The last Rat of Tobruk: inside the life of World War II veteran Tommy Pritchard

Tommy Pritchard, a 101-year-old WWII veteran, promised his lifelong mate that he would be the last man standing from the fabled Rats of Tobruk.

Tommy Prichard, left, and fellow ‘Rat’ Alf Jackson at Tobruk House, Melbourne, in 2019.

This article was first published in 2023.

It has to be you, Tommy Pritchard’s dying mate told him. You have to be the last Rat standing, the one who soldiers on when the rest of us are gone.

“Can you do that for me, cobber?” 101-year-old Alf Jackson asked gently, soon before his death.

Pritchard said he would try his best – and that turned out to be good enough because he’s it now, all that is left of Australia’s fabled Rats of Tobruk, those unassuming heroes who forged a new chapter of the Anzac legend on a baking North African shore in World War II. One by one his friends and old comrades who used to meet up at Tobruk House in Melbourne have bowed out. Jackson in 2020 in the teeth of the pandemic; Ted Stone, 100, in June 2021, followed soon after by John Campbell, also 100; Don Simpson, 102, and Joe Darley, 99, in January 2022; Geoff Pullman, 103, last November.

Incorrigible Ernie Walker, the lone survivor of the NSW contingent, died at 106, earning a salute in parliament from Anthony ­Albanese. When Harry Crick, 104, went earlier this month Pritchard knew he had fulfilled his promise. A modest man who avoids the limelight – he was more likely to be in the background laughing than cracking the jokes that would enliven any get-together of the Rats – Prichard, 101, has ­always been reluctant to broach the war outside their brotherhood.

His own family has only snippets of what he endured as an ­ambulance driver during the epic 242-day siege of Tobruk in 1941, as the mainly-Australian garrison withstood everything the Germans and Italians threw at them, and later in New Guinea defending the homeland from potential Japanese invasion. Speaking on his behalf, daughter Judy Dorber said: “He’s a very private person … not at all interested in publicity. He would rather focus on those who are gone than himself.

Last Rat of Tobruk, Tommy Pritchard, 101, earlier this year.

“My father the soldier and my Dad are two separate people ­entirely.”

Once up to 16,000-strong, the Rats have led the fadeout of the great generation that fought, died and sacrificed in WWII. Of the million-odd Australians who pulled on a uniform between 1939 and 1945, fewer than 4600 ­remained as of January 1 with an average age of 98, according to the Department of Veteran Affairs.

That number is projected to thin by another 800 by mid-year and will be down to barely 2000 in December 2024. By the end of 2025, the end will be in sight: barely 1300 WWII veterans will live to mark the 80th anniversary of the guns falling silent.

 

Pritchard’s friend Lachlan Gaylard, the 21-year-old secretary of the Rats of Tobruk Association, said Australians needed to hear their stories while they were around to tell them.

“We’re losing the pillars of our society as we know it,” said the young man who has interviewed hundreds of old Diggers between working in his parents’ bakery. “These men did great things and you have to remember that unlike the First World War, the war was on our doorstep in WWII. A lot of the Rats went on to serve in New Guinea and the Pacific.”

For the first time this Anzac Day there will be none attending anywhere, at services and marches next Tuesday.

Tommy Pritchard in his wartime uniform.

Alf Jackson in his wartime uniform.

In Sydney, where 102-year-old Rat of Tobruk Dennis Davis marched last year, only four months before his death in ­August, six veterans have said they will front the crowds.

But the RSL in Adelaide is expecting to have up to 25 on hand while in the national capital 101-year-old Les Cook is insisting on tackling the climb to the Australian War Memorial under his own steam.

“He’s marching, mate,” said John King of the RSL’s ACT branch. “I will be on one side to make sure he doesn’t fall and his grandson will be on the other side in case he goes that way.”

Pritchard will tune in from his care home in Melbourne, where he is recovering from the broken hip he sustained in a recent fall.

The old boy is as tough as nails, as you would expect. But he counts himself as nothing special and declined countless requests to speak to the media about his new-found but unwanted status as the last Rat.

No doubt he will be thinking about the promise he made to his boon companion, Alf. Though they evidently didn’t cross paths during the war, the ex-soldiers grew close on returning home. They were two of a kind: quiet, thoughtful men who had similar jobs in Tobruk; while Pritchard ferried the wounded from the frontline to the army field hospital in town, Jackson steered trucks packed with medical supplies around the heavily bombed and shelled perimeter.

Two or three days before his death in 2020, aware that he didn’t have long left, Jackson asked his family to get Tommy on the phone. During the moving goodbye he told Pritchard that he had to be the “last man standing”; it was his dying wish and Pritchard should do all he could to honour it. “Can you do that for me, cobber?”

Judy Dorber said she was chuffed for her father. “I’m very proud and amazed that he’s the last, and that he’s got this inner strength that has kept him going,” she said.

One of the few stories he had shared was of his encounter with the revered Australian Army surgeon, Ernest “Weary” Dunlop in Tobruk.

The great man was standing outside the hospital in his blood-splattered operating whites, waiting for the ambulance to pull up. “What have you got for me today, boys?” he enquired cheerfully, clasping his hands.

Sir Ernest’s granddaughter, Diana Dunlop, said: “I love this. It speaks to the … Australian larrikin character that got them through those terrible times.”

She will march on Tuesday in memory of her late granddad and all those he served with in the Middle East and Java, where the Japanese took him into captivity in 1942, putting him on his way to become a hero to PoWs on the notorious Burma railroad slave-labour camps.

“Of course it’s upsetting that they’re leaving us,” Dunlop, 27, said of the WWII generation.

“But gosh they have done well. They really are great Australians and it’s important that we hear their amazing stories from the horse’s mouth.”