Derrick VC in his own words: The wartime writings of Australia's most famous fighting soldier of World War II

By Mark Johnston

Tom 'Diver' Derrick VC DCM was Australia's most famous fighting soldier of World War II. Derrick fought in five campaigns, won the highest medals for bravery, and died of wounds sustained while leading his men in the war's last stages. His career reached its climax on the jungle-clad heights of Sattelberg in New Guinea, where he won the Victoria Cross by spearheading the capture of seemingly impregnable Japanese defences.The diaries Derrick kept throughout his campaigns, from Tobruk to Tarakan, are among the most important writings by any Australian soldier. Those diaries and all his other known wartime correspondence and interviews are published here for the first time in their entirety. 'Diver' had only a rudimentary education, but his intelligence, humour, ambition and fighting outlook shine through his words.Edited and annotated by Mark Johnston, one of Australia's leading authorities on World War II, this book provides unprecedented insights into the mind and the remarkable career of one of Australia's most decorated and renowned servicemen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: NewSouth
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781742245225

Mark Johnston

Dr Mark Johnston is an independent scholar with over forty years experience in the greenspace industry, including working as a tree officer in local government, consultant in private practice, government adviser and university lecturer. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Foresters (Chartered Arboriculturist), Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture and Honorary Fellow of the Arboricultural Association. Although originally from London, Mark is based in Belfast where he has lived for the past twenty-five years. In 2007, he was appointed MBE in recognition of his services to trees and the urban environment. In 2009, Mark became the first British person to receive the International Society of Arboriculture’s most prestigious honour, the Award of Merit.

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Cover image: Derrick VC: In His Own Words

DERRICK VC

In His Own Words

DR MARK JOHNSTON has established himself as one of the foremost authorities on the Australian Army in World War II. He was described in the Australian War Memorial’s Wartime magazine as ‘the leading historian on the experience of Australian soldiers during the war’. He is Head of History at Scotch College, Melbourne, and author of twelve books, including An Australian Band of Brothers (NewSouth, 2018).

DERRICK VC

IN HIS OWN WORDS

The wartime writings of

Australia’s most famous fighting

soldier of World War II

MARK JOHNSTON

Logo: Monash University Publishing.

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

© Mark Johnston 2021

First published 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

ISBN9781742237244 (paperback)

9781742245225 (ebook)

9781742249780 (ePDF)

Design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover design Luke Causby, Blue Cork

Cover image SX7964 Sergeant (later Lieutenant (Lt)) Thomas Currie

Derrick, VC. DCM, 2/48th Infantry Battalion. AWM 067887

Printer Griffin Press

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

CONTENTS

List of maps

Abbreviations

Introduction

Tom Derrick’s war service

Explanatory note

THE 1940–41 DIARY

THE 1942 DIARY

THE 1943–44 DIARY

THE 1945 DIARY

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Index

LIST OF MAPS

1.The Middle East, December 1940–June 1942

2.Tobruk, 1941

3.Tel el Eisa, July 1942

4.El Alamein, October–November 1942

5.New Guinea, September 1943

6.Finschhafen and Sattelberg, October–November 1943

7.Sattelberg heights, November 1943

8.Tarakan, May 1945

9.The Freda feature, Tarakan, May 1945

ABBREVIATIONS

AANS Australian Army Nursing Service

AASC Australian Army Service Corps

AEME Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers

AGH Australian General Hospital

AWAS Australian Women’s Army Service

AWM Australian War Memorial

AWL Absent without leave

Bde Brigade

Bn Battalion

Brig Brigadier

Capt Captain

CCS Casualty Clearing Station

CO Commanding Officer

Coy Company

Cpl Corporal

CSM Company Sergeant-Major

Div Division

DOW Died of wounds

FDL Forward defended locality or localities

GDD General Details Depot

GSW Gun shot wound

KIA Killed in action

L/Cpl Lance-corporal

LCVP Landing craft, vehicle and personnel

Lt Lieutenant

Lt-Col Lieutenant-Colonel

Maj Major

MM Military Medal

MID Mentioned in Despatches

MT Motor transport

NAA National Archives of Australia

NCO Non-commissioned officer

NMS No movement seen

OCTU Officer Cadet Training Unit

ORs Other Ranks, men who were not commissioned officers

Pl Platoon

RMO Regimental Medical Officer

Sec Section

Sgt Sergeant

Sjt Sergeant

S/Sgt Staff-sergeant

WD War Diary

WIA Wounded in action

WOII Warrant Officer Class II

VC Victoria Cross

x Yards

Note on currency:

Mils: 1000 mils to a Palestine pound, which was supposed to be equal in value to the pound sterling.

INTRODUCTION

Imagine the unparalleled insights we would receive if we could read the thoughts of famous warriors such as Leonidas, Alexander the Great, Spartacus or Richard the Lionheart. In the case of Australia’s most famous fighting soldier of World War II, Tom ‘Diver’ Derrick, VC, DCM, we can read his thoughts, for he kept diaries throughout the war. These diaries constitute one of the most important collections of writings by any Australian soldier. In this book those diaries, together with many of his other wartime writings and interviews, are published for the first time.

When he enlisted in the Second Australian Imperial Force on 5 July 1940, Thomas Currie Derrick was a married 26-year-old labourer with few prospects in civilian life.¹ By the end of 1944, ‘Diver’ Derrick was a national hero, with two decorations for bravery, including the highest possible award, the Victoria Cross. He had risen from a humble private to become an officer in the 2/48th Battalion, the most decorated unit in the Second AIF. His photograph had appeared in many magazines and newspapers and his image had been painted by leading artists. Yet the war that brought Tom Derrick fame also brought his death, on the island of Tarakan in May 1945. That news saddened innumerable soldiers and civilians. Within weeks of his death his widow had received 400 condolence letters, cards and telegrams from all states.²

While most Australians now have no idea who Tom Derrick was, he continues to be an iconic figure among those interested in Australian military history. For example, a Defence Department publication commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of the war and a commemorative postage stamp both featured portraits of Derrick.³ In 2004, the Chief of the Australian Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, nominated Derrick as ‘the best soldier of all time’.⁴ Historian Michael McKernan, former Deputy Director of the Australian War Memorial, stated that Derrick arguably deserved ‘a VC and two bars … at El Alamein, at Sattelberg and … at Tarakan’.⁵

Writing a satisfactory biography of anyone is difficult, if not impossible. While certain elements of any life are incontrovertibly important, we cannot ever really grasp another person’s experience in its entirety. To write an entirely fair biography of an Australian soldier who for many epitomises the courage and self-sacrifice of Australian diggers is probably unmanageable. Not only is there too much emotion involved, including sorrow and national pride, but in the case of Tom Derrick there are also many now unbridgeable gaps in our knowledge of him. Moreover, what we do know shows that he was a complex man, not a one-dimensional hero. Most of what has been written about Derrick since the war is flawed. For example a Department of Veterans’ Affairs publication distributed to schools throughout the country has quoted a poem from his 1941 diary and ascribed it to him.⁶ Yet that poem, and indeed all the other poems in his diaries, were demonstrably copied from other poets. It appears that he ‘tried his hand at poetry’, as many Australian soldiers did, but that his poems have since been destroyed.⁷

The sole published biography, written by one of Derrick’s former officers, Murray Farquhar, contains invaluable information, insight, and an acknowledgment of his enigmatic nature, but also numerous misquotations, much hyperbole and, quite shockingly, inventions that are apparent in many of the notes on Derrick’s diary entries that follow.⁸ Farquhar’s numerous inaccuracies and post-war notoriety cast a shadow over his whole book, but he knew Derrick well enough for Tom to be groomsman at his wedding in December 1944.⁹ More importantly, the interviews and letters he gathered from people who knew Derrick have been a marvellous source for this book. Having said that, wherever I have mentioned post-war interviews or letters in the notes, readers should bear in mind a comment that John G. Glenn, the author of the 2/48th’s excellent history, made to Farquhar when the latter set out to write Derrick’s biography:

One thing I found in writing the bn history was the necessity of cross checking all information given by the troops. On one occasion a particularly fine story concerning the death of one of the lads at Alamein had to be discarded as the chap was found to be working for the Sth Aust Railways ten years after the war. This was not an isolated case and there is a tendency to distort the facts after so long a time. In any case any incident can be seen in so many different ways.¹⁰

Glenn, who served with the 2/48th, told Farquhar he ‘knew Diver very well’. His brief summary of Derrick in a letter to Farquhar was: ‘a very good front line soldier and disliked parade ground training etc’.¹¹ He added that Derrick had a sense of humour, and told a story of him borrowing Glenn’s uniform to sneak out at night when they were both in hospital in Adelaide. Yet this simple character sketch, sober though it is, does not suffice as a summary of Tom Derrick’s character.

The biography of Derrick in the Australian Dictionary of Biography is by the distinguished historian Bill Gammage, but like Farquhar’s book it contains some misleading claims. Gammage, for example, insists on the importance of Derrick’s ‘mates’ in the action in which he won the VC, but this ignores the fact that the men in the platoon that Derrick led there were largely unknown to him. He had been put in command of that platoon – 11 Platoon of B Company – just three days earlier, having previously served throughout the war in A Company.

Derrick’s unfamiliarity with the group, as well as his unstinting praise of them, is apparent in his diary, and raises the purpose of this book. It is a book devoted to hearing Derrick’s own voice. His words will often mean little to readers without some context, and I have made hundreds of explanatory notes on Derrick’s comments. These are largely straightforward facts, for example about military jargon and operations, Australian slang, places and other soldiers that Derrick mentioned. However, there are also occasional observations in my notes about what Derrick’s comments suggest to me about Tom’s personality, and this introductory essay pulls together some of the strands that I see as important ones in Derrick’s life. In that sense this book contains elements of biography. Nevertheless, most of the words are Tom Derrick’s, and there is no better way to learn about a person than from his own statements.

Pictures are invaluable too, and this book contains many previously unpublished ones. For these I am most grateful to Paul Oaten, whom I came to know when I was put in touch with him in 2018 by Bill McEvoy, then one of the few surviving members of the 2/48th Battalion and who passed away at 96 in 2020. Paul, whose grandfather, Len Kader, was in the 2/48th, has become an unofficial historian of the unit, and has been exceptionally generous to me with his knowledge of that unit in general and Tom Derrick in particular. For example, he obtained for me a copy of one of Tom’s last letters, written on Tarakan in May 1945. This letter and two others used here are examples of Tom’s words that do not come from the diaries, as are transcripts of various wartime interviews. Together with the diaries they provide an unprecedented insight into the mind of one of Australia’s most decorated and famous servicemen.

DERRICK’S WORDS: THE BACKGROUND

Tom Derrick’s wartime writing naturally owed much to his background, which was working class. He was born in Medindie, a suburb of Adelaide, on 20 March 1914. His father David, an Irish-born immigrant, was working for Thomas Currie Tait, who owned vineyards and other valuable land in Oaklands Park, Adelaide. In honour of this employer, David named his first-born son Thomas Currie Derrick. Tom was the second child of David and Ada Derrick (nee Whitcombe), who had already produced a daughter, Keneitha (‘Dolly’, 1911–2002). Siblings born in subsequent years were Mabel (1918–96), Lotte (b. 1923), David Edward (‘Teddy’ 1925–40), Lilian (‘Lily’, birthdate unknown, later Lily Fryer) and Elizabeth Mary (‘Rose’, b. 1927, later Rose Philp and Rose Stirling).

David was keen to enlist in the First AIF, but poor eyesight, the result of a kick from a horse, prevented him from doing so. Only in 1916 was he permitted to join a Home Service battalion. In the post-war period the large Derrick family fell on hard times. Tom reportedly often went barefoot to the Sturt Street Public School. After the family moved house in 1920, Tom attended Le Fevre Peninsula School where he completed all grades to Year 7, with regular attendance and no grade failures.¹² A former teacher remembered him as good humoured and inclined to pranks, but also hard-working.¹³ One of his sisters acknowledged: ‘Tom cards, Blind Dubles [sic], Two up Grey hounds a Race Horse. If there was any misceif [sic] around you could be sure Stiffy Derrick was at the Bottom of it or had a finger in the pie’.¹⁴

His usual pre-war nickname was ‘Stiffy’, named (probably by his father) for a vaudeville character, but he also earned the nickname ‘Diver’, reportedly because he was a fine swimmer and diver.¹⁵ Like many in that era, Tom’s family did not possess the resources to enable him to finish high school, and at age 14 he left to become a baker’s assistant. It is difficult to gauge the impact of Tom’s education on his later life and particularly his army service. He felt sufficiently confident of his writing ability to keep diaries throughout the war, fully aware and probably keen that someone else would eventually read them. The fact that he did not complete secondary schooling is reflected in the technical quality of his writing, which contains many spelling and grammatical errors. Despite those limitations, the quality of his thinking emerges transcendently. It is not surprising that Derrick’s ‘clear memory for detail’ impressed the official Australian Army historian, Gavin Long, in an interview reproduced below in the diary entry notes for 1 December 1943. One of his wartime commanders remembered Derrick as ‘a deep thinker’, who wanted to learn and did much to educate himself.¹⁶

The army authorities did not really care about Tom’s literary abilities, and would have looked askance at him keeping a diary against regulations. How conscious they were of his status as a working-class man with a reputation as a larrikin is another matter. Two weeks after Tom’s death, war correspondent Allan Dawes wrote an article for the Army News entitled ‘Derrick’s Commission’. Dawes had earlier written a book about Australian soldiers in New Guinea entitled Soldier Superb and featuring a photograph of ‘Sgt T.C. Derrick, V.C., D.C.M.’ on the cover. Dawes was himself highly educated, having attended Scotch College and the University of Melbourne, but his article was entirely sympathetic to Derrick. He stated that recommendations that Derrick be sent to an officer training course had twice been denied ‘because the only education he had received between a State school and progress through the AIF, had been whatever he had managed to scrounge in the struggle for three meals and a bed at Broken Hill and the fruit farms of Murray Valley’.¹⁷ Derrick is understandably often presented like this, as a working-class hero. These interpretations spring from a laudable Australian egalitarianism. Just how far that egalitarianism extended to Derrick and his family is debatable. A newspaper article published a week after Tom’s death reported that his parents and two sisters still at home were living in straitened circumstances.¹⁸ Subsequent public fundraising efforts for Derrick’s wife and for his parents seem to have brought generous responses, though how much of it reached them is uncertain.¹⁹ In the meantime a committee was established to determine a fitting memorial to ‘Diver’, and the newspapers made much of the fact that various senior politicians had written to his widow.²⁰ Two men who claimed to have been his friends during hard times in the 1930s wrote a letter to the editor of the Adelaide News deploring the use of his name ‘as the pushing pole of a lot of people who in the depression years would have been insulted if the modest Tom Derrick had asked them for the price of a meal’.²¹ After winning the VC, Tom was reportedly seen telling a local bank manager who wanted his patronage that he would not give it, as the bank had spurned him before the war.²²

Apart from his educational background, other pre-war elements of Derrick’s experience that are fundamental to the content of his writings are his pastimes, his mates and his wife. Though just 5 feet 7 inches (170 cm) tall, he was stocky and strong. His physical prowess was apparent when he played sport, particularly Australian Rules football and boxing. Tom’s mates from the Berri football team figure in the diary. In 1947, on the second anniversary of his death, the ‘Berri boys of 2/48th Batt’ inserted a newspaper tribute to ‘Diver’.²³ The diaries refer to former mates with whom he boxed, which he did as a hobby but also to earn money. ‘Yel’ O’Connell, whom Derrick would praise in his diary on Tarakan, wrote that his positive impression of Derrick early in the war included that ‘he was not beyond throwing a bunch of five [sic] if anyone got on the wrong side of him’.²⁴ Mates with whom he had engaged in two other favoured pastimes – drinking and gambling – appear prominently in the story, and the diaries show that during the war he kept up those two pursuits as much as service conditions allowed.

Before the war Tom Derrick undertook many jobs. A crucial development came after a long bike ride in 1931 with mates to Berri, on the Murray River. Initially he lived in a tent camp on the river called ‘Bagman’s Paradise’. He barely managed to get by, one week reportedly living on grapes alone.²⁵ His two former mates wrote of times – specifically in 1934 – when if one man at their bag shanty got work, six of them would usually share his modest earnings. They declared of Tom Derrick that ‘a more modest and generous soul never lived’.²⁶

After doing various odd jobs, at some time in the 1930s he took up work on a vineyard at Winkie, and stayed in that job until he enlisted on 5 July 1940.²⁷ The family that employed him were the Foremans, and their names crop up in the diaries as good friends. But no individual figures so prominently in the writings as Tom’s wife Beryl. Born Clarance Violet Leslie, Beryl was 16 when they started going out in 1932. Not until June 1939 could they afford to marry. Bill Gammage likens her effect on Derrick to that of Doreen on Ginger Mick, tempering his larrikin tendencies in C.J. Dennis’s Songs of a Sentimental Bloke. Derrick’s May 1945 letter to a mate indicates that he still had an eye for ‘vivacious and lovely’ women – he uses the terms ‘wench’, ‘Lady’ and ‘lovlier sex’ – but such talk was not surprising in a soldier long deprived of female companionship.²⁸ Derrick parted with Beryl to enlist, but his love for her, and indeed their mutual devotion, are apparent throughout the diaries. For example, in an inventory of letters written and received that Tom wrote in mid-1943, Beryl was the author and recipient of the great majority of Derrick’s correspondence. Beryl remarried after the war and took the name Sincock, but remained devoted to Derrick’s memory. Farquhar’s notes on his interview with Beryl say that at the suggestion of a therapist attempting to restore her shaken mental health there occurred ‘a symbolic destruction of Diver’s myriad letters’. Indeed the vast majority of his many wartime letters do seem to have been lost, although there must be some scattered in homes around Australia.²⁹ After her second husband’s death Beryl befriended another man, John McLachlan. Paul Oaten has heard that after Beryl died in 2005, McLachlan disposed of the diaries that Derrick had kept assiduously in late 1940 to 1941, 1942, 1943 to early 1944 and mid-1945. Fortunately, between 1982 and 1984 the Australian War Memorial made copies of most, though not all, of the diaries. I have used these copies as the basis of the transcripts that follow. Though barely legible in places, they run to some 800 pages and constitute a treasury of information and insights into the man, his mates, his army and Australia’s war. A recently obtained and never previously published letter that Derrick wrote from Tarakan to Lieutenant John Thirkell, a fellow member of the officer training course of late 1944, also provides fascinating new insights into his thinking.

DERRICK’S WORDS: WHAT THEY REVEAL

November 1940 to April 1941, the eve of battle

In February 1941, General Maitland Wilson, the British commander of all troops in Libya, told Australian Prime Minister Menzies that Australian troops were ‘troublesome’ and ‘not disciplined’.³⁰ Had Wilson picked up Tom Derrick’s diary at the time he would have found in it confirmation of his criticisms. For example, by the end of January (Derrick started the diary in November 1940) he had already incurred five charges for indiscipline from what he called ‘this bluddy army’, including one for violence against a soldier, and another for threatening an NCO. On hearing of the latter charge he said ‘wished Id went on with him now’. There were also references to getting ‘slathered’ or ‘soaked’, to gambling at every opportunity and to trying to dodge responsibilities, for example telling ‘lieing storys’ about his health in order to get out of duties.³¹ In Libya, at Derna in March 1941, he engaged in more behaviour that Wilson and other British commanders considered characteristically Australian. He described how on 25 March he ‘swyped’ tins of cherries from the Derna market, reported another ‘profitable day’ when he stole fruit, a wallet and a pair of ladies’ gloves, and on 4 April ‘persuaded the Wogs to hand over’ two cases of fruit by firing several shots.

But there were indications too that this as yet unblooded soldier might turn out to be an effective one. He spent time mastering the tools of the trade, trying out friendly and enemy weapons and becoming expert on these instruments that would be at the heart of his job. He expressed anxiety to reach the fighting before it was over. There were signs too of a man who was not just a hard case, for when his battalion football team lost he was generous in acknowledging the prowess of their opponents, and when he went into hospital with mumps, he befriended his ward mates, who hailed from various units but whose names he recorded. The one with whom he became best friends, ‘Blue’ Moloney, had Irish heritage like Tom himself, was clearly very funny and probably would not have been General Wilson’s ideal soldier. But, like Derrick, he would be decorated for bravery, would be commissioned an officer and would die leading troops in battle. Just as he befriended these ward mates, a letter he wrote to a fellow member of his officer training course in May 1945, six months after it ended, showed that Derrick maintained friendly contact with many of the new officers, even though he was much more famous and successful than them.³²

In his diaries, Derrick referred to platoon commanders by their formal title, ‘Mr’ – Mr Gill or Mr Dodd, for example – and to many of the NCOs as ‘Sergeant X’ or ‘Corporal Y’. This was not the mode of a man completely opposed to army discipline or hierarchy, even though Farquhar asserts that ‘to get even a grudging sir out of Diver was something’.

Derrick could be belligerent, but he was also loyal to his friends and his beloved Beryl. Like the vast majority of the AIF’s volunteers, he was keen to get into the war. That this anticipation was not connected only with his own pride was apparent when at one point he defined joining the action as ‘going to help’ (21 February 1941).³³

From a personal perspective Derrick was also ambitious to ‘get some place’ (3 January 1941), as he put it when he became a Bren gunner. His platoon commander at that time was Lieutenant Hurtle Morphett, who years after claimed that it was apparent to him from the beginning that Derrick would ‘go a long way’. Clearly he saw Derrick as charismatic, noting his ‘strong nuggety figure, those big soft brown eyes which could be so misleading and the personality that shone out of that man’. He observed too that Derrick had ‘a sharp brain’ and a ‘burning ambition’ which drove him ‘to be absolutely top at whatever he was doing’.³⁴ A turning point seems to have come in February 1941, when Derrick went on a training course within his battalion, led by an excellent teacher, Lieutenant Andrew McLay. Derrick recognised that this was the army’s chance ‘to make something of me’. By the third day of the course Derrick could write that he was ‘beginning to think Im not altogether hopeless after all’. His enthusiasm for this training course jumps off the page of his diary. The very fact that he kept a diary suggested that he hoped he would do things that were worth recording, and would reach a wider audience, as when on 25 January he used the expression ‘just think people’ or on 14 April ‘hows this folks’.³⁵ One of his closest mates said that ‘Diver could swear as much as the rest of us’, but ‘his diary he would keep inviolate’.³⁶ Very few soldiers swore in their writings, but Derrick’s conscious restraint does suggest that he expected others to read it. Until late 1943 he made notes in his diary about the progress of the war in other places – for example, in the Atlantic, Crete, Madagascar and Italy – indicating that he knew that he was part of historically important events. He was aware that in his diary he was chronicling events worth recording, but as he entered action at Tobruk, Derrick still had doubts about himself.

On 11 and 12 March 1941, as his unit prepared to move from its camp in Palestine to Egypt and active operations, he wrote of having ‘a great time’, but there were signs of anxiety. On 11 March, he recorded that his great mate, Charlie Butcher, would not get back to the unit from hospital in time to accompany them: ‘wish to Christ he would’, lamented Derrick. The following day Derrick wrote of expecting to leave that night, and that he had ‘got well lagered [drunk] last night just as a token of gratitude to a good camp’. In brackets he professed ‘(nice excuse eh)’. He seemed unusually testy on 13 March when the move was about to occur and it emerged that the men had to carry more than expected: he complained of ‘the lying b- - - - -’

(his dashes) who had told them to expect only a 90-pound pack. Up to this point, nothing he had written suggested that he would become an exceptional fighting soldier.

Derrick in Tobruk, April–October 1941

Tom Derrick’s role in the siege of Tobruk is problematic. He and most of the 9th Division were caught up in the ‘Benghazi Handicap’, the frantic retreat of British forces from western Libya to Tobruk. He then participated in the siege as a front-line infantryman in the 2/48th Battalion from 11 April until the battalion departed in October. He and the battalion spent much of that time on the front line, the ‘perimeter’, including long spells in the very dangerous area known as the Salient. Farquhar, Gammage and McKernan present him as doing outstandingly well at Tobruk, but this is possibly an exaggeration. His role in the siege is not even mentioned in the 2/48th Battalion history, the official army history or Chester Wilmot’s detailed wartime history of the Tobruk campaign. He did well enough to be promoted to Acting Corporal, according to his army service record on 11 July 1941, though he says in his diary it was 14 May. If it was the latter, this would fit with the statement in Farquhar’s book that Lieutenant Morphett unsuccessfully recommended Derrick for a Military Medal for his efforts in the heavy fighting of 1 May.³⁷ Farquhar’s notes on the medal in his interview with Morphett seem to support this notion, but are cryptic: ‘8 Pl – recommended for MM – splendid ptl & def duties’. Morphett unequivocally said of Derrick’s performance on 1 May that he was ‘already A1 – cool and calculating’.³⁸ Another officer, Olof Isaksson, used the same adjectives in praising Derrick.³⁹ Far from being boastful, Derrick was so modest about his own efforts that in any action he described it is difficult and sometimes impossible to determine exactly what he did. Then again, telling the full stories of battles and of lives is never possible. Nevertheless, even reading between the lines it is hard to find evidence in his diary that signifies him doing anything remarkable in Tobruk, while many others around him were. At least ten other 2/48th men won decorations for bravery in Tobruk.⁴⁰ It is apparent, for example, that John Lovegrove of the 2/43rd Battalion, who won no fame in the war, led more Tobruk patrols – and more eventful ones at that – than did Derrick.⁴¹ Farquhar claims that Derrick led 15 night patrols in 24 days in the Salient, but this is not substantiated by Derrick’s diary or the battalion War Diary. On the other hand, his mate Wally Fennell said that Derrick ‘always’ wanted to go on patrols, while another, Clem Billing, gave the impression that there were many.⁴²

While Derrick’s Tobruk diary is not full of him acting heroically, its entries – typically between 50 and 100 words in length – reveal other interesting aspects of the man. Initially he had talked of wanting to get into the fight, though probably no more than most of the other volunteers who comprised the AIF. His writings show that once in action he found real war confronting. Just two weeks into the siege he talked of a ‘horror scene’, aptly on Anzac Day 1941. He claimed that he had no reaction to this horror, which involved moving German corpses for burial. On 5 July, exactly a year after he enlisted, he noted that he had ‘put in a ghastly morning sweeping up the remains of young Jack’, a man in his section killed by a direct hit on their post in the notorious Salient. Even when the unit was rested from the front line at Tobruk, he acknowledged these periods as stressful, stating no fewer than four times that uncertainty and inactivity drove him and his comrades ‘nuts’.⁴³ At the end of April he reflected that the last month had been ‘rotten and fearful’, marked by uncertainty about whether the next shell would have his name on it. As this suggests, he recognised that luck played a big part in war. Thus on 13 July, just before he went out on a fighting patrol, he wrote ‘heres luck Diver old pal’, and on 2 August, the eve of an attack that would be disastrous for many Australian participants, he wrote, ‘Good luck Diver?’ Sometimes in Tobruk he was quite pessimistic. On 27 April he had ‘Been hearing some very bad news and am inclined to fear the worst, Wish to Christ it were all over’. On 3 June, after the fall of Crete, he felt moved to say ‘Fear the worst here now’. Yet such downs were matched by ups. At the end of April, while he spoke of still fearing the worst, he noted approvingly that ‘All the boys seem contented and calm and have no doubt about the attitude they all will adopt when the Hun infantry bobs up’. In the following entry, on the dramatic 1 May, he noted ‘30 Hun tanks have broken through’, but then added defiantly ‘Let em come’.

He was never overwhelmed by this anxiety, as is suggested by the fact that after the siege, while resting in Syria, he once wrote about how an extra good night’s sleep had been ‘just like Tobruk days’.⁴⁴ Derrick maintained his ambition to lead, unlike others who once in action saw any position of responsibility as too physically and psychologically stressful.⁴⁵

He praised others in his unit: ‘nice work Ronny’, he enthused after a particularly successful patrol by Lieutenant Ron Beer. He was proud of their collective achievements. In August he quoted a poem addressed to dead comrades in Tobruk, which concluded with the line ‘You’ve founded a tradition for the 2nd 40 eighth’. Derrick was reportedly not inclined to praise others verbally.⁴⁶ He could be critical of other soldiers, and this is apparent in the entry on a patrol he participated in on 15 July. When he and the rest of the patrol’s forward party were returning home they ‘found our covering party had left us to it’. The following day he praised the ‘gameness’ of the sergeant who led the patrol, but ruefully noted ‘did not think rest of patrol would walk out on us’.

I have heard from others – who unfortunately must remain unnamed – that Derrick could be a ‘bully’. This is not incompatible with Hurtle Morphett’s recollection in a eulogy that Derrick’s natural leadership was apparent whether he was at ‘war, or playing poker, drinking beer or hitting somebody on the left ear’.⁴⁷ In short, he tended to dominate those around him. But he could also be sympathetic to those who could not cope. When a reinforcement to the unit, Private Leverett, went ‘to pieces’ at the sound of friendly artillery, Derrick, although not officially in charge, sent him to the Regimental Aid Post. When Leverett was evacuated, Derrick declared this ‘the best thing for him’. Derrick’s platoon mate Clem Billing claimed that ‘Diver often showed compassion like that’.⁴⁸ Similarly, although Derrick’s good pre-war mate ‘Butch’ was unable to return to the unit, Tom made no criticisms of him for not doing so.

When Derrick declared that he had been promoted to Acting Corporal in April, he joked that ‘it will take Jerry to disrate me to 2/6 day’, meaning that only failure in action would lead him to give up the better pay that came with the job. Ivo Paech, his platoon commander from late August 1941, remembered ‘Diver’ intimating that he wanted to become a sergeant, ‘but definitely not an officer’.⁴⁹ Paech recorded just one contretemps with Derrick, when in September the latter wanted to open fire on enemy stretcher-bearers in revenge for the Germans doing the same the previous month.⁵⁰ By the time he left Tobruk, Derrick was an experienced and confident soldier, like thousands of other members of the 9th Division. Just how able he was is impossible to gauge, but the excellence that he would show from the very beginning of his next campaign was surely built on the nearly 200 days he spent in Tobruk.

Between Tobruk and Alamein: November 1941–June 1942

The period between the relief of Tobruk and Derrick’s return to operations in the desert lasted about eight months. Most of it was spent in Syria (including modern-day Lebanon). As usual there were many moves within and from outside the battalion. From late December ‘Diver’ acted as Platoon Sergeant to his platoon, even though officially he was still a corporal. On 2 February 1942 he mentioned this and how he had often been platoon commander, a job usually reserved for a lieutenant. He professed ‘a great liking for the job’ and said he ‘wouldnt mind another stripe’, which would signify that he was a sergeant. Yet his behaviour towards his superiors presented a potential obstacle to advancement. Just six days later he had to acknowledge that ‘my attitude to our officers has not been appreciated’, and as a result he was to be paraded to the Commanding Officer. He got off with ‘some sound lecturing on discipline’. That same ‘attitude’ was apparent on 15 March, when he declared ‘the majority of our Officers arnt much help’. This negativity towards his superiors – a tendency of which his wife was very aware – may have slowed the speed of his promotion.⁵¹ Eleven days later he noted: ‘Went Ack willy [A.W.L. – absent without leave] to Tripoli in the evening had a fairly good night and a good skin full of beer and things’.

He admitted later that he took ‘plenty of AWL’, but claimed he was never caught. Had he been, this too might have slowed his chances of promotion. But this was also part of enjoying life. In January 1942 he wrote in camp in Syria of ‘a glorious day with clear skies and sunshine, and good to be alive’. Then came the reflection of a thoughtful soldier who knows that his brushes with death are not over: ‘Have never wanted to live so much all my life’. He would only be promoted, to acting sergeant, when his battalion was back in the front line, in July.

Before that, a sign of his technical proficiency and of his desire to be the best was the fact that at a school for instructors on 25 May 1942, he three times beat seven other contestants in a race to be first to fill a Bren gun magazine. He declared his time of 24 4/5 seconds ‘the best yet recorded’.

He kept informed about the Japanese advance across the Pacific from December 1941, and by the end of February was writing quite anxiously: ‘2 months of the new year with the war getting ever closer to Australia and am not in a position to do anything about it – The whole of the Division are most desirous to return home and fight for, and in their own country’. That wish was not to be granted at this stage, for when the 9th Division finally moved from Syria, in June 1942, it headed not for an Egyptian port and home, but for the Western Desert and another ‘engagement with Mr Rommel’.

July–November 1942: Great soldier, great diarist of war

He may have been disappointed to be returning to the desert, but Derrick was also determined to fight well and to describe his actions there in detail. He kept a small pocket diary for some of this time, but also used a school exercise book to compose many of the most expansive diary entries he ever wrote. His mate Wal Fennell was surprised to learn of this book after the war, but said that Derrick had scribbled ‘scrap notes’, which he must have written up later.⁵² These covered a period of some of his most important actions, near the coast to the west of the soon-to-be-famous El Alamein station, where the fighting would determine whether Rommel and his Axis forces could push on to the Suez Canal or whether they would be pushed out of Egypt and ultimately out of Africa. Derrick won a Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) in the July fighting, primarily for capturing three machine gun posts and 100 prisoners. Although the July battles are not nearly as renowned as the great battle of El Alamein that followed in October–November, that fighting was significant: the Australian official historian, Barton Maughan – also a 9th Division veteran – nominated 10 July 1942 as ‘the turning point in Africa, and indeed of the entire war between the ground forces of Germany and the western allies’.⁵³ On this day, the 2/48th Battalion’s first in the campaign, Derrick’s actions were remarkable, and constitute the main events described in his DCM citation.⁵⁴ It was then that he led his men in capturing the 100 Italians and their machine gun posts.

That day he wrote, apparently with future readers in mind, ‘from now I can only talk of A. Coy [Company], but shall endeavour to give accounts of other Coys exploits wherever possible’. He apparently not only