Previous chapter: On the road to Tobruk
April 1941
To this day I cannot remember how long we spent in Tobruk. We arrived in a state of utter exhaustion, only to find that everyone else in the place was in the same state, and that there was a hell of a lot of work to do.
During the first few days we were busy unloading ships in the harbour. Small vessels came in each night filled with stores, food and ammunition. Someone in charge had good ideas, and issued an order that all three-ton lorries from no matter what units were to be placed under the command of the port operating officer, (complete with drivers of course). A one-way system was organised and as each truck was loaded and driven out, another took its place. Any personnel not being drivers on any other specific duty were put to work getting the stores off the ships and loading the lorries, while others outside the port were stacking the stuff in dumps. By these means an amazing amount of material came in each day.
Someone else, somewhere in Egypt, must also have been doing a good job in getting the stuff on to ships. The Royal Navy was working flat out too, but their testing time was to come a little later when the Luftwaffe arrived. A lot of troop reinforcements also came in those first days, including the best known of all – the Australian 9th Division and some Polish troops. Ships that came in under cover of darkness were expected to be unloaded in readiness to leave again in the evening. At that time of year the nights were nearly as long as the days, and every skipper naturally wanted to get as far away from Tobruk as he possibly could before daylight came, when he might be spotted by enemy aircraft. Everyone in the place was working flat out and pretty well left alone by the Jerries, who had their own problems of course.
We had set up camp on some high ground facing down to the harbour, about half a mile away, maybe a little more. A stony track led up to where we were. From there we could look down into a valley in which the Italians had left a lot of their transport, all neatly parked in rows. This was to prove to be a boon to us in the air attacks, which were to come. The German Stuka pilots could not resist dropping bombs on these lorries; they never learnt that they were not British trucks.
Our ‘camp’ consisted of those vehicles, which were not engaged in unloading duties, including of course the cook’s wagon. The ‘cookhouse’ was set up in a deep trench, rather like a small anti tank ditch, built by the Italians as part of their defences. Across this ditch the cooks had laid the tailboard of a lorry (purloined from the Italian vehicle dump down below). They used this to lay out the dixies, from which they dished out the tea and such cooked food as they could manage. Their cooking stove and dishes were nicely sheltered from the wind at the bottom of the ditch.
The rest of our trucks were scattered here and there. The big Fiat had been converted into a dormitory where I and eight or nine others slept, underneath it, that is. We too had pinched a few tailboards from the Italian lorry park, and with these, built a wall round three sides of the truck, keeping them in place by piling large stones against them. Large stones were in plentiful supply anywhere in Tobruk that you happened to be. This arrangement kept the wind out, and after we had spread our blankets, we had a nice cosy den to crawl into. Crawl in being the only way of doing it, for as you can imagine, there is not a lot of headroom under any vehicle. We soon learnt not to sit up suddenly when first waking! The pack instinct is just as strong among soldiers as it is with dogs, and it was indescribably pleasant when we were all lying, asleep or awake in this confined space. A few one-inch boards can give quite an illusion of security.
The perimeter of Tobruk ran in a large sweep from the coast and back to the coast. The Italians had spent much time and effort in preparing Tobruk for defence, and their outer line was nine or ten miles away from the port, enclosing an area of, possibly fifty square miles of hard arid stony country.
When the Germans first arrived at the outskirts of Tobruk they must have believed that it would be an easy matter to penetrate the outer line and get down to the port area, which would effectively given them control. They didn’t manage this and historians give all the possible reasons in the many books that have been written about the desert war. I suppose that they just did not have the strength in the first few days and by the time they had the strength we had also stiffened up with reinforcements and supplies brought in in the period I have just written about. The scene was set for the struggle to come.
295 Company had just received a commendation from General Wavell, I can’t remember the wording, but it went along the lines of “who by their untiring efforts over a period of 100 hours, did much to delay the enemy advance”. If by that he meant that none of us had very much sleep for four days, he was dead right.
The Germans had by now brought some Stuka squadrons in. They were based at the airfield at El Adem which was very close to Tobruk, so close that on certain days one could see from where we were camped, the clouds of dust sent up by the aircraft taking off from there.
The first few raids were moderate affairs with about half a dozen planes coming over and dropping one bomb after a screaming dive. They were going for the ships in the harbour but, as I have already explained, many of these were already sitting on the bottom. The work of unloading stores had slackened off quite a bit, whether due to the fear of air attack, or that sufficient supplies had now been landed I do not know. Whatever the cause, we actually had periods when we had nothing to do and could sit around and catch up on things, including sleep.
From our position outside the port we could take a philosophical view of the efforts of the Luftwaffe; it wasn’t us they were aiming at. Day by day the number of planes in the air at one time continually increased, until we could count thirty or forty swarming around in bunches of three, taking it in turns to come swooping down. The defence consisted of some Bofors guns, plus the guns of any Navy vessel that happened to be in port. There were Bofors set up on some of the sunken ships, which no doubt made the pilots keener to sink them again. We had no aircraft of our own so the Luftwaffe pilots only had ground fire to reckon with.
At first they played it by the book – select the target, put the nose down into a vertical dive, go straight at it, pull the bomb release and climb smartly upwards again. These tactics were terrifyingly effective to begin with but after a day or two the Bofors boys found that they were not too difficult to hit if the gunners stuck to it and weren’t put off by the noise. They knocked quite a few Stukas down, and made the others a lot more careful. They gave up the vertical dives to a large degree. It was quite a sight to see a Stuka coming down at an angle. When the bomb was released it seemed that half the plane had fallen off and we could watch them in their trajectory before they landed. They seemed to be enormous, but I’ve no idea of their weight. This method was nowhere near as accurate and it was encouraging to know that even the crack Luftwaffe pilots could be scared off by a determined defence.
Eventually the Stukas gave up the climb after dropping the bomb because they were still taking casualties they didn’t much like. They took to flying out low and level and jerking whilst firing bursts from their machine guns, only climbing when they felt themselves far enough away from the concentration of guns around the harbour.
It was on one of these occasions that I nearly had my comeuppance. We were up on our hill and had enjoyed watching a Stuka pilot score a direct hit on one of the Italian lorries, when our cook – one Paddy Montgomery – clanged out the signal that dinner was ready – come and get it. He stood in his ditch with his food in front of him on the tailboard table. I collected mine, can’t remember now what it was, but I had a full dixie in each hand and was making back toward the Fiat, when I heard the noise of a plane coming low up the hill. Careful not to spill my dinner I turned to see this Stuka flying straight towards us.
I remember thinking that if I ran, or threw myself down I would have to abandon my dinner and I wouldn’t get another. Instead I ran slowly and, I’m sure in a dignified manner, sank to a squatting position. Holding my two dixies firmly away from me, facing the Stuka. He was still climbing to clear our hill, and when he got within spitting distance, or so it seemed, opened up with his machine guns, and swept noisily overhead. I was unscathed and rose to my feet, to see a raving Paddy Montgomery shaking his fists at the retreating plane. His burst of fire had caused no casualties but had shot all Paddy’s dixies, clean off the tailboard.
We were put to work down in the port, making arrangements to demolish the facilities in case of an evacuation. This didn’t seem strange to me at the time, although in the light of the fame that came to Tobruk because of the siege, it would seem to be a matter that would later be kept quiet, or even denied. Nonetheless it is a fact that a section of 295 Company were down there for that reason, and I was one of that section. We were using big Italian air compressors to work pneumatic drills, with which our chaps were excavating holes in the harbour wall to place explosives. The only explosives readily to hand were some Italian Air Force bombs. I don’t know how these were to be detonated. My job was to look after the compressors, seeing to oil and water etc. starting and stopping them as required. They made a shattering noise so that if was impossible to hear anything else when work was going on. This was at the time when the Stuka raids were in full swing.
The Navy signalled air raids by raising a blackball on the signal mast outside Navy HQ, and one soon developed an ability to work with one eye on the mast. During daylight there was a raid about every twenty minutes to half an hour. This was the length of time it took the planes to fly back to EI Adem, load another bomb and get back to Tobruk. The planes always came over in full strength, I suppose they preferred to have thirty or more aircraft to be shot at by our guns, rather than to come over more frequently with a smaller number of planes to face the same number of guns.
When the black ball went up there was a general scatter as everyone tried to find some sort of cover. Then all hell would break loose for a few minutes, the black ball would come down, and we all crept out again and got on with whatever we had been doing. I can’t say I wasn’t scared, because I was, but as everybody else looked as though they weren’t, there didn’t seem much point in making much of it. Amazingly these raids did not do the damage one would imagine. The pilots were becoming very chary of pressing their attacks home and bombs dropped all over the place, most of them doing no vital harm. That was the impression I had, but I expect there are many who served longer in Tobruk and saw much more of these attacks than I did who would tell a different tale.
Looking back, I think it quite possible that the demolition work we were doing was not necessarily a sign of defeatism on anyone’s part, but quite possibly a way of finding something for us to do. We were, as I have previously mentioned, an Army Field Company, unattached to any brigade or division, but completely at the Army Commanders’ disposal and it may simply have been that no one knew what to do with us. In fact, I can’t remember whether we completed the preparation for demolition or not. We were told one morning that we were to embark that night on a vessel that would evacuate us to Mersa Matruh, down the coast in Egypt. One of our three sections was to remain, but the other two, plus HQ section were obviously being considered as useless mouths to feed. I didn’t hear anyone volunteering to transfer to the section that was staying.
That afternoon the drivers handed their trucks into a central transport pool. I followed in the big Fiat and drove them all down to the port. Every man carrying his rifle, kitbag, and full marching order, all his worldly possessions in fact. As we went up the gangway of the ship I looked back to the quayside where the faithful old Fiat stood, engine ticking over, and I felt quite a pang. I don’t expect it was long before someone climbed into the cab and drove her off.
The ship we were on was called the Fiona, which suggests a Scottish origin. She was quite small, about twice the size of the Hythe ferry, I’d guess, and was built purely to carry carry cargo.[note] She stood there with open hatches, into which we descended to find that she was already carrying some cargo. This consisted of hundreds of shells for naval guns. Each was about five feet long and five or six inches in diameter stacked any old how and completely loose. We understood from the crewmen that these were Italian shells that had been loaded in Greece and were intended for Alexandria, but had not been unloaded, there being no time, as the ship was immediately ordered to Tobruk.
We settled ourselves gingerly down on the shells, doing the best we could to keep hold of our rifles and kit. We had some haversack rations and our water bottles. I can’t recall what the rations consisted of, but probably the usual tin of beef and packet of biscuits. We knew we should be on the ship all night, indeed she would not sail until it was dark. We also knew that the Stukas were quite keen to catch ships at sea as soon as they were able to spot them. Luckily radar had not been developed to any great extent in 1941, in fact none of us had ever heard of it, it being a closely guarded secret by each side – each of which thought that they were the only ones to have it working successfully.
We had settled ourselves down in the light from the hatch openings, but the crew unceremoniously put the covers on. Then we heard them driving the wedges in to fix them formally in place, and we were in utter darkness. We had strict orders not to smoke, or to strike matches. It was not a nice feeling to know that we were battened in, with no chance of escape unless someone above took the covers off again.
Sometime later the engines started and we felt the ship moving. We sat there in total darkness, the only time I’ve ever been in total darkness, unable to lie down or move about. To attempt to walk was to risk a broken ankle if one of the shells moved underfoot. We knew when the ship met the open sea by the increased movement but that was all. We spent about twelve hours in that dark hold before we felt the engines slowing and the ship tying up. When the first crack of light came into where we were, it was blinding, but you can imagine the relief when we saw the covers removed and could stand up and gather our bits and pieces.
We were safely docked, out of range of the Stukas, and as it slowly dawned on us – out of Tobruk.
Note
On 18 April 1941, HMS Fiona was was bombed by German Ju-87 aircraft and sank NW of Sidi Barrani, Egypt with the loss of 51 Royal Navy sailors. (see here.)