BRILLIANT CAREER

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25086, 27 December 1944, Page 3

BRILLIANT CAREER

GENERAL SCOBIE

FROM TOBRUK TO ATHENS An officer in a canary sweater squatted in my cramped desert dugout in October, 1941, and quickly asked for map details of our positions and the enemy's in that left sector of Tobruk salient. Today he has orders from the British Government to assume complete control of Athens and drive out the E.L.A.S., writes H. I. Marshall in the Melbourne Herald. Lieutenant-General Ronald Mackenzie Scobie, C.8., C.8.E., M.C., now British GOC in Greece, had then, at 48, only recently been promoted MajorGeneral and given command of the 70th British Division, formed from the old 6th British Division to relieve the oth Australian Division in besieged Tobruk. That October morning, amid a bit of shelling and a lot of dust—the khamseen was blowing—General Scobie just "dropped in" at my "doova." The shelling was of no concern —he just wanted a spell out of the dust and some local information.

Visits from generals were not at all in my lino. So this one—unannounced, and in a bright yellow pullover — knocked mo right off balance. (So did the crack I gave my head on the dugout root' when I finally shot off my camp stool to stand to attention. But his gesture waived that slight formality.) Intent on Job in Hand

My impression was of an unassuming man, intent on the job in hand, who liked to see for himself. His sell-chosen job that day was a careful ground reconnaissance of the salient area of Tobruk, the fortress which he was soon to take over from its Australian commander, General Morshead. He had come up from Egypt ahead of most of his division to <j;et the feel of the place before command passed to him

General Scobie lias what the Army calls "presence." A Digger put it in different terms. Asked who were the two or three officers on the ridge between our battalion headquarters and the centre forward company, he said, "Dunno. But one of them's the cove in the canary sweater, and you don't have to see his badges of rank to know he's one of the heads." General Scobie was a Second Lieutenant at the outbreak of the 1914-18 war (in which he was wounded, won the M.C., and was twice mentioned in despatches), and a colonel at the start of this one. Between Tobruk and his present appointment he was GOC Malta in 1942, and Chief of the General Staff, Middle East, in 1943. At Duntroon Australians were not strangers to him when he came to Tobruk, for between 1932 and 1935 he had been director of a branch of instruction at tho Royal Military College, Duntroon. But neither he nor anyone else could then have anticipated that he would ever have Australians under his command in battle.

This was how it happened. Rommel's major attempt to interfere with the big seaborne divisional rolief was launched in "Bomb Alley" against a Navy convoy coming up from Alexandria to embark the last "flight" of Australians. The relief had then been progressing, in moonless periods, for more than a month.

This belated blitz did damage and robbed the convoy of time to complete the trip on schedule. As a result, 2/ 13th Australian Infantry Battalion remained in Tobruk, command of which had by then passed to General Scobie. On November 18 General Sir Alan Cunningham—brother of the Admirallaunched the Eighth Army into Libya in the "Crusader offensive, forestalling by only five days the all-out assault Rommel had been planning for Tobruk. As a phase of the attack from the frontier, General Scobie was to break out through the south-eastern perimeter toward EI Duda and Sidi Rezegh, to link up with the oncoming offensive. Contact With New Zealanders

His 70th Division fought splendidly in breaking out, but progress against strong enemy defended localities was slower and more costly than had been anticipated. He had not originally intended to use the veteran Australian battalion in this operation, but casualties and the necessity for driving the Germans from the vital El Duda ridge, and for consolidating that ground, altered his decision. * , lie called on the 2/13 th for this special effort, and they did the job—with distinction. This success directly contributed to the garrison's first landward link with the outside world since April 10, contact being made with the New Zealanders at El Duda.

Rommel nearly swung the battle by two daring decisions. He effected a masterly junction of 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions, and decided to commit this combined weight of armour against lighter British forces at Sidi Rezegh whore, among other disasters, an entire South African brigade was lost.

And he sent a flying column of armour and supporting arms to thrust for the frontier, shooting up all "soft" transport and supply dumps it could find. Although this column missed a vital Field Maintenance Centre by only five miles, and finally petered out, it horribly disrupted the Eighth Army's lines of communication. '"Freyberg's Bayonets"

The Germans surged from Sidi Rezegh to smash the Tobruk "corridor,' and not only was the link with the fortress severod, but tho headquarters of one of the Eighth Army's two corps became temporarily isolated with tho garrison. The other corps had become badly split up, much armour had been/lost, and Cunningham urged on General Sir Claude Auchinleck a withdrawal of the Eighth Army from Libya to regroup. Auchinleck—since, perhaps, too little praised for his firm daring in this crisis as for his feat the following year of stabilising retreat at the El Alamein line; —flew to the desert, veheftiently denied that the position was hopeless, and ordered that the Eighth Army must go through or not come back. Returning to Cairo, ho relieved Cunningham of command and sent Major-General Ritchie to take over.

Both sides regrouped for a final onslaught at Sidi Rezegh, and as the great armoured struggle there was ending with the British in possession of the battlefield, Freyberg's New Zerjlanders were reopening Tobruk "corndor" at bayonet-point. So Tobruk was finally relieved. And tho 2/13 th Australian Infantrv Battalion, parting >vi tli the 70tli Division, headed east for rest camp in Palestine, always to be distinguished >(» tho only Australian battalion that served for the entire siege—throughout General Morshead's seven months of "offensive defence," and then under General Scobie in tho heutio attacking finale.