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The 6th was my fathers division. All volunteers, trained in Australia and Egypt and straight into the fray at Bardia then onto Tobruk. My father was a bren gunner with the 2/8th - 19th Brig and was knocked "with the last mortar of the opening day" on the 21st January 1941. He didn't get to walk into Tobruk on the 22nd. He spent many months in El Kantara hospital in Egypt before being sent home.
The 7th Division did not get much Kudos either. Their defeat of the Vichy in Syria although a great victory was not trumpeted at the time for political reasons.
__________________ Spidge, 
------------------------------------------------------- My Avatar is the memorial to the 22 Commonwealth Coastwatchers at the Temakin Cemetery on Betio (Tarawa Atoll) who were beheaded by the Japanese on 15th October 1942. http://www.dva.gov.au/media/publicat...mem_beito.html
"You were given the choice between war and dishonor.
You chose dishonor and you will have war."
(Winston Churchill made this prophetic pronouncement in a House of Commons speech in 1938, just after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain signed the Munich agreement with Hitler. Chamberlain returned from Germany with the signed agreement in hand, proclaiming that "peace in our time" had been achieved. Churchill attacked Chamberlain's "politics of appeasement" in this and many other speeches.)
What did the Australians do in ww2 and other conflicts? Check out this site:
http://www.diggerhistory.info/00-pag...ster-index.htm |