Australians at War Film Archive
Bill Rudd was a sapper with the 2/7th Field Company, Royal Australian Engineers in the 9th Australian Division at El Alamein. In this interview excerpt he discusses the night of 26-27 July 1942 when more than 400 officers and men in the 2/28th Battalion were forced to surrender to the Germans at Ruin Ridge.
A full interview with veteran William 'Bill' Rudd, conducted on 20 May 2003, is available in the Australians at War Film Archive.
Transcript
Bill Rudd: We were attached to an infantry battalion. On the night, the whole battalion was taken POW (prisoner of war). But with that battalion were anti-tank people, engineers, signals experts, and all the what is loosely regarded as corps troops.
Interviewer: So your company was made up of sections?
Bill Rudd: Our company was made up of sections. The night we went in with the 2/28th Infantry Battalion, we were attached to them for that operation only. We had a lieutenant, Ken Bradshaw, he’s still alive, and 15 sappers, an NCO, a corporal, and a sergeant. And we went into that action attached to an infantry battalion, but we weren’t part of that battalion. We were there to do special jobs. Our job that night was to lift the mines in the minefield, to make a gap in them, so the infantry ... and where the infantry had to dig in, because the previous battle at Ruin Ridge, they’d gone too far and they were cut off. And that was, like a lot of battles are, it completely went wrong.
Interviewer: This is at Ruin Ridge.
Bill Rudd: Yes, Ruin Ridge. The third and last battle for Ruin Ridge with the 2/28th. We were to be relieved in the morning by British tanks.
Interviewer: Leading up to the point of capture, how long was the battle? I mean, how long were you in action for?
Bill Rudd: That particular night? We started at midnight. We dug in when we reached our objective, with the colonel at headquarters. And the radio wasn’t working because something went wrong, and the reinforcements couldn’t get up through the minefield, and the Germans managed to close the minefield. And that meant that no supplies got through to us. We didn’t have any shells for the few anti-tank guns that had got through. And he had no alternative but to surrender when the tanks that came up weren’t ours. So it was a disaster, it was a complete disaster. But there were plenty of other disasters that were worse than that one, but for that battalion, it was an utter disaster.