The siege of Tobruk lasted from April to December 1941, when Axis forces under Erwin Rommel surrounded the Libyan port, held at first mainly by the 9th Australian Division. From August 1941 the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade under General Stanisław Kopański, about 4,800 men, was shipped in by sea, relieved Australian units and held some of the hardest sectors of the perimeter. The garrison held until the siege was lifted, and the Polish soldiers proudly shared the name the Rats of Tobruk.
In the summer of 1941 a desert fortress on the coast of Libya was holding out against Erwin Rommel. Into it, by night convoys, came a brigade of Polish soldiers who had escaped their occupied country and travelled half the world to fight: the Carpathian Brigade.
The fortress in the desert
In April 1941 Rommel's German and Italian forces drove the British back across Libya, but the port of Tobruk held out, defended at first mainly by the 9th Australian Division under Major General Leslie Morshead1. For months it was supplied only by sea, under constant air attack.2
From Syria to Africa
The Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade had been formed in French Syria in 1940 from Poles who had escaped through Romania and Hungary.3 When France fell, its commander Stanisław Kopański led it into British Palestine rather than accept the armistice4, and it trained and served in Egypt.
Into Tobruk
In August 1941 the brigade was carried into Tobruk in a series of night convoys.3 By the end of the month about 4,800 Polish soldiers were in the fortress, relieving Australian units on the perimeter, first in the south and then in the west.
The Medauar salient
In October the Poles took over the most dangerous sector, around the Medauar salient, where the enemy lines lay close4. They held it through weeks of shelling, bombing and night patrol fighting, and when the British Eighth Army attacked to relieve the fortress in November, Polish units joined the fighting, and in December they took the Medauar hill and Acroma, the link-up that finally lifted the siege.
The Rats of Tobruk
The siege was lifted at the end of 1941. German propaganda had mocked the defenders as rats5, and they took the name as a badge of honour. The Polish Carpathians wore it proudly; many went on to fight at Monte Cassino in the Polish II Corps.
