When the barrage began, there was no sign of the ‘I’ tanks that were to support the infantry, but the troops set off, expecting the tanks to overtake them. Almost immediately the enemy concentrated his full defensive fire across their path, and added a dense smoke screen. Through this and dust raised by the two barrages, the Diggers soon found they could not see twenty yards. The tanks, coming up behind them, could see nothing and lost their way. Men of the reserve platoons ran to them and hammered on the side and turrets with rocks and rifle-butts, but through the 3-inch armour of the ‘I’ tanks, the crews could hear nothing. No one had told the infantry that on the back of each turret there was a push-button bell by which they could have attracted the crew’s attention. Lost, the tanks turned back and the infantry continued on alone.
Mortars and shells fell so thick and fast among them that some men were blown off their feet by the blast, and many were wounded. Field, anti-tank and ack-ack guns provided an intense barrage, but the ack-ack guns were worst of all, for they fired shells that burst into jagged splinters fifty feet above the ground. Moreover, the whole area was completely covered with criss-crossed fire from light and heavy machine-guns shooting on fixed lines from the front and both flanks. Nevertheless, the infantry kept on, even though about a third of them were killed or wounded before they reached the cover of the escarpment below the enemy posts.
The company on the right, under Captain Ian Malloch, made for S7, intending to attack it with a platoon from either flank. As they advanced Malloch was wounded in the arm and head, but he continued to urge his troops on. Lieutenant J. N. Bowden, also badly wounded, led the left platoon to the top of the rise, but reached it with only a handful of survivors. These captured some German sangars, not far from S7, but had not sufficient strength to attack the main concrete post. Bowden decided to wait for reinforcements, and sent three men back for help. Only one of these reached Malloch but he had no one to send, for the reserve platoon (under Lieutenant G. G. Anderson), which had been delayed while trying to put the tanks on the right course, was now held up near S9. Bowden’s party was not heard of again.
Attacking from the other flank Lieutenant Trevor Neuendorf’s platoon captured S7 in spite of very heavy casualties only to find that it was completely covered by enemy machine-guns in sangars behind the post. With a small party Neuendorf set out to clear this area and captured several positions, but lost nearly all his men in the process. When the Germans counter-attacked with tanks, Neuendorf and the remnant of his platoon were overwhelmed and taken prisoner. He had no anti-tank guns and no reinforcements could reach him, although some tried to do so. By 7.30 a.m. the enemy was firmly re-established in S7.
Meantime, Major W. H. Perry’s company had captured S6, largely through the gallantry of Lieutenant Carl Jess. As his platoon got near the post, it was pinned down by fire from a nearby sangar. Jess led three men forward and silenced it with hand grenades, but in doing this, he was so badly wounded that when the stretcher-bearers came to him, he said, ‘Leave me here – I’m done. Get some other bloke who’s got a chance.’ Jess’s batman, Private H. Coxon, remained to look after him and also Sergeant Roy Jacobs, who had been wounded in both legs as he followed in behind Jess. Both Coxon and Jacobs were captured. Jess is posted ‘missing believed killed’, but his name will be honoured forever among the 2/23rd.
In S6 Perry’s men captured nineteen Germans after a stiff fight, and Perry himself with Lieutenant G. A. Sheldrick’s platoon pressed on to S4, while another platoon under Lieutenant George Gardiner was sent to clean up the sangars along the escarpment between S6 and S7.
S4 resisted strongly, but Perry’s party captured it, killing most of the garrison and taking four prisoners. Perry fired a success signal, which was also a call for reinforcements, but the air was so thick with smoke and dust that the signal was not seen by the troops waiting to come to his aid.
The capture of S4 and S6 was a splendid achievement, but it was not enough. The whole area on either flank was studded with enemy machine-gun nests, and when Perry left Sheldrick in S4 and set out to escort the four prisoners back to S6, he came under fire at once from Germans still holding out between S6 and S7.
Gathering eight of his own men near S6, Perry led them against the nearest enemy position. Those left in S6 did not see him again, but in a letter written from a prisoner of war camp in Germany he described what happened.
As we rushed the sangars we ran into Gahan,1 Gardiner and about 12 men who had attacked from a different angle but were not seen owing to the smoke. Just as we cleaned up these sangars, heavy machine-gun fire came from all angles. In a second only five of us were left standing. Immediately I ordered them into the sangars, each dragging a wounded man. Gahan and Gardiner were killed and as the light improved we saw we were almost surrounded. Yet armed only with rifles we kept up a steady fire and held them up for 2¾ hours, when they put over a thin smoke-screen.
I had just popped my head up to have another shot, when I collected on the side of the head two sandbags from the parapet, propelled by an anti-tank shell. I was knocked almost unconscious but was lucky as the shell missed me. By the time I got the sand out of my eyes, three tanks and a team of infantry were almost on top of us. My four lads had no hope and surrendered. I was assisted by a German officer who up till then was my prisoner.
Sheldrick, whom I had left at S4, hung out till the following day. His gang was completely surrounded, made several attempts to get a message back, had no water or food and had run out of ammunition.
While Perry and his men were fighting desperately to hold S6 and S4, Colonel Evans (C.O., 2/23rd) was doing his best to get help to them. But by this time the enemy was concentrating a deadly fire on the area any reinforcements had to cross. Nevertheless, at 7.40 a.m. Captain P. E. Spier’s company set out for S6 and S7, supported by four ‘I’ tanks. They were greeted with fire of all kinds and smoke and dust made it difficult to see more than fifty yards. This blinded the tank crews, and although they reached the escarpment near S6 they became hopelessly lost. As Spier had been ordered not to attack without the tanks, and as he saw German tanks coming up on his flank, he reluctantly turned back.
The bad visibility served one good purpose. It enabled two Bren carriers to reach S6 with ammunition and rations. The carrier-sergeant (Colin Rigg) found Perry’s sergeant-major, W. G. Morrison, and 26 fit men occupying sangars around an old Italian water-tower, 200 yards south of the concrete post, from which they had been driven by severe enemy shelling. Loading five wounded men on to his carriers, Rigg went back for help.
By the time he reached Battalion H.Q. the smoke and dust had cleared and it was impossible for anyone to reach S6. About 9 a.m. when five German tanks were seen cruising round the water-tower, Morrison and his men were given up for lost, for they had no anti-tank guns. The German tanks had in fact shot up their sangars from a range of sixty yards, killing two men; but just when it had seemed that the positions would be over-run, British shells landing all round the Diggers drove the tanks off.
Nevertheless Morrison’s forces remained in great danger. There was no word from the platoons that had gone forward and no chance of help coming up from behind. Worst of all, the telephone line from S6 back to the Australian lines had been cut by shell-fire. Morrison called for a volunteer to make a dash across the 800 yards of open desert separating them from the nearest Australian post – S8.
‘I’ll go,’ said Corporal Fred Carleton, ‘I’m just the company clerk.’ He stripped off his equipment and ran, his six feet four making a fine target for the German machine-guns. He eluded them, but when he got near S8 the Diggers there fired on him by mistake. It was not till about midday that he eventually got through to Battalion H.Q. with the news that Morrison’s garrison was still resisting but urgently needed to re-establish telephone communication with the artillery, which alone could hold off the Germans.
One of the battalion signallers, Pte. H. P. Clark, volunteered to go out and repair the line. Enemy arti
llery and machine-guns were still sweeping the area between S10 and S6 as Clark set off across the coverless desert dragging a field telephone with him. Half-crawling, half-sliding, he wormed his way yard by yard along the broken signal line. He repaired twelve breaks and twelve times, when he checked through, he found the line to S6 was still dead. He had now covered well over 1000 yards, but even so was more than 500 from S6. He crawled on, mended the thirteenth break and got through. Morrison, seeing him coming, had sent a man out to repair the line near S6. His job done, Clark worked his way back to S8, with snipers after him most of the way.
Over the phone, Morrison now told Evans that he still had twenty-three men alive and plenty of ammunition; that the tanks had been beaten off by artillery in the morning, but that they and German infantry were gradually closing in. Through the rest of the afternoon their attempts were stopped primarily by the accurate shelling which Morrison directed from a sangar beside the water-tower. No German tanks came within 400 yards of the Australian positions, but machine-gunners and snipers sneaked back into sangars which they had abandoned during the morning. Five more men were killed and five wounded, and eventually Morrison had to bring down fire almost on top of his own sangars in order to stop the advance.
Meantime, Evans was organizing another attack with the rest of the battalion, but when it was found that no tanks were available Morshead decided it would be too costly to take S7, and that S6 was useless without it. He would be content for the time being to hold the original line and Morrison would have to withdraw.
As dusk fell, German tanks were seen bearing down on the post. Morrison telephoned urgently for artillery support. It came at once, and the enemy was again checked, but it was clear that the check was only temporary. Evans told Morrison that he would have to get out before it was too late and that two carriers would be sent up for the wounded. As the carriers emerged from the half light, however, the men at the water-tower saw them head straight for an enemy anti-tank gun position, and over the phone from Morrison came this shot for shot description:
‘One of the carriers has been hit point blank. It has stopped. The other has been hit. A bloke’s getting out of it. He’s running round to the front. They’re firing at him, but he’s climbed aboard and got her going. Both carriers have turned away and they’re drawing back out of range.’
The carriers returned to Battalion H.Q. Two of the six men who had gone out had been killed and two wounded. The others reported that S6 was being rapidly surrounded and that tanks were waiting to attack as soon as darkness protected them from British shelling.
With only a few minutes of light left, Evans ordered Morrison to make a dash for it, leaving the wounded behind; fourteen good men’s lives, he said, could not be risked for the sake of the five wounded. In one minute the artillery would put down a barrage to cover them; Battalion H.Q. would send up white and green flares to guide them in. They must leave.
At six minutes past nine, Morrison shouted to his men to run. They rose from their sangars and made the best pace they could down the escarpment as the British shells thundered down behind them. The Germans saw them go and laid a screen of fire across the stretch of desert they had to cross.
Back at Evans’s H.Q. the minutes dragged – 9.15, 9.20, 9.25. By 9.30 they should have covered the 800 yards to S8, but there was no word of them. The enemy barrage raged on. Ten o’clock passed and 10.30. By then the German fire had died away and all hope died with it. Behind S10 in the cave which housed his H.Q., Evans said with finality – ‘If they were going to get through, they’d have been here by now.’
But almost immediately he was contradicted by a shout from outside. Morrison and his men were safe. They had not run. They had crawled most of the distance along the shallow ditch of the old Italian pipeline. They had been pursued all the way by a machine-gun firing straight down the pipeline a foot or two above their heads. Six times they had come to points where machine-guns firing from the flanks cut across the ditch. They had watched the tracers go by and squirmed underneath them. They had not been able to get to S8 or S10 for the enemy fire on both had been too hot. They had crawled back more than a mile and a half – almost to Battalion H.Q. – before they were clear of enemy fire.
But they had brought their wounded with them.
It had been a costly day for the 2/23rd, for it had suffered 173 casualties. Of these 173 at least 25 were killed, 59 were wounded and 89 more were missing; many of the missing were taken prisoner and most of these were wounded, but nearly half are presumed to have been killed. Only two officers in the leading companies escaped unhurt; of the others four were killed, three were wounded and captured and one badly wounded. Out of the five platoons that reached the enemy posts, the half-platoon that Morrison led back was the only organized force to survive. The attack might have succeeded but for the enemy’s smoke screen, which prevented the tanks finding their way to S6 and S7. Without them, all the gallantry of the infantry was in vain. The attack proved that the Germans had established a strong line running east and west along the top of the escarpment on which S6 and S7 were placed, and that the capture of these posts alone would not force them to withdraw from this general line.
The Germans realized, however, that their existing defences were not strong enough, and within a week Australians could hear pneumatic drills and concrete mixers at night as the enemy prepared pillboxes and elaborate strongpoints in the Salient. If the 2/23rd’s attack did nothing else, it put the Germans definitely on the defensive. Morshead, however, could not rest content with passive resistance. Too large a proportion of his forces was still occupied holding the Salient. If an attack on the enemy’s flank could not succeed, then his Salient must be reduced by concerted pressure right along the front.
Early in June, when the 20th Brigade took over this sector for the first time, Murray found that, in spite of the 2/10th’s advance on the northern flank, he still needed the greater part of his three battalions to hold it, but Morshead ordered him to shorten the line so that at least one battalion could be kept in reserve.
To some extent the Germans made this task easier. Immediately after the Salient Battle, Rommel had ordered the construction of a strong defensive line behind that held by his troops on May 3rd. While his engineers were at work on this, the infantry covered them by holding a chain of outposts several hundred yards in front of these new positions. The new line, shorter and stronger, was completed by the beginning of June and thereafter the Germans did not defend these outposts as strongly as before.
Murray’s battalions soon advanced their positions all along the line until they were as close as possible to these outposts. Then by intensive fire they forced the Germans to abandon their forward positions one by one, and withdraw to their basic defence chain, which ran in a rough semi-circle with a radius of about a mile and a half around Hill 209.
Even though the troops did not have to drive the Germans back at bayonet point, the brigade suffered a number of casualties2 because the enemy had the whole front well covered with machine-guns and mortars, and protected by anti-personnel mines and booby-traps. These defences made the process of moving the line forward slow and difficult. Before new ground could be occupied, the platoon positions had to be cleared of enemy ‘death-traps’, and then dug and wired. As all this had to be carried out after dark, each forward bound took several nights to complete.
In June the forward Australian positions were finally advanced to within 500 yards of the enemy’s main line and all his outposts were driven back. By the end of the month, the brigade had gained about 1000 yards on a front of a mile and a half, thereby reducing the Salient front from more than five miles to less than four. It was now held by six infantry companies instead of the original ten. By early July, however, the forward troops were battering against the hard core of the German defences and any further westward moves could be made only at the cost of severe casualties. As they withdrew, the Germans sowed the desert so thickly with mines that Australian patrols had t
o move on hands and knees with the greatest caution. Even so there were many casualties. On June 29th, for instance, a patrol from the 2/15th Battalion struck a minefield only 200 yards in front of its own wire. An anti-personnel mine went off, killed an officer and drew heavy enemy machine-gun fire. As the Diggers flattened themselves out on the desert, they set off more mines which killed two men and wounded the rest.
The casualties from booby-traps and mines would have been far greater but for magnificent work by the 2/13th Field Company. It operated in this sector almost without a break and did much to make the garrison safe against further enemy attacks. The sappers’ job called for courage of the highest order. As they crawled forward in the darkness they never knew what they might strike. With tense fingers they searched the desert sand for the three little prongs, which were the triggers of the powerful German ‘jumping-jack’ mines. When these were set off a primary charge exploded, blowing a 9-pound mine, packed with shrapnel, some two feet into the air before it burst. The engineers had to be on the watch also for tripwires, sometimes strung between camel-thorn bushes, and attached to powerful booby-traps. Having found these they had to disarm them – never quite knowing whether the Germans had not added some new device, which would explode the mine if anyone tried to delouse it.
Everything had to be handled warily. In their abandoned trenches and dug-outs the Germans had left ingenious devices. In one, the moving of an old ammunition box exploded a mine. In others, small yellow blocks, which looked like cakes of soap, had been pushed into crevices between sandbags. They contained plugs of high-explosive that went off when the blocks were disturbed. The German positions were so heavily ‘booby-trapped’ that the troops preferred to dig new ones rather than occupy them. Months later in one ex-German dug-out I saw a large silver torch which everyone coveted but no one was game to touch. For all we knew it might have been quite harmless.
Tobruk 1941 Page 25