“No matter what happens to us, when we go forward, we shall give the enemy such a thrashing that they will never willingly stand up to an assault by Australian infantry again. In the last war, when the AIF went into the line the Germans knew, no matter what the result, they were going to get hurt. We will give these birds to think the same.”
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Godfrey
2/6 infantry battalion AIF
Bardia, January 3, 1941
It’s a line I read years ago that has stuck in my head ever since. Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Godfrey’s exhortation to his men as he stood before them outside the Italian fortress of Bardia on January 3 1941. The start line for the Australian soldier in the Second World War.
The Battle of Bardia is little known or remembered in Australia today and is even less likely to be read about in Italian text books of history. It’s doubtful even the modern Libyan inhabitants of the town care to pause on this Anzac Day, 2019 and remember the 130 Australian and 1300 odd Italian serviceman who died in the fighting for control of their town in the opening days of 1941. The vastly outnumbered 19th Brigade of the second Australian Imperial Force took the town, relatively easily in military terms, and captured nearly 40 000 Italians, opening the way for the Allied armies to continue their advance across North Africa.
Colonel Godfrey’s words, echoing down the decades are worth remembering today. In many ways, if you put some context to it, it represents much of what Anzac Day is all about. Courage, duty, service and devotion. Letting the enemy know that even in the most dire circumstances, they will remember who they were fighting that day. Of course not everyone has an interest in military history and in this day and age a large minority rail against Anzac Day, wallowing in glorious ignorance of its significance to the nation. That is their right. But to me it’s a day to enjoy being an Australian and as I looked out my bedroom window this morning at the majestic hills and warming sunshine I gave a little thanks of my own to the young men and women who have gone before us and served their country, many until the last heaving breaths of their lives.
Bardia was just the first of many battles fought by Australians in World War 2. Across North Africa and Egypt and Syria through Greece and Crete and the jungles of Malaya, Singapore and Papua and New Guinea. In the skies over every theater of war and on every ocean, Australians devoted themselves to their service. Those 130 men killed at Bardia were the first of an eventual 27 000 over the next four years. On this 104th Anzac Day I salute them. And Arthur Godfrey? He was killed at the Battle of El Alamein in 1942 as his men lived up to the standards he had asked of them at Bardia many months before.
Lest we forget.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 