Three Kings

Yet it was not all so one sided. In places the Italians fought hard, a stubborn sergeant holding his men together in a concrete bunker and refusing to give in until the Australian infantry had to work their way up and hurl in grenades. As the first prisoners were led to the rear, O’Connor was surprised to learn what he was up against. The Italians quickly told the interrogators that the port was defended by all of 40,000 men with a brigade of tanks in reserve. It was twice the size O’Connor had estimated, and now his 23 Matildas seemed a small force to consider challenging such a weighty garrison.

“40,000 men sir! Do you think the buggers are giving us a load of crap?” A staff officer had come in with the report, and O’Connor took the information in, thinking.

“We shall soon see.” O’Connor smiled, his short white hair catching the morning sunlight at the edge of his officer’s cap.

“You mean to continue the attack?”

“What else? The enemy line stretches out for twenty kilometers to the east. They may have 40,000 men, but they can’t all be in one place at the same time, can they? We’ll hit them, just as we planned. See to the orders, Lieutenant.”

“Sir!” The man clicked his heels and was off, and soon the Matildas were pushing forward towards the gap that had been forced by the Australian infantry. When the tanks pushed through, they made short work of the pill boxes, blasting at them with their 2 pounder guns. When one post fell, the next bunker adjacent to it decided the wiser thing was to surrender, and the infection soon rippled back from the point of the assault.

The big Australian infantry rushed forward with the Matildas, Bren gun teams having to fire no more than a few hostile bursts before whole trench lines of Italian infantry would emerge, hands in the air, white flags waving. One Bren team came upon a line of L3 machine gun tanks, twelve in all, their motors revving up as though they were making ready to charge into the battle. More on instinct than anything else, the gunner fired at the closesttankettes, and was astonished when the whole line of twelve gave up and surrendered after a single burst.

Once the British tanks were ‘inside the wire,’ it had the effect of piercing a balloon. The entire defensive position began to collapse. It was not that the British and Australians were that much better at the art of war, but only that they were that much more determined to prevail. They had the will to win forward, and the Italians did not, preferring a quick surrender and a safe walk to the rear areas, and out of this damnable desert war.

Bardia fell that very same day, and the shock of its sudden capture by a force a third the size of the garrison rippled across Cyrenaica, sending columns of Italian Colonial infantry streaming west towards Benghazi. Old Electric Beard had been given a close shave, and now it was on to Tobruk, the first real prize O’Connor had in mind. It would offer a great natural harbor to supply his forward move from that point, but by the time he got there the 7th RTR was down to only eighteen Matildas.

Several tanks had broken down, others had simply run out of fuel and ammunition, still others had run over a mine or slipped a metal tread and were stuck in the sand, no more than metal bunkers now. Yet O’Connor would not stop. He was out among the men, urging them on, commandeering any truck that seemed idle and stuffing it full of riflemen before he rapped his riding crop on the hood and pointed out the direction he wanted it to go. His energy seemed boundless, and he moved so quickly that he seemed to be everywhere at once.

The tired Aussies took heart to see this, and they shouldered their rifles and slogged on. They would use the same formula to take Tobruk: engineers, artillery, and those eighteen Matildas. A good bayonet with some guts behind it often resulted in surprising results. They would take another 25,000 Italian prisoners in the valuable port, including AdmiralMassmilianoVietina, the commander of the garrison. 208 guns, numerous enemy tanks and trucks were also taken, and many were used to flesh out the thinning ranks of the British 7th Armored division. In all, the British force had ended up capturing 130,000 Italians, losing only 500 men in the process, with 1373 wounded and 55 missing.

It was a triumph of will, determination, and the skill of all who fought that action. But it would not end with Tobruk. O’Connor radioed back to Wavell that he had both ports, and was given a hearty congratulations.

“Best to stand on that ground now and consolidate,” said Wavell. “Your men will be tired, and it will take days to get food and petrol up to the front.”