raided Bardia and caused some damage and great consternation.
Rommel’s reply was to switch a large number of tanks from Tobruk and to consolidate his position on the frontier before he renewed his assault on the garrison. Rommel had two tank regiments in Libya – the 5th and the 8th – each originally with about 150 tanks. After the Easter Battle it seems that the 5th rested and refitted, while one battalion of the 8th Regiment went to the frontier. Its other battalion was evidently still on its way up from Bengazi. The Easter Battle had shown that he would need at least a hundred German tanks, plus a heavy concentration of artillery, if he were to have a chance of breaking through the Tobruk defences. But such a force represented nearly half the tanks he then had in the Tobruk–Sollum area. He could not afford to concentrate so many against Morshead’s garrison until he felt safe from attack on the frontier and had been reinforced by the remaining tanks of the 15th Armoured Division, which were already moving up from Bengazi.
He must have realized too that the next attack on Tobruk would need to be much more carefully prepared. The Germans had obviously been over-confident when they attacked at Easter and had not troubled about such detailed preparations as Mackay’s forces had made the previous January. He had made a deliberate attack, but the Germans had evidently believed that a strong immediate thrust would bring swift success. Mackay had gained the advantage of surprise as to both place and time of attack. Once the bridgehead had been made, the Anglo-Australian forces had not pushed recklessly through the narrow gap and bolted for the town. They had widened it and established secure flanks before attempting deep penetration. They had been supported by thorough artillery bombardment, because they had taken care to locate all enemy batteries and amass the guns and ammunition necessary to silence them. Colonel Pohnhardt, C.O. of the 8th M.G. Battalion, who had led the German attack at Easter, had failed to take these precautions. Moreover, he was so confident that he drove in through the gap behind the tanks in a staff car; it was knocked out by an anti-tank shell and he was killed.
Warned by this set-back, Rommel now prepared for a thorough-going attack on the Fortress. This time there would be no mistake. Meanwhile, his German forces recovered from the Easter Battle and dealt with the threat from the frontier. He left it largely to the Italians to maintain the pressure on Tobruk.
Thwarted in the south, the enemy turned his attention to the western sector of the perimeter, which was being held by Tovell’s 26th Brigade, with the 2/24th Battalion on the right; the 2/48th on the left and the 2/23rd in reserve. Prisoners’ statements and captured diaries suggest that the Germans had intended the Italians to attack in the west on the Easter Monday while they made the main assault from the south. This plan went astray, apparently because the German operation order did not reach the Italian H.Q. in time to be translated and acted upon. There was no attack in the west on the 14th, but next day the Italians tried to make amends.
During the morning of April 15th several hundred infantry approached the 2/48th’s front, but when the 51st Field Regiment began to shell them some fled and others took refuge in a wadi about three-quarters of a mile west of the perimeter. While the gunners encouraged the refugees to lie low, a patrol of 22 men of the 2/48th, led by Lieutenant Claude Jenkins, rounded up an Italian officer and 74 men.
Meanwhile
another force – estimated at more than a battalion – had approached the wire farther north where the 2/48th linked up with the 2/24th. Advancing bunched together, they provided a perfect target for the British gunners and later patrols found evidence that the gunners had made the most of their chance. The Italians were held up for about an hour, but then the guns had to stop firing through lack of ammunition; the Italians rallied and came on. Several hundred got through the wire between two posts which were nearly a mile apart, but fire soon pinned them down. Patrols gathered in 111 Italians, and the bodies of 30 victims of mortar fire were found in a nearby wadi next morning.
In spite of these costly rebuffs, the Italians continued to probe the front next day, April 16th, but their attacks were ill-planned and half-hearted, and merely yielded another big bag of prisoners. The day’s round-up began early, when a small patrol from the 2/24th went out along the Derna road and brought six Italian officers and 63 men back for breakfast. A little later Lieutenant A. Wardle and 26 men of the 2/48th found 98 Italians in a wadi a mile outside the perimeter. They shot one and the others surrendered, the day’s biggest haul was yet to come.
Late in the afternoon another patrol reported that an enemy battalion had advanced down the road from Acroma and was deploying for attack a mile and a half west of the perimeter. As the British gunners got on to them, the Italians scattered in confusion. It was then seen that they were being followed, or possibly driven into action, by twelve tanks. The gunners soon dispersed these and put down a barrage behind the Italian infantry to stop them from withdrawing, while three carriers under Lieutenant O. H. Isaksson went out to reconnoitre.
In one carrier was Private R. G. Daniells, who told me later that they were sent merely to ‘see what the Ities were up to’. He said:
As we drove out they put up a few shots, but we kept our Brens and anti-tank rifles spraying them. When we got near they stopped firing. One carrier went round each flank and one ran straight through the middle of them. We fired over their heads; they dropped their rifles and machine guns, waved white handkerchiefs, and put up their hands. As we drove through, they began marching towards our wire, leaving all their gear on the ground. When we got to the back of the mob we turned our carriers and drove the Ities in like sheep. The first of them had just reached the perimeter when some tanks came up behind and had a go at us with H.E. They landed a few in the middle of the prisoners, who bolted inside the wire.
It seems certain that the tanks were German and that the crews were deliberately showing contempt for their allies. They were soon driven off, however, by the 25-pounders. About 570 prisoners were brought in by the carriers and another 150 were rounded up by Lieutenant A. E. Brocksopp and 15 men. The 2/48th’s total for the day was 26 officers and 777 men captured, at a cost of one man killed and one wounded. The prisoners turned out to be almost the entire 1st Battalion of the 62nd Trento Regiment, including their colonel. He was so delighted with his reception and so infuriated at having been fired on by German tanks that he helped Tobruk H.Q. draft a leaflet appealing to other Italians to follow his example.
The leaflet, which was scattered next day over enemy lines by the R.A.F., read:
SOLDIERS OF ITALY!
For you and your companions the day of peace and happiness is close at hand. In all Africa your comrades have given up the battle. In Abyssinia the war is over; the Ambassador from the Duke D’Aosta has already made preliminary peace terms with British G. H. Q.
Yesterday thousands of your countrymen were taken prisoner at Tobruk. It is quite useless to make any further sacrifices of this kind. All Italian soldiers who have been captured by the British have been treated in the finest manner.
So make an end of this before your losses become considerably larger.
The Italians made no general response to this appeal, but the tally of prisoners continued to mount, even though their next attack on April 17th was much better planned. Their objective was an important rise across which the western perimeter defences ran. It was known as Hill 209 or Ras El Medauuar, and was the most valuable feature in this sector. It rose in a gentle slope only a hundred feet above the surrounding desert, but it commanded that for several miles.
The enemy attack opened late in the morning with heavy machine-gun and mortar fire from well-concealed positions, into which small parties of Italians had smuggled themselves during the night. Then enemy artillery plastered Hill 209, and tanks and troop-carrying vehicles appeared from behind another rise, named Carrier Hill, half a mile west of 209.
British artillery shelled them, but about a battalion debussed and moved towards the perimeter led by twelve tanks. Several of these were German, but the rest were Italian mediums and lights. They headed for the positions on 209, held by Lieutenant D. Bryant’s platoon. His story of the action was this:
The tanks came on through the shelling and forced their way over a broken down part of the wire. One Italian ‘light’ blew up on the minefield, and two more were knocked out by our anti-tank rifles before they got very far. The rest continued on and we couldn’t stop them. One party of four or five tanks shot up our sangars on 209 and over-ran the 51st Regiment’s O.P., wounding its C.O. (Colonel Douglas). Then a medium tank went for one of the concrete posts, crashed through the wire and fell into the circular anti-tank ditch. Before the troops could deal with it, the tank reversed and cleared out trailing a coil of concertina wire.
While some weapons were turned against the tanks, others kept the Italian infantry pinned down half a mile outside the wire. When these tanks found they could not subdue the posts and that their infantry could not advance, they withdrew. The remainder had careered on eastwards to the 2/48th’s reserve company position a mile inside. There was no minefield to stop them and they charged through the flimsy barbed wire and over the shallow weapon-pits and trenches, where one man even had the epaulette torn from his shoulder by a tank track.
The troops fired everything they had but only knocked out a single light tank. The rest pushed on another mile until they came to a stone wall the Italians had built as a tank obstacle. By this time the gunners were pasting them heavily; they turned back to the perimeter, but another was disabled on the way out and its crew captured. Under cross-examination these prisoners admitted that they had been sent to capture and hold 209, confident, in spite of the Easter Battle, that once the tanks got through the wire the defending infantry would surrender. Warned by enemy interest in this sector, Morshead had already ordered engineers to lay a minefield two miles long inside the perimeter and parallel with it, half a mile behind Hill 209. Work on this and the Blue Line positions a mile farther in was now intensified.
For the next four days there was a lull in enemy activity except in the air. Formations of up to forty dive-bombers attacked the harbour and ack-ack guns at least once a day. The gunners brought down four on April 19th and hit back so vigorously that eight new ‘I’ tanks were safely unloaded on the 21st. But these were nothing compared with what Rommel gained by the arrival outside Tobruk of the rest of his 15th Armoured Division.
During the lull in ground fighting, the enemy brought up a number of artillery batteries and began building a chain of defensive positions several thousand yards outside the western perimeter extending from north of the Derna road to south of Carrier Hill. Behind this hill Australian patrols discovered a number of field guns, tanks and infantry.
When the Italians originally built the perimeter fortifications they did not take in this hill. That oversight weakened the western defences considerably, for behind it an enemy could mass unobserved for an attack on 209. Unfortunately the garrison had not enough men or weapons to hold Carrier Hill, but Tovell determined to clear the area beyond it, and simultaneously to raid enemy positions astride the Derna road. He wanted to destroy several batteries that were harassing the forward posts and to keep up the ascendancy that the offensive defence of the Easter Battle and subsequent patrol clashes had won. On April 22nd, therefore, the 2/48th and 2/23rd Batt
alions carried out two bold daylight raids.
The raid on Carrier Hill was made by ninety men of the 2/48th, supported by three ‘I’ tanks of the 7th R.T.R. and with mobile antitank guns and carriers to protect the flanks. The plan was for the tanks and infantry to sweep round Carrier Hill, attack the Italians from the rear, and drive them back to the perimeter. The raid was led by a short, slight, red-headed Adelaide school-teacher, Captain Bill Forbes. His men had already gained useful experience in the patrols that had mopped up so many Italians the week before; this time the prize was bigger.
At dawn on the 22nd, Forbe’s raiding party moved out more than a mile westward, skirting the southern slope of Carrier Hill. Overhead a Lysander cruised about to drown the noise of the tanks. They were intended to lead the infantry but they went so fast that they were soon lost in the morning mist. Forbes did not see them again until the raid was over. This did not worry the Diggers. Forbes led them west of Carrier Hill and then swung north moving along a shallow wadi, while the carriers covered his left flank. One of Forbe’s platoon commanders, Lieutenant D. G. Kimber, describing the raid, said:
The enemy hadn’t spotted us at this stage and his guns were still shelling 209 as we came up behind them. To our left was a transport park, and the carriers dealt with that while we went on. We came over a slight rise, marching spread out in line abreast with Forbes well in front. We were about 500 yards from the Italians when they saw us. As they opened up with mortars, M.Gs and anti-tank guns, Forbes waved to us to keep going. Their fire was heavy but it was all over the place. By coming at them from the rear we’d surprised them and in their panic they shot wildly. Then the carriers came up on our left and drove straight into the Italian positions with every gun going.
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