Tag Archives: 6th Division

Getting Some Sun with the Boys

Posted on by Leave a comment

Some 85 years ago today. 6th Australian Division, Cyrenaica, Libya. 29 December 1940. Official wartime caption: “Near Bardia, one of the BREN gun posts is placed to protect the artillery batteries from dive bombers. Left to Right: Gunners N.H. McLeod and Whalen, Bombardier Greenwood.” Note the Boys .55 caliber anti-tank/anti-material gun and its distinctive “donut” style muzzle break.

Negative by James Francis (Frank) Hurley, Australian War Memorial No. 004944

Formed in September 1939 from the 16th (New South Wales), 17th (Victoria), and 18th Australian Infantry Brigades, the 6th Australian Infantry Division Brigade sailed for the I Australian Corps in the Middle East via brigade-sized lifts between 20 January and 8 May 1940 with the last (the 18th Bde) diverted to England at the time of Dunkirk. The carved-out brigade was replaced by the newly formed 19th Bde, raised in Palestine from the 2/4th, 2/8th, and 2/11th Battalions, in November 1940. (The 18th, having spent six months on defensive duties in England, finally reached North Africa in January 1941, where it was attached to the Australian 7th Division).
 
The 6th Australian Division entered combat at Fort Maddalena and Garn el Grein on 11 and 12 December 1940 and would see lots of action during Operation Compass in and around Tobruk, where the division lost 214 men killed, 790 injured and 21 captured– traded for a part in capturing 65,000 Italians by 5 February 1941. 
 

Members of C Company (mostly from 14 Platoon), Australian 2/11th Infantry Battalion, part of the 6th Division’s 19th Bde, having penetrated the outer defenses of Tobruk, assemble again on the escarpment on the south side of the harbor after attacking anti-aircraft gun positions, on 22 January 1941. San Giorgio is one of the plumes in the background. Burning fuel oil tanks at the port are the second. AWM

Rushed to Greece in March 1941, the 6th Division suffered more than 2,800 casualties– most of those taken prisoner– in the withdrawal from Greece. Used to capture Syria from the Vichy French, post-Pearl Harbor/Darwin, the 6th was pulled from Syrian garrison duty and rushed home where they soon were allowed to bask in the “joy” of the Kokoda trail and the New Guinea campaign. 
 
Disbanded in early 1946, during its six-year war, over 40,000 Australians served in the division’s ranks, fighting across three continents from Libya to Greece to Syria and New Guinea. Of these, 1,763 were killed in action or died, a further 3,978 were wounded and a total of 5,153 men became prisoners of war. 

Aitape Triple Canopy

Posted on by Leave a comment

80 years ago this week: 26-year-old Australian Army Private Rosslyn Frederick Gaudry (Service Number: NX94822) of 2/3rd Infantry Battalion, 16th Brigade, 6th Division “watches his sector with his Owen submachine gun in a forward observation pit at Kalimboa Village” in Aitape, Wewak, New Guinea, 26 April 1945.

Australian War Memorial AWM 091259

Raised for WWII at Victoria Barracks, Sydney on 24 October 1939, 2/3 Aust. Inf. Battalion A.I.F. sailed from Sydney just 11 weeks later for North Africa and disembarked in Egypt on 14 February 1940. Fighting first against the Italians in Libya in early 1941, they were sent to the fiasco in Greece then evacuated to Palestine where they fought the French in July 1941 then remained here until March 1942 as a garrison force. Returned to Australia, they were soon fighting along the Kokoda Trail and would remain in and around the green hell of New Guinea until the end of the war. The battalion left 207 of its men on the Roll of Honour, earned boxes of decorations (4 DSO; 16 MC; 12 DCM; 30 MM; 2 BEM; 73 MID), and 16 battle honours stretching from Tobruk to Mount Olympus to Damascus and Kokoda.

As for the very haggard Pte. Gaudry shown above, he was born in Gulgong, New South Wales in 1918 the son of George Henry Gaudry and Maude Gaudry (nee: Lyons). He enlisted in the Australian Army on 10 April 1942 in Paddington, Kandos, NSW and served in 2/3 Bn across New Guinea from the Owen Stanley Mountain Range along the Kokoda Track to the Aitape-Wewak Campaign.

Discharged from service on 4 October 1946, he returned to NSW and became a salesman. Married to Joan May Gloede in 1953, Gaudry passed at age 61 on New Year’s Eve 1979 in Homebush, Australia.

He is buried in the New South Wales Garden of Remembrance in Rookwood.