Job Maseko's bravery knew no bounds.
While imprisoned after the fall of Tobruk in 1942, the member of South
Africa's Native military Corps and his fellow black comrades received inhumane treatment.
Still, determined to help the Allied fight against the Axis powers, Maseko took matters
into his own hands and made a bomb out of a milk tin and other objects he could find.
Then, after asking his friends to look out for him, Maseko boarded a German freight ship
and placed the handmade item near the fuel barrels, lit the fuse,
and walked back to his work spot before anyone could spot him.
Little did the South African soldier know what the ship carried
and the role this brave act would have in the war…
Taking Tobruk
The port of Tobruk, located in Eastern Libya near the Egyptian border,
was the nation's only natural harbor, and as such, it was coveted by many.
In the early 1910s, Tobruk was occupied by the Italians
and was subsequently used as a naval and air base for southern military operations.
Because of its strategic location, the port of Tobruk became the most valuable
deepwater port in North Africa during World War 2. It soon became the focus
of some of the most prolonged fighting in the North African theater of the war,
and changed hands several times between the Allies and the Axis.
After capturing the port from the Italians in early 1941
and taking 25,000 prisoners in the process, the British fortified
the valuable area with 12,000 British and Indian troops and 14,000 Australian troops.
Subsequently, for 241 days starting in April,
the Axis forces carried out the Siege of Tobruk, surrounding the port and besieging the troops,
most of which were Australians who had become an emblem of fierce resistance
against the German–Italian military troops in the North African campaign.
Still, after the port was relieved in December, the British top brass
decided not to defend the coastal port city a second time and instead left a small temporary
force to hold the port while launching a new strike force closer to the Egyptian border.
As a result, all the minefields installed in the area were stripped,
dismantled, and sent to the Gazala Line further west.
By mid-1942, the garrison defending Tobruk and its surroundings was made
up of mostly young and inexperienced South African troops. And on June 15,
Hendrik Klopper, a major-general of only one month's standing, took command of Tobruk.
Meanwhile, most of the armor and artillery had been taken away to the Egyptian border,
so the port’s defenses were in poor shape. Still, the Western and Southern sides of the port were
well defended by the South Africans, but the Eastern side proved to be its weaker point.
The Axis defending the area included the feared Afrika Korps, which was the German expeditionary
force in Africa during the North African Campaign, led by infamous Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel.
The Commander's plan to capture the port of Tobruk once and for all
included an ingenious ruse in which his infantry would approach the western port’s perimeter
while his mobile forces would sweep past them, giving the South African forces the impression
that the Axis armor was heading straight into the well-defended Egyptian border.
The scheme also involved fake radio messages to
convince Allied communications that they were heading somewhere else.
Surrender
The operation was carried out on June 20, as Rommel swung his mobile armored
forces back around, heading towards the port’s weak eastern perimeter.
As the noise from the tanks, trucks, and infantrymen grew louder, the inexperienced
South Africans spotted several German Stukas and Ju-88 aircraft flying overhead. Meanwhile, Rommel
pressed every available Axis aircraft to head to North Africa and into Tobruk to complete his plan.
At 5:20am, Rommel ordered an attack on Tobruk,
and the Panzerarmee Afrika attacked the port with heavy artillery and massive air support.
The force managed to penetrate a 600-yard wide gap on the eastern defensive perimeter,
allowing German and Italian sappers to race forward, lift the remaining mines,
and bridge the tank traps with tanks and infantry racing through the gaps.
Rommel's plan was so effective and swift that many of the Allied
forces in the western perimeter had no time to get involved in the fighting.
With his headquarters bombed, communications lines wrecked, and a destroyed codebook,
an astonished General Klopper lost the last bit of power he had on the situation.
With no other choice, Klopper then surrendered himself and his almost 33,000 men to Rommel.
By the evening, Tobruk had fallen.
The surrender at Tobruk became the second-largest capitulation by the British Army in the war,
and the single largest capitulation of South African forces in the country’s history,
both before and after World War 2.
Tobruk's loss in the North African theater proved a severe blow to the Allies,
but mostly the British leadership, which precipitated a heated political crisis back home.
Unexpectedly, this major defeat evoked additional sympathy from the United States to the British,
leading to an expedited export of supplies and equipment to the Middle East.
Native Military Corps
The Axis that now controlled the area took thousands of General Klopper's men
as prisoners of war, including 1,200 members of the Native Military Corps, or NMC,
a military unit consisting of Black South African volunteers recruited into the Union Defense Force.
Despite accounting for nearly 40 percent of the South African fighting force in the war,
with over 128,000 volunteers, the men were never given a combative role
and instead served as laborers attached to a limited number of white military units.
Throughout the conflict, the men from the Native Military Corps worked in a vast range of roles,
from drivers, military cooks, engineers, stretcher-bearers to bomb loaders.
At the time, South African race laws prohibited black men from carrying firearms,
and the soldiers from the NMC were only issued a single spear as a weapon for guard and
ceremonial duty. As such, the men often found themselves in highly dangerous circumstances.
One of these men was Job Maseko, a former delivery man that worked as
a stretcher-bearer rescuing wounded men during the fight for the port of Tobruk.
As the situation escalated in the combat zone on June 20,
all previously established rules and restrictions went out the window, and Maseko and his comrades
were given actual rifles to fight in the front lines like every other soldier.
Still, after Tobruk fell, Maseko was captured, and he and the other
prisoners were forced to march across the Libyan desert towards an Italian prisoner-of-war camp.
The treatment the prisoners received was nothing short of sinister,
and an even worse fate awaited the captured black members of the South African Native
Military Corps, as the Axis did not view them as regular troops, much less worthy humans.
According to reports and journals from Indian soldiers who were also
captured after the fall of Tobruk, both they and the black prisoners
received only one packet of biscuits per day and minimal water rations.
Other first-hand accounts tell how colored soldiers were commonly attacked
by drunk German guards while marching to the camp.
What’s worse, neither the Indian nor Black prisoners were allowed to take cover
whenever the Allied bombers attacked the port, eventually becoming victims of their own fight.
Most of the black captured soldiers were put to work in the harbor,
offloading ships in the blistering sun for hours at a time with no rest. Desperate for food,
occurrences of black men escaping from the camp
to find something to eat with their white South African counterparts were common.
Job Maseko was one of them, but the soldier would take it one step further than anyone else.
A Bomb Made Out of a Tin Can
The unethical treatment of the Axis towards the black prisoners
and his duty to assist his own kind convinced Job Maseko to take action against his captors.
Thus, the former miner and chemical explosive connoisseur gathered gun
powder from lost bullets and created a bomb out of a single condensed milk tin, a long fuse,
and other materials he found lying around the prison camp and the port.
A month and a day after the fall of Tobruk, on July 21, 1942, while doing his mundane prisoner
duties on the dock, Maseko asked three of his comrades to cover for him and distract the guards
while he sneaked deep into a German freight ship docked at the harbor.
If caught, the soldier would face terrible consequences.
Once inside, Maseko carefully placed the bomb near the fuel barrels for maximum effect,
then lit a fuse and made his way back to his friends.
After waiting for a while, a huge internal explosion shocked everyone in the harbor,
and the German freight ship sank almost immediately, causing a commotion in all of Tobruk.
Around the same time, Maseko fixed an old German radio that informed him about
General Bernard Montgomery's upcoming epic battle at El Alamein in Egypt.
Days later, Maseko and other prisoners managed to escape from the prison camp
and walked for three weeks through the Libyan desert and enemy lines
to join the battle and help turn the tides of the war.
The German ship that Maseko single-handedly sank was filled with essential equipment
to be used against the Allies in the Battle of El Alamein,
and the event ultimately played a defining factor in the Allied victory in late 1942.
By November, after the legendary offensive, the British had finally recaptured the port of Tobruk
and would hold it as their own for the remainder of the war.
Life After The War
During an interview after the recapture of the port of Tobruk, Job Maseko was able to point out
the exact spot where the ship was berthed, and a team of divers later found it on the sea bed.
For his actions, the brave soldier was recommended for a Victoria Cross,
the British Commonwealth equivalent to a Medal of Honor.
However, according to Neville Lewis, the first official war artist for South Africa
during World War 2, Maseko was not genuinely seen as a South African citizen
because of the color of his skin, and the petition was denied.
Maseko was later presented with the Military Medal by Major-General F. H. Theron.
As all South African soldiers returned home, most were met with
praise and applause from the government and received monthly checks for their service.
However, with the Apartheid racial segregation laws put in place in the late 1940s,
the black Native Corps only received a bicycle and a pair of boots,
while the white South Africans were given houses and land.
Soon, Job Maseko's legacy slipped away from memory, and the national hero tragically passed
away in 1952 after being struck by a train and with no money to even pay for his funeral service.
Then, in April of 2021, Bill Gillepsie, a history aficionado and son of a World War 2 veteran,
started a campaign to award the South African hero with a posthumous Victoria Cross,
claiming that: (QUOTE) “The Military Medal was just a consolation prize.”
The campaign is currently backed up by Maseko's family, who firmly believe the hero deserves the
medal for his actions and courage that ultimately put South Africa's military prowess on the map.
The South African Navy also honored Maseko's legacy with the SAS Job Maseko,
naming a missile attack craft after one of the bravest South Africans in history.
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