‘Never give in, never retreat’: Spirit still shines for Rats of Tobruk
They span in age from 99 to 102, but for Victoria’s seven remaining Rats of Tobruk memories are vivid and mateship lives on.
Victoria
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They’re the surviving seven from a 14,000-strong army who withstood an onslaught of evil. Victoria’s Rats of Tobruk were born in the shadow of the Anzacs but forged their own legend in an eight-month siege which began 80 years ago.
Today they span in age from 99 to 102 but their memories remain vivid and their bond strong.
“You never give in and you never retreat,’’ says 101-year-old Geoff Pullman, who took a bullet to the hand from the enemy.
“You’ve got to stay — that’s all there is to it.”
Ted Stone, 100, places a hand on Mr Pullman’s shoulder as they meet for the first time.
They say they’re the lucky ones. Mr Pullman shows a photograph with five comrades, including a cousin, on a week’s leave in Cairo.
Three months later three were dead.
Mr Pullman, aged 21, was sent straight to Tobruk’s frontline to replace one of the men in the 2/12th Field Regiment.
“I think why did I live and others die? I am no better than they are,’’ he says.
“I just can’t believe I’m still alive.”
Mr Stone, who spent 5½ months in Tobruk attached to the transport section 2/5th Field Ambulance and who still drives, said there was little time for choice in war.
“In the services you go where you are sent,’’ he says.
“You do what you are told. And you’re either lucky or you’re unlucky.”
The Rats took their name from British-born Nazi propagandist William Joyce, best known as “Lord Haw-Haw” for his traitorous broadcasts to Allied forces.
“Greetings you Rats of Tobruk. How are you today? Twenty feet down and still digging?” he asked them.
Joe Darley, 99, will never forget the taunts, beamed on the radio as Australian soldiers battled from the tunnels of Tobruk.
“After the war they executed him in England which was a disappointment to me because we used to think he was a joke,’’ Mr Darley says.
“We used to look forward to listening to him. I think he did as much to boost our morale as what he did to depress it.”
Mr Darley, assigned to the 2/23rd Battalion, came within less than a metre of being struck by a German mortar on the battlefield.
He went on to have a 35-year career with Victoria Police, rising to the rank of assistant commissioner.
“I’ve lasted such a long time,’’ Mr Darley says.
“I’m philosophical about life. We’re only here for a visit. I’ve been here longer than most people. It makes you special when you become so scarce.”
Harry Crick, 102, of the 2/24th Battalion, says he’ll always be proud to be a Rat.
“Oh yeah, my strewth,’’ he says.
It was thought just six Rats of Tobruk remained in Victoria. Then in February this year historians discovered John Campbell, 99.
Daughter Alison had attended an open day at the Rats of Tobruk Association’s Albert Park headquarters.
Asked when her father died, she replied he was still alive. Indeed he was in very good health having only had his first drink aged 50 and never taking antibiotics until six months ago.
Mr Campbell, who enlisted aged 18, led the 8th Battery of the 2/3rd Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, using artillery abandoned by the German and Italian armies.
The first night in Tobruk Mr Campbell and about 200 comrades who’d marched for miles slept on the ground, sharing blankets and crushing rocks with a hammer in a bid to get more comfortable. They were allowed just a pint of water a day for washing and drinking and shared a rifle for every 10 men.
The memory of a German airman killed in a downed bomber lingers.
“When he came down to bomb us my gun brought him down,’’ Mr Campbell says.
“I have to live with people that I killed. He was a young man. And as you get older you think this young person — he might have been married, he might have had a wife, he might have had children or a grandchild.
“But he doesn’t have that because I’d stopped him. You think after: ‘What for?’
“I can see no sense in war on either side and yet they still go on.”
Nationwide, only 18Rats remain. “They are part of history that is fading,’’ says Rats of Tobruk Association committee member Lachlan Gaylard.
The organisation will on Sunday hold a special event to mark the 80th anniversary of the siege and has commissioned portraits of Victoria’s seven surviving Rats.
Tommy Pritchard, 99, assigned to the 2/5th Field Ambulance, will also be among those to attend.
He was attached to the 18th Infantry Brigade in Tobruk, balancing four or five stretchers in the crude ambulance which traversed terrible roads for up to two hours at a time.
Many of the wounded soldiers wouldn’t survive but their comrades dug in, demonstrating resilience like the Germans had never encountered.
“Tobruk was the first time the Germans had been pushed back,’’ Mr Gaylard says. “That German army was a skilled army. But the Australian army proved pretty much unbeatable. They gave the Germans their first defeat of the North African campaign.
“To hold them back and stop them and hold Tobruk under the conditions they were in shows they were intuitive and could improvise under any conditions. To live in a besieged city for umpteen months with not many supplies and casualties mounting — it’s pretty remarkable.”
Don Simpson, 102, who served in the 2/32nd Infantry Battalion and sustained a gunshot to the leg at El Alamein, said being a Rat was a badge of honour.
“Oh, my word,’’ he says.
“But you can’t help but think of the mates who haven’t made it to be my age. My mates, all my mates that were lost, these things don’t leave you.”
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