Ernest Brough - Attacking post No. 12

Transcript

I got shot up in Tobruk and he said "Right, you've got to go out and attack post 12 tonight." So I said to the boys "Probably this'll be the last you see of me, I'll either be dead or a prisoner of war." And I got out there and a little bloke who had just come and he was sixteen and he was only about this high and he should never have been sent in and I had another adult fellow with me, ‘cause he never kept up with us and we got to this twelve post number and they knew we were coming I suppose, knew we were outside and I could smell all the bullets going over my head. You could smell them.

I was right up against the dugout and they poured it out and they never said anything and we never said anything, but what it did he hadn't advised the fortress what he was doing so between him and the fortress was putting a heap of bullets in, the same thing and they probably killed the little bloke themselves, you see, he was out there on his own, he hadn't kept up.

Anyway I waited until they stopped firing out of twelve because they'll run out of ammunition soon because on the Spandau they had magazines, you see, and they just slipped them in, you see, and when they stopped firing, I had one grenade and I had a Tommy gun with fifty rounds in one magazine and twenty in another and when they stopped firing, you see, I put my fifty rounds into the dugout where they were and two grenades on top of them and they went real quiet and the other guys said, "Come on, let's go while they're thinking about it."

So I got out and there was only a roll of Dannert wire between us and we got over the Dannert wire and we happened to run into our own company headquarters, I could hear them digging, you see, and I had the twenty rounds still left and I thought if its Germans I'll give them a burst, you see and I got over and we heard Captain Joshua, a great old bloke too, and he said "Well boys you've just about got it right."

They were digging something, you see, and so I turned up and the next thing my mate turned up, Bert Cox from Australia he comes up and says, "Hello, hello, hello . They got you at last did they." ‘Cause I had a bullet in the bum, you see, and blood all over the place but I was still going because when I first got hit, the first thing was to move your legs around to see if you're alright, see, but we lost the little bloke, that was the only thing, but that's some of the experience.