Noteworthy People
Sir Leslie Morshead
Leader of the Rats
BY MATTHEW STIRLING
B
Major-General L J Morshead, Tobruk, August 1941. Australian War
Memorial, ID Number 020347.
ORN IN BALLARAT to a large family in 1889, the
young Leslie Morshead might not have appeared
destined to become one of Australia’s greatest
military leaders. But his small frame and inoffensive
nature concealed a brilliant tactical mind in the making. The
lad who became a schoolmaster in rural Victoria would go on
to be known as ‘Ming the Merciless’ by his legendary 9th
Division, the Rats of Tobruk.
Things military had been only a minor part of Morshead’s
early life. As a schoolmaster, he commanded two cadet corps
in Armidale and Melbourne. But when Australia entered the
First World War, he travelled to Sydney to enlist as a private
in the newly formed Australian Imperial Force, and his long
and illustrious military career began in the training grounds of
Australia and, later, Egypt.
A trench at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, after the battle, showing Australian and Turkish dead on the parapet. In the foreground is Captain Leslie
Morshead of the 2nd Battalion and on his right (standing), is 527 Private James (Jim) B Bryant of Stawell, Vic. Australian War Memorial, ID
Number: PS1515.
Australian Heritage 23
Noteworthy People
The town and harbour painted from drawings made in Tobruk at the beginning of February 1941, two weeks after the town had been
captured by Allied Forces and before the Siege of Tobruk began. Less than two weeks after his appointment as a war artist Ivor Hele
accompanied the victorious Australian 6th Division into the Libyan harbour town of Tobruk. He made a number of pencil sketches and small
oil studies of the town and port area so as to be able to document what had been the Australians’ greatest success to that date. Hele did
not stay long in Tobruk, but moved on with the advancing troops before returning to Cairo. This painting was worked up from the drawings
done in January as a tribute to the Australians, who, with British and Polish troops, held out until they were relieved in September 1941.
Oil on canvas, by Ivor Hele, 1941. Australian War Memorial, ID Number ART22233.
Morshead’s talent for command
was soon apparent and his
commission as lieutenant was fast in
coming. Before his battalion was
deployed to the ill-fated Gallipoli
offensive, he was promoted again,
and he landed at Anzac Cove as a
captain of 2nd Battalion.
It was on these bloody shores that
his hour came. Distinguishing
himself as a courageous leader, he
led his platoon the furthest of any of
the Allied forces at the assault on
Lone Pine in August 1915 before
being driven back by a determined
Turkish counter attack. He was
further promoted to major before
the withdrawal from the shores of
Gallipoli. Ill with dysentery, he was
evacuated to England and returned
to Australia in January 1916 as the
Allies withdrew from Turkey
24 Australian Heritage
Now just 27 years old, Morshead
was promoted to Lieutenant
Colonel and given command of
33rd Battalion, which was to be
deployed to France. He would lead
his men through the gruelling
battles of Messines, Passchendale,
Villers-Bretonneux and Amiens
before the armistice in 1918.
By war’s end, Morshead had been
injured three times, once severely,
had risen through the ranks from
private to Lieutenant-Colonel, and
had been awarded the Distinguished
Service Order and mentioned in
dispatches an astonishing six times,
all before he turned thirty.
When his appointment
terminated in 1920, Morshead
applied for a land grant under the
soldier-settlement scheme, and
eventually settled in Quilpie,
Queensland. But the farming life did
not appeal and, after marrying
Myrtle Woodside at Scots Church
in Melbourne, he took a job in
Sydney working for the Orient
Steam Navigation Co, eventually
becoming a branch manager.
Morshead was also involved with
the paramilitary New Guard during
the early 30’s, an organisation that
became famous for its hard-line
anti-communist stance and constant
preparedness to launch a coup d’etat
against the New South Wales
premier Jack Lang, whom they
regarded as a communist
sympathiser.
But war, it seemed, had not
finished with him. Australia once
again needed to supply men in
another world conflict, an
obligation that Morshead, now 50,
Noteworthy People
felt fell upon his experienced
shoulders. Taking a commission in
October 1939 as a colonel and
temporary brigadier in the 2nd AIF,
he was given command of the
5000-strong 18th Infantry Brigade.
Like their fathers before them, they
were to be trained first in Australia
and then in the deserts of Egypt. But
events in France had taken the
world by surprise, and the collapse
of the British and French forces
under the unstoppable attacks of
Hitler’s mechanised armies had
caused panic in Britain. En route to
Egypt, the 18th Brigade was ordered
to redirect to Britain in the face of a
seemingly inevitable German
invasion. They would remain in the
Salisbury plains while the Battle of
Britain raged above them.
After inflicting a series of
devastating defeats on the Italian
forces in North Africa, including
the taking of the fortress city of
Tobruk, the British-led
Commonwealth forces were ordered
to halt their operations against the
Italians and prepare for
redeployment in Greece following
the Italian invasion in October
1940.
In November 1940, after months
of training, the 18th Brigade
embarked for the Middle East, and
Morshead prepared his men for
action at a location near Gaza.
Through luck and skill, Morshead
was promoted to Major-General,
and given command of 9th Division
in January 1941. With the 18th
Brigade as its founding element,
Morshead’s first task was to instil
soldierly discipline and camaraderie
in poorly trained and inadequately
equipped men who felt they were
the unwanted remains of the AIF’s
recruitment drive.
The 9th Division was ordered to
hold the line in North Africa while
the 7th and 8th Divisions were to
form the nucleus of the fighting
forces in Greece. Unbeknown to the
Allied forces, the German general,
Erwin Rommel, had landed at
Tunisia with a division of crack
troops, well supplied with the feared
German tanks. The Desert Fox was
in place to strike at the
undermanned and ill-equipped
Commonwealth forces.
The German counter-offensive in
North Africa struck the Allied line
with such ferocity that whole
divisions were thrown into headlong
retreat along the entire line. What
ensued, as the Australians dourly
dubbed it, was the Benghazi
Handicap. Tens of thousands of
allied troops were ordered by
Archibald Wavell, the Commanderin-Chief of Allied operations in
Africa, to fall back to the Egyptian
border.
However, Wavell refused to give
up Tobruk and its invaluable natural
harbour without a fight. His
instructions to Morshead were, “I
rely on you to hold Tobruk for eight
weeks”. Keen to halt their retreat
and engage the enemy, the
Australians of the 9th Division were
A 3.7” anti-aircraft gun illuminates the sky as it goes into action against night raiders, 13 October 1941, Tobruk. Australian War Memorial, ID
Number 020973.
Australian Heritage 25
Noteworthy People
to be left at Tobruk while their
British comrades moved to the
Egyptian border to bolster the El
Alamein line.
By early April 1941, Tobruk was
cut off. The Axis forces had
enveloped the city and had
continued to move towards the
Egyptian border. Yet Rommel knew
he had to take Tobruk before he
could move on the British
strongholds in Egypt. Without it he
could not resupply his fuel-thirsty
mechanised forces. The Australians
had not been idle in the face of the
enemy advance and for the first time
in the war, Hitler’s tanks faced a
steadfast, dug-in enemy determined
to hold them back.
The Australian war correspondent
Chester Wilmot, who spent the
siege with the 9th Division,
remarked:
Morshead had established a
multilayered defence. He ordered his
men to hold no-man’s-land with
constant patrols and raids on enemy
positions. With the aid of the
legendary Gurkha troops from
Nepal, enemy morale was sapped by
these lightning-fast attacks.
Rommel threw his men into the
attack of Tobruk on 11 April,
convinced that the Australian forces
would crumble under the pressure of
a mechanised attack. Morshead
responded with British artillery and
tanks, and Rommel’s forces lost
dozens of tanks in those initial
Easter attacks.
William Joyce, better known as
Lord Haw Haw, the traitorous
English announcer of German
propaganda station Radio Berlin,
scoffed at the efforts of the
defenders. “These rats of Tobruk,
living like rats, they’ll die like rats”.
Unaware of the tongue-in-cheek
humour of the Australian troops, the
moniker ‘Rats of Tobruk’ became an
overnight badge of honour.
The higher echelons of British
military command, however, were
suitably impressed. On 5 May,
Churchill cabled Morshead:
To General MORSHEAD from
PRIME MINISTER ENGLAND.
The whole empire is watching your
steadfast and spirited defence of this
important outpost of EGYPT with
gratitude and admiration.
And from his commander, Chief
Field Marshal Wavell,
Personal Gen. MORSHEAD from
C.-in-C. Your magnificent defence
is upsetting enemy’s plan of attack
on Egypt and giving us time to build
up force for counter offensive. You
could NOT repeat NOT be doing
better service. Well done.
The counter offensive Wavell
mentioned was the upcoming
Operation Crusader in North Africa.
It was the first successful offensive
against Rommel’s forces, and its
success relied on the time bought by
the defenders of Tobruk.
Brave though the men of the 9th
…Morshead knew that nothing
Division were, their success was
would sap the troops’ morale as
dependent on the valiant ‘Scrap
much as idleness. He kept them
working and he kept them in
Iron Flotilla’ of the Royal Australian
contact with the enemy. The work
Navy which made repeated trips
of strengthening the defences went
from Alexandria with supplies.
on from the first day to the last.
Their run through the gauntlet as
Morshead was never satisfied.
the enemy airforce attacked
relentlessly soon became
known as ‘Bomb Alley’.
Without the courage and skill
of these men, the defenders of
Tobruk would have long since
fallen. The RAN lost 23 ships
on the resupply route,
including the HMAS
Parramatta and the HMAS
Waterhen.
As weeks became months,
and Rommel continued his
assault with many casualties
on both sides, Morshead
noticed the steady decline in
the health and fighting
capacity of his men.
Although morale remained
strong, he could see that the
near constant shelling,
attacks from enemy divebombers and the desert winds
were conspiring against his
troops. By August, eight
Winston Churchill (left) with Lieutenant General Sir Leslie Morshead during the British Prime
months after Wavell had
Minister's visit to Cairo, 4 February 1943. Lt Gen Morshead commanded the 9th Australian Division ordered the temporary defence
which played a leading part in the Allied breakthrough at El Alamein. Australian War Memorial, to hold Tobruk, Morshead and
ID Number MED1255.
26 Australian Heritage
Noteworthy People
his 9th Division rats began
to be relieved by Polish,
British and South African
forces.
Morshead continued to
lead his now famous 9th
Division until February
1943 in North Africa.
Although he played a
decisive part in the
destruction of the Axis
force at the Second Battle
of El Alamein, Morshead
was overlooked for
promotion because of his
reservist history, the new
Field Marshal Bernard
Montgomery preferring an
English officer with
English military
experience. Morshead,
with his 9th Division, was
recalled to Australia
following the final stages
Lieutenant-General Sir Leslie Morshead with fellow Australians Captain J E McKeddie and Captain
of the battle of El
E T C Lines, visiting the Tobruk Siege Cemetery in April 1948 for the unveiling of the Australia memorial
Alamein. He had
to the 559 Australians who died during the siege. Australian War Memorial, ID Number 041441.
commanded a division of
men who had been thrown
diverted the 1 Corps to the
But there was one more role to
into the deadliest battles of the
campaign in Borneo, a battle that
complete
before
he
could
return
to
African campaign, suffered huge
was to prove as bloody as it was
civilian
life:
he
was
tasked
with
losses and, through discipline and
needless.
forming
the
II
Corps,
which
was
to
sheer courage, emerged victorious.
be trained in Northern Queensland
Morshead’s military career drew to
The 2AIF’s official historian,
in preparation for deployment
its end when the Japanese forces
Barton Maughan, described
against the Japanese forces.
surrendered in September 1945. He
Morshead as:
Morshead ensured that the corps,
was offered further military and
...every inch a general. His slight
consisting of the veterans of the 7th
diplomatic postings and the
build and seemingly mild facial
and
9th
Divisions,
was
trained
in
governorship of Queensland, but
expression masked a strong
amphibious
landings
and
jungle
refused, preferring to rejoin the
personality, the impact of which,
Orient Line and become the
tactics,
knowing
that
he
was
facing
even on a slight acquaintance, was
manager of the New South Wales
quickly felt. The precise, incisive
a fanatical and highly motivated
speech and flint-like, piercing
branch.
enemy. The training was put to use
scrutiny acutely conveyed
in September 1944 when 9th
Sir Leslie Morshead was diagnosed
impressions of authority,
Division stormed the beaches of Lae
with
cancer in the mid-1950s, and
resoluteness and ruthlessness. If
and,
after
a
bloody
battle,
ousted
he
died
in St Vincent’s Hospital,
battles, as Montgomery was later to
the
Japanese
defenders.
With
Sydney
on
26 September 1959. He
declare, were contests of wills,
superior air support and determined
was accorded a military funeral,
Morshead was not likely to be
found wanting.
attacks, Australian troops and their
escorted by his veterans of 9th
American
allies
swept
the
Huon
Division.
By his return to Australia in
peninsula
clear
of
enemy
February 1943, Morshead had been
Further Reading
occupation.
on duty continuously for more than
Tobruk, by Peter Fitzsimons, Harper
three years, had helped inflict the
Morshead was reassigned to 1
Collins Publishers, 2006
first defeats the enemy had known
Corps in May 1944 in preparation
Middle East 1939–43, by Colonel E G
and had commanded one of the
to assist American forces in retaking
Keogh, Wilke & Co Ltd, Melbourne,
hardest groups of fighting men in
the Philippines. Yet the ego of the
1959
the Commonwealth forces.
American general, Douglas
Tobruk 1941, by Chester Wilmot,
Moreover, he hadn’t seen his family
MacArthur, dictated that it would
republished Penguin Books Australia,
2009 ◆
since his departure in 1940.
be a solely American initiative, and
Australian Heritage 27