A PROUD soldier thought to be one if the last remaining ‘Rats of Tobruk’ was farewelled by his wife, friends and RSL colleagues at Gateway/Grant funerals in Chelsea Heights yesterday.
Richard Charles Scales died on 3 December aged 92. He was an enthusiastic member of the Chelsea Longbeach RSL but not an advocate of war itself: “I just want to promote the memory of the 2/24th Battalion and the Rats of Tobruk,” he said when interviewed by The News two years ago (‘Remembering Charlie’s war’, The News 14/11/12).
Mr Scales, who is survived by his wife, Loris, was a member of 2/24th Battalion which was involved in two of the most decisive battles of the war – at Tobruk, in modern day Libya, where they became known as the ‘Rats of Tobruk’, and at El Alamein, on the shores of the Mediterranean in Egypt.
The battles are acknowledged to have halted German General Rommel’s advance into Africa and brought strategic and morale-boosting success just when the Allies were experiencing heavy losses and setbacks elsewhere.
“The holding of Tobruk was one of the major turning points in the war and El Alamein stopped Rommel getting hold of a deep water port in North Africa,” he told us then.
At 16 when war broke out in 1939, the trainee storeman ran away to be a soldier – as his dad, Bill, and uncle, Joe, had been in the Great War – but was deemed too young and sent home. Doing his penance and sent back to Corryong he bided his time until another opportunity presented itself.
Enlisting again at Wangaratta in 1940 he found himself in the Middle East training for desert warfare. There, the Army’s successes were tempered by terrible losses and Mr Scales lost many of his mates and commanding officers.
“Of the 700 who went in to the battle at El Alamein only 59 came out on the truck at the end of it,” he later recalled. Wounded himself he recuperated in a British war hospital in Egypt.
After the war he could not settle down – until he met love-of-his-life Loris at a New Year’s Eve ball. “I don’t know where I would be without her,” he had said at our interview.
Longbeach RSL welfare officer John Morris described Mr Scales as “one in a million”.
“He never gave much away though,” he said, much like a lot of old soldiers.
“I knew him for 10 years and, even though he never spoke much, I thought him an exceptional bloke.”
Rats of Tobruk Association members convey their deepest sympathies to relatives who have suffered the sad bereavement of a loved one.
VALE
Soldier, rest! Thy warfare o’er.
Sleep the sleep, that knows no breaking
Dream of battlefields no more,
Days of danger, nights of waking.
— Sir Walter Scott
