Many years ago now, when I was interviewing the late Philip Brownless about his experiences in 23 Infantry Brigade – the ‘forgotten Chindits’, about whom George Wilton will be giving a talk for the Kohima Educational Trust on 19 January 2023 – he said, “Rob, the Chindit experience was nothing compared to Tobruk.”
That led me to my study of that great siege. I was privileged to be able to visit the site of the long battle – courtesy of the late Colonel Gaddafi – in the company of Ben Brownless, Philip’s son in August 2007. We found his father’s old platoon positions on the Ed Duda battlefield, where the Tobruk garrison broke the siege in November 1941.
Ben Brownless on one of the trench positions of his father’s old Essex Regiment platoon, on Ed Duda ridge, Tobruk
Anyway, all this is has come to mind this week as I’ve spent some happy hours with the team from SEGA, the games company, preparing for their new Company of Heroes game. I’m not a gamer myself, but was heartened by the team’s determination to make their new game on Tobruk to be as authentic as possible.
If nothing else, Tobruk was a story of remarkable human fortitude. We are very fortunate to have, both in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and the Imperial War Museum in London, a fantastic array of first-hand accounts of that great battle. My couple of years research at the time introduced me to some amazing characters – Rudolf Schneider, Alex Franks, Ray Ellis, Frank Harrison and John Rigg, among many others – all of whom have sadly now passed away. But what fun we had! I even have a treasured photograph of me in our pool with Rudolf Schneider, Rommel’s driver, at a party my wife and I gave for ‘my’ veterans in 2009.
Veterans of Tobruk: Jack Senior, Alex Franks, Rudolf Schneider, Philip Brownless, Ray Ellis & John Riggs
That famous photograph!
Jim Naughtie even persuaded Rudolf to sing Lili Marlene on the BBC’s Today Programme on Radio 4, but Rudolf couldn’t remember the words.
A pint in the pub with James and Rudolf after the Lil Marlene episode
But my point here was not to reminisce about writing a book, but to remind readers of the physical and mental challenges of long periods of time spent in combat. This has been what has been occupying me this week with the SEGA team.
The siege went on for 241 days, many of its 24,000 defenders staying the entire course all though most of the Australians were swapped out in September for incoming members of the British 70th Division. The battle entailed not only a struggle between the two protagonists, but one to survive in the extraordinarily harsh environment presented by rocky desert, baking sun and limited water. Along the perimeter the infantry defended their trenches and strong points, dominating the area outside the wire by aggressive patrolling; further back the tanks and guns supported this battle, although by July the limited supplies of fuel prevented anything other than the allocation of emergency counter-attack tasks by the tanks. At sea the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy ran the nightly gauntlet of submarine and Stuka to bring in supplies and reinforcements and to take away the wounded, POWs and those considered unnecessary to the continuation of the defence, while around the harbour and along the coast the men of the anti-aircraft batteries faced their own daily battles to survive the relentless fury of the Axis’ aerial assault, and to defeat it.
The first hurdle to overcome as the garrison settled into the routine of siege life was to master the considerable challenges thrown up by the natural environment. The first, for those unable to enjoy the doubtful pleasures of Italian-built strong point, underground bunker or cave, was to try to survive on the hostile rocky crust of Tobruk’s wide desert. This was primarily a problem for the men of the field and anti-aircraft artillery batteries who were forced to dig shelters as best they could, close to their guns, wherever they found themselves. For those able to get their hands on the piles of surplus Italian munitions, the solution was easy, though it was a dangerous game for the unwary. Ray Ellis was digging a new gun position one day when the two men digging in the next gun pit wandered away:
These two were not renowned for their intellectual prowess and we joked that they had decided to walk to Cairo to buy a drink. Some time later they returned carrying a huge unexploded German shell between them. When we enquired the purpose of their errand, they said they were going to use the shell to blast a hole in the rocks to save them digging. Some minutes later, there was a tremendous explosion, and when we looked across, they had disappeared. We never did find more than the odd bit of them: they had blown themselves to pieces. We seriously wondered if they had fitted the shell into position and then struck the firing pin with the back of a shovel.
At Fort Pilastrino during the Easter battles, Dr John Devine lived in a dugout, ten feet by four, sleeping on a stretcher. The dugout was about four feet deep, and covered with a single layer of sandbags as protection against shell splinters. There was no ventilator, as this would have let in dust; yet even so, and despite the lack of floor covering, it was necessary for him to sleep with his glasses on and a towel around his mouth. In the morning before getting up, he had to scrape away the dust from round his eyes, take off his glasses and dust the rest of his face. His first night in his dug-out introduced Devine to a persistent problem in Tobruk: rats.
I retired to bed early on my first night and started a losing fight against the rats. They fought and chased each other all around so much that they shook the dug-out, and when flashes of anti-aircraft fire, searchlight beams and the sheet lightning of bomb explosions showed that Tobruk was being stormed, the rats were making such a row that I could not hear the bombs.
They had a playful habit of running round on the parapet just under the dug-out roof, and when one was soundly sleeping they would scratch down dirt and dust. One night I woke with pain in my finger, and found that it was bleeding from small bites. A thirsty rat had been gnawing it. If a water bottle were left within reach, the rats would gnaw away the cork for the moisture it contained.
Another problem was fleas. They were ubiquitous and resilient to most known forms of eradication. Army-issue insecticides and kerosene could do nothing to remove them and they were a pestilence to both friend and foe. The ‘fleas were so bad that on waking in the morning one’s pyjamas were spotted all over with one’s blood’ Devine recalled. ‘We tried everything – airing all our bedding, spraying it with kerosene, covering everything including ourselves with insecticide, lighting fires on the ground – but nothing seemed to do the slightest bit of good.’ The fleas were no respecter of persons. Rommel fought a constant battle against biting bugs. To his wife on 27th August 1941 he wrote:
Dearest Lu,
Nothing new. The heat’s frightful, night time as well as day time. Liquidated four bugs. My bed is now standing in tins filled with water and I hope the nights will be a little more restful from now on.
Fleas were only one problem, however. It was no surprise to anyone in Tobruk that flies had constituted one of the ten plagues of Egypt. There appeared to be millions of them. Seemingly to appear from nowhere they went for moisture, especially the eyes, nostrils and mouth, spoon, mess tin and mug. The intense desert heat, combined with the constant attentions of millions of flies caused great strain, a few men succumbing to cafard, or desert madness, one Northumberland Fusilier even trying to shoot the flies with his revolver.
Considerable effort was expended to devise methods for their destruction. Of the many games played to alleviate boredom one was to see who could catch and kill the most flies. Private Alex Franks, a driver in 2/2nd Motor Ambulance Company driving old Morris Commercial trucks and earning two shillings a day (Australian soldiers received six shillings, an issue of envy for some Britons), came across a novel solution one day. He noticed that one of his fellow drivers in his ‘blood wagon’ always had far fewer flies around than the others. On questioning, the man revealed his secret: a pet chameleon tied to a piece of string. ‘He doesn’t have to go out looking for flies’ Alex was told. ‘An ambulance is the next best thing to a fishmonger’s slab. Where there’s wounds there’s blood and where there’s blood there’s flies. They come in looking for grub and he just shoots his tongue out and grabs them.’
From April through to September the heat from the sun was powerful, and while most men browned evenly, others were tortured by sunburn. It was an offence not to wear a shirt and to suffer sunburn, but most men ignored these instructions and turned a golden brown. Along the coast a refreshing zephyr off the sea for most of the day countered the effects of the heat, although the benefit of the breeze was not felt when one went underground or into a slit trench, where the heat could be stifling.
The physical disturbance to the desert floor brought about by the movement of thousands of troops, hundreds of vehicles and relentless bombing increased the number and intensity of the local dust storms that raged over the summer months. Dust lined the mouths of parched men. Thirst was compounded by the dust, a gritty all-pervasive substance that swirled in the air, gathering into every cranny, particularly the working parts of rifles and machine guns. Regular cleaning with a lightly-oiled rag became an almost religious ritual: a single jammed round at a crucial moment could mean the difference between life and death. These local dust storms could be just as dangerous and disorientating as the massive khamseen. Reginald Copper recalled: ‘Some of the sand was so coarse that when the winds reached 50 mph or thereabouts it would strip the camouflage paint off the vehicles.’ Sandstorms could last for two hours or two days and the wisest course was to sit tight and wait for it to pass. George Porter remembered one man who ‘left the Gun Park in a sandstorm in the morning and took a slightly wrong bearing so that he missed the Rest Camp. He wandered for an hour or so looking for the camp and then decided, as he had his bedding with him, he would lie down and wrapping himself up in his blankets, wait till the wind dropped, only to discover that he was within a stone’s throw of his own bivvy!’
The rats, fleas and flies, burning heat and swirling grit of the sandstorms added an unpleasant natural dimension to a battlefield already made unpleasant by the attentions of an enemy eager to put an end to their embarrassing failure so far to capture Tobruk. The violence with which the siege had begun in April never diminished through to its eventual conclusion in December, although it varied in subtle ways. While Rommel’s pressure throughout April and May was concentrated on the physical integrity of the perimeter, from June it was focused on attempts to starve the garrison into submission through an aerial campaign of unprecedented fury, supported by the attempts of German and Italian submarines to sever the sea lifeline – the famous ‘Spud Run’ – to Alexandra by the ships of Admiral Cunningham’s ‘Scrap Iron Flotilla.’
This meant that the siege never witnessed an entirely quiet day, nor was one area more or less dangerous than another although the fighting took different forms from area to area. Tobruk found itself the front line in the confrontation in North Africa and between June and November received the concentrated attention of Rommel’s combined German and Italian forces. Shells fell every day, there was no let up in the intensity of the aerial onslaught over many months, and the rattle of machine-guns and rifle fire was almost constantly to be heard. When the perimeter was not under direct attack and the troops in the defensive posts could get down to a routine of sorts, the aerial and artillery attacks continued without let up over the port, the town and particularly the artillery and anti-aircraft gun positions. The ex-French artillery piece in Bardia – nicknamed ‘Bardia Bill’ by the troops – had long been registered on the dockside areas of the harbour, intermittently lobbing 159mm shells into the port. ‘High level bombing became so commonplace, both by day and by night’ recalled Bombardier Ray Ellis, ‘as to pass almost unnoticed unless the bombs were falling close by.’
In this environment the most precious commodity, apart from shade, was water. The ration for each 24-hour period was a mere 1½ pints of water, for drinking, shaving and washing. Everyone was constantly thirsty, hungry and dirty. Lips were swollen, split and bleeding through lack of moisture. Gunner Ted Holmes, the battery cook of 425 Battery Royal Horse Artillery, recalled dreaming ‘about putting your head under the tap at home.’ A man’s personal ration was carried in a water bottle at his waist, continually exposed to the sun’s rays and therefore always tepid. Normally, recalled Captain Vernon Northwood, the troops had to clean, shave and wash their teeth in half a mug full of water:
You got a water bottle full of water per day for your own personal use. Tea was made when the food came up at night, so your breakfast and your lunch came out of your water bottle.
I had a little tobacco tin – I used to smoke a pipe then – and I shaved in it. Every man shaved every day in Tobruk. People don’t believe that – but if they didn’t, they soon got a skin rash. I wet my brush and I shaved in that tin. I cleaned my teeth and spat the water back into the tin – didn’t waste any of it. I used the balance of the water for the sponge to wash my privates. A little piece of sponge that could absorb water – you hung on to that. That was very valuable to you.
A limited source of water was provided by the native wells, which produced a brackish and evil-tasting liquid that could only be used after boiling, and when flavoured by tea leaves. These wells were contaminated naturally by the rich oil deposits in the region, although both sides never realised this, blaming each other routinely for the deliberately contamination of the desert ‘birs’. Water was occasionally brought in at great risk from Alexandria, and stored in tanks near the docks, reserved for use by the hospital. Rain water was scarce. When it did arrive men would rush about frantically trying to catch as much as they could in mess tins, helmets and whatever containers were at hand. When, on Friday morning 26th September the heavens opened, Bombardier ‘Bunny’ Cowles and his mates stood outside in the downpour and used the opportunity to soap themselves down. Others rushed to collect as much as possible of the precious water into containers, Cowles catching enough to fill a 60-gallon tank. The following morning the troops were astonished to see the desert in bloom as a carpet of tiny, colourful flowers emerged in response to the rain. After several days a temporary though shallow lake startled Major Robert Daniell with the sight of hundreds of migrating ducks sitting contentedly on the surface. He didn’t have the heart to shoot any to augment his meagre rations.
Life in Tobruk during the siege was a strange combination of fear, hardship and pride, for those who were forced to endure the long dangerous months of confinement. ‘Not one who took part in the siege,’ observed Leonard Tutt ‘can have remained unchanged by it.’ A strange affinity built up between those on the inside, and those outside, who were forced to endure its privations. ‘There was a ‘oneness’ about our daily existence’ he recalled, a sentiment echoed by many others, whose voices echo down to us through the pages of their letters and diaries:
When I heard a burst of firing coming from one of the posts on our front I could see in my mind’s eye the tall Australian with his battered bush hat, a finger on the trigger of his Bren. I could almost hear what he was saying to his Number Two: ‘Come on Bluey, let’s give the buggers a couple of magazines full – let ‘em know we’re still here.
I could make a pretty good guess too that his hand would have a dirty bandage around it. There had been a heavy attack the night before. He would have fired until his Bren was nearly white hot and must surely have burnt his hand when changing to his second barrel.
The danger and hardship in Tobruk created a brotherhood of weary warriors which still binds the survivors into old age. Life was not always enjoyable, but it was survivable and in the long months of their incarceration the ‘Rats of Tobruk’ took justifiable pride in their ability not merely to survive, but to thrive in their adversity. The irascibly irreverent Diggers had a word for it:
The writer Eric Lambert observed their stoicism and endurance with pride, describing them reverently as not ‘ordinary men.’ He watched a patrol of Diggers returning from the desert in August 1941:
Down the wadi comes a file of men. They march slowly, out of step, and mostly in silence. The dull clink of their weapons is clear in the evening air. At first their faces look all the same, burnt deep, their eyes red-rimmed with the whites gleaming, cheeks hollowed, lips straight and grave. Their shirts and shorts are stiff like canvas with mingled dust and sweat, and streaked again with the sweat of the day. Their legs are bare and burnt and almost black; their boots are worn pure white. Some who still have them wear their tunic, for the air will soon be deathly cold, and their headgear is, as before, motley: a steel helmet, a crumpled slouch hat and an Italian pith helmet. Their packs, haversacks and ammunition pouches have become as white as their boots and their weapons gleam dully in the spots where they have become worn, for they had five months of use.
They are a strange spectacle. They were once ordinary men, but now they do not belong among ordinary men… Not one of them will ever be quite the same again.
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[*] Written by Private Hugh Patterson, son of the famous Australian poet, ‘Banjo’ Patterson, and a driver in the 20th Brigade.
A grim environment to fight a war.