Larrikin Ernie Walker lost to Rats’ dwindling ranks

He was unbowed, unafraid and incorrigible to the very end, going out at the age of 106 like a Rat of Tobruk should. We’ll not see the likes of Ernie Walker again.

Ernie Walker, one of the last Rats of Tobruk, at home last year. Picture: Britta Campion

He was unbowed, unafraid and incorrigible to the very end, going out like a Rat of Tobruk should. We’ll not see the likes of Ernie Walker again.

At 106, he was hailed as the last Rat standing in NSW and one of the oldest survivors of the great generation who pulled on a uniform to fight the Nazis and defend the homeland against Japanese invasion in World War II.

His death means only two remain of the 14,000 Australian soldiers who refused to yield when the dusty, flea-infested Libyan port of Tobruk became the fulcrum of the Allied position in North Africa in 1941, defying Rommel’s Afrika Corps and Italian allies in an epic 242 day siege.

Paying tribute to Mr Walker, Anthony Albanese told parliament on Monday: “We honour Ernie’s memory, we salute his service and we reflect on the bravery of all those Australians who risked and lost their lives to defend our nation’s freedom.” Mr Walker was remembered by friends and family as a true Australian larrikin, quick with a joke and to smile, a man who approached life with a twinkle in his one good eye.

Ernie Walker, pictured in Tobruk in 1941.

But like many of his mates, he could not bring himself to speak of his wartime service until late in life, so traumatic were his experiences in the desert and on the Kokoda Track in New Guinea, holding out against a rampant Japanese army before the tide turned.

He killed because he had to, Mr Walker said, in an emotional 2018 interview recounting in unflinching terms how he had knifed a German sentry during a raid on enemy lines at Tobruk. “I got him … I was sick after it, sick for days,” he said.

Secretary of the Melbourne-based Rats of Tobruk Association, Lachlan Gaylard, said the army didn’t want to take Mr Walker when he went to join up “with just about every bone in his body broken”, a legacy of a boyhood passion for horseriding.

But he persevered and was sent to the Middle East with the 2/1st Pioneers Battalion. “He was always laughing, always cracking a joke,” Mr Gaylard remembered. “But despite his lightheartedness there were things that carried a lot of weight … he loved his family and he loved his country. He never let go of that.”

Mr Gaylard, who has sat down with dozens of WWII veterans to record their stories, said the fade out of the war generation was almost complete. Ten Rats had died in the past 12 months, leaving only two known survivors aged 101 and 104 respectively.

Mr Walker’s death on November 22 on his property at Penrose in NSW’s Southern Highlands came only days before the funeral of Geoff Pullman, 103, in Melbourne last Friday.

The Department of Veterans’ Affairs said fewer than 4600 of the nearly one million Australians who donned a uniform between 1939 and 1945 were left, and the number was projected to fall to 1300 within three years. The average age of WWII veterans was 98, of whom 660 were 100 or more.

Mr Walker’s daughter-in-law, Lisa Hines, who nursed him at home, said the old boy had died how he wanted to: in his sleep, his wife, Bev, holding his hand. “He fought to the end,” Ms Hines said.

Mr Gaylard said Mr Walker had been typically chipper when they last spoke after he suffered a ministroke. “He lived a very full and rich life and I think he recognised time was up. He had no regrets – he was ready to go.”