Treasuring the moment: a military tattoo
By Frances Goold
He asked if we had anything planned for Anzac Day.
“A big rest” was all I could come up with. “What about you?”
“We’ll go to the Dawn Service.”
“Kids too?”
“The kids have been coming with us to the Dawn Service since they were babies. Later there’s a few of us will head off to the two-up game. The ring’s sandbagged, there’s refreshments, it’s a big tradition here.”
We’d been hanging pictures when I noticed the tat on his arm. It didn’t seem like the usual macho array so I asked if he would show it to me.
He nodded, “Sure”, raised his sleeve, and turned his arm over.
I was so moved that for a second or so I couldn’t speak. Suddenly the only picture in the room was his.
“It’s for my Pop”, he said, “he was a Rat of Tobruk. He’s passed now.”
“How was he when he came home?”
“He was fine… but he’d been wounded, hit by shrapnel, so he had that.”
“Did he talk about his experiences?”
“No, he never spoke of it, and he lived till he was 98.”
The Rats of Tobruk were soldiers of the Australian-led Allied garrison that held the Libyan port of Tobruk against the Afrika Corps during the Siege of Tobruk, which began on April 11, 1941 and ended on December 10. The port continued to be held by the Allies until its surrender on June 21, 1942.
Between April and August 1941, some 35,000 allies, including around 14,000 Australian soldiers, were besieged in Tobruk by a German–Italian army commanded by General Erwin Rommel. The garrison, commanded by Lieutenant General Leslie Morshead, included the 9th Australian Division (20th, 24th, and 26th Brigades), the 18th Brigade of the 7th Australian Division, four regiments of British artillery, and the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade.
According to the Australian War Memorial online archive, the Australian casualties from the 9th Division from 8th April to 25th October numbered 749 killed, 1,996 wounded, and 604 prisoners. The total losses in the 9th Division and attached troops from 1st March to 15th December amounted to 832 killed, 2,177 wounded and 941 prisoners.
The Australians held out for almost eight months against the German siege, which was abandoned by the Germans after 242 days when, on December 7, 1941, Rommel made the decision to fall back to Gazala. However, on June 21, 1942, Rommel began a second offensive that finally captured the fortress.
According to Colonel Ward A. Miller, “the Australians’ epic stand at Tobruk had a major impact on the war because the Germans suffered a serious and unexpected reversal. The Tobruk garrison demonstrated that the hitherto successful German blitzkrieg tactics could be defeated by resolute men who displayed courage and had the tactical and technical ability to coordinate and maximize the capabilities of their weapons and equipment in the defence.”
My proud assistant’s grandfather served in the 9th Division.
Although it’s that time of year when profound and raw emotions are held and privileged by collective remembrances across the nation, I wasn’t anticipating such a whack of it whilst hanging pictures at home.
“Every picture here tells a story”, I had said to him while we measured, drilled, and hung the first few, then suddenly here was his.
Later, while he was packing up, I asked on impulse if I might take a photograph of the tattoo, maybe write something respectful.
It wasn’t simply that I wished to capture the moment when a young married man and father of two small children paused in his work to share with me something of immense pride for him and his family, but I felt compelled to record a small, perfect work of remembrance inscribed into his flesh that both embodied and symbolised the spirit of his soldier-grandfather – as if it were a talisman I needed to hold unto myself for a little while. Revealed by his outstretched arm was a loving pride and authenticity of feeling with which I had somehow lost connection and was determined not to have disappear as soon as it had arrived.
There are memories that are suppressed, and remembrances that go on, and there are reminders of the things we are losing or have lost.
That tattoo was a reveille of sorts and a little tap toe for which I am grateful. And it’ll be that much harder to ignore the day.
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4 comments
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Canguro
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RomeoCharlie
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Harry Lime
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wam
Return to home pagePeter FitzSimons pens the following piece in this morning’s SMH.
The missing emotion that needs to be articulated on Anzac Day – Rage.
I appreciate that each person will have his or her own view on the subject of warfare & personal involvement. I have written elsewhere within these pages of my own view, influenced as it is by my experiences of growing up with a traumatised and ruined father following his years as a Japanese POW on the Burma Railroad. To say that grief dogged his family’s lived experience is to utter a banal – in the sense of it being such a commonplace human experience – fact; his father lost two siblings during the AIF’s involvement on the Western Front during WWI, his mother, too, her brother dying at Gallipoli, then their son, barely alive after his repatriation from Burma.
Young men march off to war full of anticipation for the thrill of the battle, and will often say they have never felt so alive as when in the heat of battle. Ben Roberts Smith would no doubt agree with that sentiment. A distant relative of mine, a Kiwi, joined the NZDF and had two deployments to Vietnam. More than forty-five years later, he still wakes at night with full-body sweats and nightmares and has monthly trips to the city to see his psychiatrist. A British gentleman, a former Japanese POW, said at the age of 92 that he’d just a few weeks previously had the most intense nightmare regarding his time of internment.
A former American army colonel migrated to Australia following the end of the Vietnam War, and at some point spoke to the ABC about his experiences; he went into great detail about the physical and psychological effects of being in field combat conditions; people shitting and pissing themselves in fear, the agonies of witnessing the guts spilling out of your buddy’s abdomens following shrapnel or bullet wounds and much more, graphic, awful, maddening… the point strongly made that the human psyche is not built to withstand these brutal assaults.
Post-combat lives are replete with stories of dysfunctional men & women; alcoholics, or addicted to drugs or other dangerous behaviours and tragically, all too often, the burden of post-combat experiences becoming too difficult to bear, they escape through suicide.
Others may glorify war, as is their right, if that is what they wish to do. I’d call that denial of the realities. I’m not negating acts of bravery or heroism, but I do question why we allow ourselves to continue, as a species, with these monstrous and destructive behaviours, given the outcomes for all are so very very negative and damaging.
I agree wholeheartedly with FitzsSimons.
My father was also a rat of Tobruk but won the accolade as a sailor, one of the crew of one of the boats that ran a blockade of air attack by the Germans to try to cut the supply lines that kept the garrison supplied so that it could withstand the siege. Although he was RAN, the ship on which he served at that time was, I think a British ship, HMS Tynwald which was later sunk. Three of the ships on which my father served were subsequently sunk. Did he lead a charmed life? Like so many he spoke little of his war service, mainly telling us the funny bits. As a ( now retired) journalist I regret that I didn’t press him harder.
Canguro,visited the war memorial in Canberra a few years back,very moving,and it reinforced the anger and sense of waste I’ve always had about these things.Two great uncles lost in WW1,several blokes I knew in the army lost in Vietnam..their names in plaques on the walls with umpteen thousands of others.Where are we now?Weak minded politicians playing toadies to the worst warmongering nation of all time.Not to worry,we’ll be couch surfing in front of the idiot box watching it all unfold…until we don’t.Meanwhile the armament industries rob us blind for the pleasure.
The joke is on us.
Off military road, the road to my daughter’s place on Victoria road, largs north, has a light pole with the same image of the soldier. It is such a treat to see it.
ps
I always felt sorry for Barassi because my dad came back, albeit damaged TPI, but his didn’t.