Description
Title: Tobruk’s Easter Battle 1941 – The Forgotten Fifteenth’s Date with Rommel’s Champion
Author: Mackenzie-Smith, John
Condition: Near Mint +
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 9781921555855
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 173 pages
Comments: The initial Australian and British victory over Rommel’s Afrika Korps on Easter Monday 1941 at Tobruk was Germany’s first defeat in World War II. Incongruously the vital actions of Queensland’s 2/15th Battalion on that day have been generally ignored.
For the first time, this investigation places that lost body of infantrymen nearly four miles from the outer perimeter near El Adem crossroads. There they were dug in around two gallant Royal Horse Artillery batteries, which incurred heavy losses in turning around a concerted Panzer attack.
In that battle the 2/15th Battalion ‘A’ Company delivered the final blow to the accompanying German infantry, led by the formerly invincible Lt Colonel Gustav Ponath who was killed in the field. This ably researched and intriguing episode redresses the brave 2/15th Battalion’s subsequent sense of injustice.
