BATTLING HEROES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 November 1941, Page 6

BATTLING HEROES

AUSTRALIANS AT TOBRUK BLINDED CAPTAIN LEADS VOCAL CHORUS. ON RETURN FROM NIGHT RAID. Writing from Tobruk on October 26, the correspondent of the ‘Sydney Morning Heraldd” with the A.I.F. told the story of a captain in a Queensland battalion, who was blinded by a hand grenade while leading a raid at Tobruk, and was brought back through the enemy lines to Tobruk singing “My eyes are dim, I cannot see.” The captain, whose home is at Winton, Queensland, is now recovering, and his sight, following an operation to remove shrapnel from his face and body, will not be affected. He was leading 12 Australians in a night raid of the enemy lines seeking prisoners. They crawled over the dusty brown earth and grey rocks, through barbed wire, booby traps and mindfields, deep into the enemy lines, turning to attack a strongpost in their rear. There were 40 Italians in the trench and the captain, leading his tall Queenslanders, rushed from the darkness upon them. The Italians fought desperately, and Italians in other posts, with their customary indifference to the .welfare of their own men, poured fire from trench-mortars among the combatants. The captain threw aside his tommygun and reached down and seized two Italians by the scruff of their necks and endeavoured to pull them from the trench. He nearly succeeded when one threw a grenade he had beep holding into the captain’s face. It hit his steel helmet and exploded as it fell. The captain staggered backwards into the arms of his own men as the surviving Italians raced into the darkness and safety.

Half walking, half carried, the captain began the long journey back to Tobruk. There were several other wounded. Then the captain began his song, and the party entered their own lines, chorusing, “Show Me the Way to Go Home.” In a front line “fishpond,” a circular waist-high fortification of rocks gathered from the escarpment, where the colonel awaited them, the raiders and others staged an impromptu concert with mouth organs and combs. The colonel sang, “Rose of Tralee.”

The Italians 1,000 yards away heard “Waltzing Matilda” roared in unison. NEWCOMER’S ROUGH TIME. A youthful private from Wagga, after travelling for ten days continuously to join his unit at Tobruk, finished the journey stumbling along in the rear of a patrol, and was 1,000 yards behind the enemy lines before he knew where he was.

He arrived at Tobruk travel-stained and weighted with a heavy kit indarkness, lit now and then by flares and the flash of bombs and gunfire.

Wearily he marched from the harbour, clambered into a truck, which took him to the transit camp. More wearily he went on through the darkness, now in a truck, now on foot, till he reached his unit in the front line.

It was after midnight, and in a dugout the Colonel and officers were planning a raiding party into the enemy lines. They were told that one man selected for the patrol was not able to go. “Take the new man, it will be good

experience for him,” said the Colonel, unaware of the new recruit’s trials. The patrol leader, believing the recruit had already been told of the job they had to do, told him to leave his kit and follow in the rear, and, ghostlike, flitted away into the darkness with his men following in Indian file. Resignedly the recruit plodded behind the silent column. After the patrol had advanced 2,000 yards, wending its way through boooby traps and barbed wire, even his resolution began to waver, “Strike a light,” he grumbled, “how much further have we got to go to reach the front line?” “Shut up, you — fool, you are a thousand yards behind their lines now,” the patrol leader hissed. The recruit continued and completed the patrol, and is now one of the best patrolmen in the battalion.