Ali Baba Morshead and his Twenty Thousand Thieves

DESCRIPTION: "Old Jerry had us on the run -- the news was far from hot.... The GOC, despondent, sent out messages in sheaves For Ali Baba Morshead and his 20,000 thieves." His troops arrive and give Rommel fits in the Western Desert
AUTHOR: "An A.I.F. Signaller, Western Desert" (cource: Page-KissMeGoodnightSergeantMajor)
EARLIEST DATE: 1973 (Page-KissMeGoodnightSergeantMajor)
KEYWORDS: soldier disaster Africa
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1941 - The Siege of Tobruk
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Page-KissMeGoodnightSergeantMajor, pp 95-96, "Ali Baba Morshead And His Twenty Thousand Thieves" (1 text)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Yanks Back Home" (subject of Leslie Morshead and the 9th Australian Division)
NOTES [1308 words]: Boatner, p. 377, has this to say of Leslie Morshead:
"1889-1952. Originally a schoolmaster, he joined the army in 1914 and had an outstanding record at Gallipoli and in France.... In 1939 he too command of the 18th B[riga]de and from Feb 41 led the newly formed 9th Australian Div[ision]. He defended Tobruk against Rommel in the last eight months of 1941, winning the nickname 'Ming the Merciless' from his admiring troops. Promoted to lieutenant general and knighted, Sir Leslie then headed Australian Imperial forces in the Middle East. After being involved in the second battle of El Alamein he took the 9th Div to Australia in early 1943. [He spend the rest of the war serving in the Pacific] Sir Leslie returned to civilian life after the war."
Wheal/Pope, p. 314, say "Morshead, Lt General Leslie (1889-1959) Australian soldier, who rejoined the army from civilian life in 1939 and commanded the 9th Australian Division in the Middle East. He led his troops through the siege of Tobruk and the battles around El Alamein before his forced were recalled to the Far East. He next commanded Australian forces against the Japanese in New Guinea, and in 1944 was made GOC of the New Guinea force and Commander of the 2nd Australian Army. He ended the war in control of Allied operations in Borneo."
In the period after the Sidi Barrani campaign (for which see the notes to "Side By Side (North Africa Parody)," the British stripped many troops from Egypt to send to Greece, while Hitler sent Erwin Rommel and a mechanized division to Tunisia to clean up the mess the Italians had made of their campaign. Rommel went far beyond his orders; inded, Pitt, p. 253, , says he "proceeded to disobey his orders with a diligence which compels the admiration of all who have ever cocked a snook at authority. He didn't just defend his position; he launched a counterattack -- and the attenuated, mis-positioned, worn-out British forces collapsed. Rommel headed back along the Libyan coast, aiming for Tobruk and the Egyptian border itself.
The British commander in Egypt and the Middle East was Archibald Wavell; he and Churchill had disagreed many times, but this time they agreed: Tobruk must be held and the Egyptian frontier protected. To perform the former task, Wavell "appointed general Morshead to command 9th Australian Division in Tobruk and arranged for more tanks to be sent there by sea. By the time Rommel was ready to attack Tobruk Morshead had six infantry brigades, four artillery regiments, two anti-tank units, 75 anti-aircraft guns and 45 tanks. He was able to repulse all Rommel's attacks." In April 1941, Rommel's Germans were shattering the British forces, but Tobruk held off their assaults (at least for the moment) and Tobruk was surrounded and besieged (Sears, p.26). Morshead's instruction to his officers was "There is to be no surrender and no retreat" (Sears, p. 33), which agrees with Churchill's order to Wavell that Tobruk was to be held "to the death without thought of retirement" (Strawson, p. 74).
Wavell had visited Morshead at Tobruk shortly before Rommel's main assault and was told that the Australians could hold. Wavell then gave the order, "Well, if you can, you'd better get on and do it" (Pitt, pp. 271-272). He did. Pitt, p. 263, calls Morshead "a resolute and highly intelligent commander," and notes that he stood off Rommel even at a time when the Germans were running rampant everywhere else in Cyrenica.
Rommel tried three separate assaults against Tobruk before settling down to a regular siege in May (Sears, p. 33).
"The siege of Tobruk was to drag on for eight months, until the winter of 1941. It was a boring, bloody, dangerous stalemate for the men on both sides. They 'went to ground' during the day, suffering the stifling heat and swarming insects to avoid sniper's bullets. Bombing and artillery fire took a steady toll.... Morshead's garrison could be supplied only by ship, and only at night, and British naval losses were heavy. But neither side would loosen its grip. To the British Commonwealth, Tobruk came to stand for stubborn courage in the face of adversity To Rommel, Tobruk was a symbol of frustration. He vowed that someday the fortress would be his" (Sears, p. 34).
Two attempts to relieve Tobruk -- operations "Brevity" and "Battleaxe," both failed (Strawson, pp. 80-81; according to Sears, p. 36, the latter attack failed in large part because the Germans had started to deploy their horribly effective 88 mm antitank gun, which is mentioned in several songs of the period). Wavell was gone by then -- the failure of "Battlaxe" cost him his job (Strawson, p. 85). A third attempt at relief, the "Crusader" operation that ended in January 1942, did open the road to Tobruk temporarily in December 1941 (Strawson, p. 108; Sears, p. 66) -- but the result was that the British were badly over-extended -- Sears, p. 68, says that "Rommel, the Desert Fox, had somehow managed to dominate the battle even in defeat." And, just as in 1941 the British had siphoned off men to send to Greece, now in 1942 they siphoned them off to fight Japan (Carver, p. 25; Strawson, p. 111). They also failed to maintain the defenses of Tobruk, and carted off much of the equipment there for other purposes (Sears, pp. 83-84). When Rommel counter-attacked a few weeks later, he regained the lost ground and then some; this time, Tobruk fell (on June 21; Sears, p. 85; Strawson, p. 127) and the Germans raced on to a place called El Alamein. That was about the lowest point for British forces in the war, but it also proved to be more or less the turning point. Churchill, who had not been willing to supply support to either Wavell or Auchinleck (Wheal/Pope, p. 36), fired the latter, brought in Harold Alexander and Bernard Law Montgomery, and gave them enough men and equipment to finally win the North Africa campaign.
Morshead and the Australians were out of Tobruk by then, though; they had eventually been relieved (Carver, p. 22). Morshead was part of the force that won the Battle of El Alamein. Many of the Australian troops were sent to the Pacific instead; this is the subject of "The Yanks Back Home" (which see)
It was because of Moreshead's defensive success at Tobruk that "Lord Haw-Haw" (William Joyce, the British citizen who was hung after the war for his work doing German radio propaganda; Wheal/Pope, p. 251) took to calling Morshead "Ali Baba Morshead." And, yes, 20,000 troops is about right for an oversized but somewhat depleted division; according to Sears, p. 29, during the eight months Tobruk was under siege, it averaged about 23,000 defenders at any given time.
It's pretty tangential to this song, but Haw-Haw attracted a lot of books (I have no idea if this list is complete):
J. A. Cole, Lord Haw-Haw: The Full Story of William Joyce
Nigel Farndale, Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce
J. W. Hall, Trial of William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") (Notable British Trials)
Ben Holland, The Insane Life of Lord Haw-Haw: The Rise and Fall of William Joyce: Hitler's British Radio Star
Colin Holmes, Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce
Mary Kenny, Germany Calling: A Personal Biograpphy of William Joyce, 'Lord Haw-Haw"
Peter Martland, Lord Haw Haw: The English Voice of Nazi Germany
Brett Rutledge, The Death of Lord Haw Haw
Francis Selwyn, Hitler's Englishman: The Crime of 'Lord Haw-Haw'
Rebecca West, Trials of Lord Haw-Haw
Joyce had in fact published his own opinion of how the world worked in 1940 in Twilight over England, seemingly republished as Lord Haw-Haw: Twilight over England; he also wrote a book, The Meaning of Treason. A book called Lord Haw Haw National Socialism Now and Fascism and Jewry is also attributed to Joyce, but I suspect this is another version of one of his other books. - RBW
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File: PKMG095

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