The 2/9th Battalion AIF and the Siege of Giarabub

[old man emu]

Recognition of the battles of the Australian Army during the North African campaign usually concentrates on the capture of Bardia, Tobruk and the push to Benghazi ("The Benghazi Handicap"), and the later Siege of Tobruk by the Germans. However there was an earlier engagement that created the first crack in the control of the area by the Italians, leading to those early victories. This is known as the Siege of Giarabub, a highly fortified, Italian centre. This was an engagement planned by Australian commanders and carried out by Australian infantry and artillery units. Its success illustrated both the planning skill of the commanders and the fighting spirit of the Australian infantry soldiers. While all the other battles are not forgotten, the victory at Giarabub is mostly unknown. 

 

Here is a video telling the Australian side of the Siege. The Italians also made a movie about it.

 

 

 

 

[onetrack]

From my memories of talking to a lot of WW2 Veterans (a lot of my farmer clients in the 1960's and 1970's were Veterans, and many were front-line Middle East soldiers), they all told me the Italians never had a great deal of enthusiasm when it came to fighting. A few did, but the majority were pretty ambivalent about supporting Hitler and Il Duce - and when it came to deadly battle, many were quite prepared to raise the white flag, knowing full well they would be well treated by the Allies.

 

Quite a few farmers told me how it wasn't unusual to see half a dozen Aussie soldiers in charge of a few hundred Italian POW's, they were easily controlled and posed little risk of launching an attack to get away from capture.

Once captured, the farmers always mentioned how the "Eye-ties" were willing workers at even menial tasks, and numbers were happy to become cooks and labourers, thus making life easier for the Australians.

 

However, feeding huge numbers of POW's in North Africa was a major problem for the Allies, and all the POW's were underfed. As a result, the decision was made to ship suitable POW's to Australia to assist with labour shortages.

 

Sizeable numbers of Italian POW's were sent to W.A. to provide labour for farming and timber milling industries, and many enjoyed life in Western Australia - to the point that they returned after WW2 and settled here, with numbers of them becoming very wealthy in farming, and other business ventures. Nearly all the Italian POW's said they enjoyed often being treated as family members when working on farms - and they all said they couldn't believe the ready availability of food in Australia. Even in Italy, most of the Italian population starved during WW2. 

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-11-10/pietro-verazzi-was-sent-to-mount-barker-as-a-prisoner-of-war/104220964

[willedoo]

I think I've mentioned this in the past on the forum. My dad did his initial recruit training at Cowra and one time he had leave to go by train into Sydney and on the return trip was in the same carriage as a whole bunch of Italian prisoners on their way back to the prison camp. They were trustees with no guards and he said they were a happy bunch. One of them had a guitar and they were all singing along. Best guess is they had been out somewhere fruit picking or some other labour job.

 

The 2/9th. was our local S.E. Queensland AIF battalion along with the 9th. militia battalion; the current 9th. Battalion is based at Enoggera in Brisbane. My father due to his age didn't join the army until 1944 so by the time he was posted to the 2/9th. as a reinforcement, he was only with them for a bit under a year. They were at Balikpapan when the war finished and were still there at the end of the year when the battalion was disbanded. The older blokes who had served the most time were repatriated home and my dad and the younger blokes were absorbed into the 2/14th., a Victorian battalion, along with their younger blokes. Some of the older 2/9th. blokes who went home had been with the battalion since the start of the war when they went to England. I can remember reading in the book of the history of the 2/9th. that they spent more time outside the salient than any other battalion at Tobruk. The 18th. Brigade gained a bit of a reputation during those early African and Middle east campaigns which dobbed them in for a few hard jobs later on. They were at Mine Bay, Buna and Shaggy Ridge as well as Balikpapan later in the war. Buna was particularly hard on them where they sustained about 2/3 killed and wounded.