Description
World War II, the Rats of Tobruk Medal, number 366, die struck in white metal 1941. “RATS OF TOBRUK 1941”, gilded enamel figure of a Rat at centre surrounded with blue-purple enamel, legend surrounds / uniface, number “366” impressed. Some blue enamel missing, otherwise virtually as made – a very important piece of Australian military history. Virtually as Made, very scarce.
In recent times there are very few examples of the 1941 Rats of Tobruk medal offered for sale. In 2014, an example numbered 380 and is stippled to recipient QX859 Fallon was sold by Noble Numismatics Sale 107 with a hammer price of AU$1,300 (approximately $1,586 with buyer’s premium), and although attributable, has no blue enamel intact and appears in worse condition to the one offered here. Further to this point, Dix Noonan Webb appears to have never offered this medal in their archive, further demonstrating its scarcity.
Between April and December of 1941 approximately 35,000 allied soldiers defended the city of Tobruk against a German-Italian army – amongst these were 14,000 Australians. The defenders of the city made effective use of the extensive below-ground network of tunnels built by the Italian army pre-WWII; so effective was this defensive strategy that a major German propagandist, William Joyce, derisively referred to and addressed the garrison as ‘the Rats of Tobruk’. The Australians took this comment as a badge of pride, going so far as to strike their own unofficial medal, as seen here, bearing the likeness of a rat – the metal used came from German bombers that were shot down with captured German guns. The design of the medal is best attributed to QX1193 Leslie Harold Dufton, a Queensland corporal:
“[Dufton] served with the 2/13th Field Company Engineers in Tobruk. With TX1170 Corporal Roy Allison Costello and QX7003 Sapper Frederick Roy Bignill, Dufton worked on the medal over three evenings. They made the original medals using aluminium from a wrecked German aircraft and copper from the driving bands of shell cases. At first they were planning to make medals for themselves as a souvenir, but as others in their unit saw them, they asked for more to be made. So, with the support of their commanding officer, QX6024 Major August Shaw Gehrmann, they decided to make one for each man in that field company. Later, with the approval of VX250 Lieutenant Colonel Jack Mann, the commander of the Royal Engineers, a decision was made to create a die or dies so that the medal could be mass produced and available for purchase for every member of the 9th Division Engineers that served in Tobruk.” Australian War Memorial