MCEVOY, Laurence Henry
| Service Number: | SX11122 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 28 January 1941, Wayville, South Australia |
| Last Rank: | Private |
| Last Unit: | 2nd/48th Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia, 6 February 1924 |
| Home Town: | Broken Hill, Broken Hill Municipality, New South Wales |
| Schooling: | Broken Hill High School, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation: | Labourer |
| Died: | Natural Causes, Bedford Park, South Australia, 28 February 2020, aged 96 years |
| Cemetery: | Not yet discovered |
| Memorials: |
World War 2 Service
| 28 Jan 1941: | Enlisted Private, SX11122, Wayville, South Australia | |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Jan 1941: | Involvement Private, SX11122 | |
| 17 Nov 1943: | Discharged Private, SX11122, 2nd/48th Infantry Battalion |
Tribute to Rat of Tobruk
RAT of Tobruk Laurence “Bill” McEvoy has been remembered as a kind man who always put others before himself.
The World War II veteran and Medal of the Order of Australia recipient died suddenly on Friday, aged 96, at Flinders Medical Centre.
His dedication to fellow veterans earned him the prestigious honour in 2018, and his efforts to care for those men will always be cherished most, his family said. “He was greatly loved and will be sadly missed,” grandson Andrew McEvoy, 45, said.
“In the years following his war service, he did an enormous amount of work to support veterans. As a family, we are very proud of (his) voluntary work.
“He was a very thoughtful person beyond himself.”
Known as Bill since an early age, Mr McEvoy was just 16 years old when he sneakily enlisted to fight in World War II.
Just a year later, the 17-yearold found himself stranded at the deadly siege of Tobruk, where 14,000 Australians were surrounded by German and Italian soldiers from April, 1941.
When recalling the “hellhole” experience in 2018, Mr McEvoy said: “I was there all the while and I didn’t like it” .
The siege ended when relief arrived at the Libyan port city seven months later.
Mr McEvoy was born in Broken Hill in 1924 and was a former member of the 2/48 Battalion. The 2/48th is Australia’s most highly decorated unit of World War II, with four members receiving the Victoria Cross – the nation’s highest military honour.
While under heavy fire at the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt in 1942, Mr McEvoy was badly injured when a shell exploded close to his right arm.
Unable to hold a gun, he was shipped back to Australia the following year and later became one of the first patients at the Repatriation General Hospital in Adelaide.
He resumed civilian life at the Broken Hill Post Office, but moved to Adelaide in 1950 and had a career in social security . In later life, Mr McEvoy served as SA branch president of the Rats of Tobruk Association for 15 years. He was national president for seven years, between 2002-2008 .
Mr McEvoy is survived by his second wife, Jan, 93, three children, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren .
Copyright © 2020 News Pty Limited
Submitted 24 August 2020 by Trevor Thomas
Biography contributed by Robert Kearney
Round 4 - SANFL 2011- see link to the left of this page
ANZAC DAY 2011
CEREMONIAL VETERANS
Three South Australia veterans will take part in the Remembrance Ceremony priot to the S.A.N.F.L. Anzac Day match. U.N.I.S.A. student Adam Holmes met the men who will be leading the Adelaide Oval crowd in this very special Anzac Day tradition.
BILL MCEVOY –
ANZAC DAY FLAG RAISER
Bill McEvoy has lived in the same Morphett Vale home for 33 years – a quiet life punctuated by the
raising of a family, fond friendships with neighbours and a comfortable career first with the post office and later in social security.
He will raise the Australian flag at this weekend’s Anzac Day match in remembrance of those with whom he shared a very different life – his mates who served in the 2/48th Battalion, one of Australia’s most highly decorated WWII units.
The men of the 2/48th are justifiably proud of their ‘Rats of Tobruk’ status.
The boy from Broken Hill joined the army after travelling the country seeking work in the Depression- stricken ‘30s.
When war was declared, he underwent training in Adelaide before embarking for North Africa. In April 1941, the Allies were fighting to hold the Libyan outpost of Tobruk from the advancing German and Italian troops.
“I cleaned the guns, I was a runner. I would go up to platoon or company headquarters, do this, do that. While you were cleaning them, you got to know them. And while you cleaned them, you’d have a shot out of them.
So that’s the way I learnt how to operate a lot of machine guns,” Mr McEvoy said. “There were Italian guns there, we had to have them. We had nothing. One gun to a platoon. That was 30 men.
“We were out into the line for about seven or eight days and back again, generally a different place. Some were rather easy and some were very, very bad. There was a bad place there called The Salient, which the Germans took.
“(At The Salient), the nearest (the German-Italian army) were to us was about 100 yards. If you showed up during the daytime, they buried you.
“They had a lot of machine guns… they were mainly on a fixed line.
They’d press the trigger and about 10 or 15 rounds would just shoot out.
Mortars weren’t very good either. All you’d hear would be ‘plop’ and then ‘boom’. It would land anywhere and you’d just hope it wasn’t near you.
“On The Salient, at the night time, there was a kind of peace. I don’t know what time, but when your
rations were about to come up, the Germans would stop firing, we’d stop firing and we’d have our dinner. After that, they’d fire a gun in the air and it’d be back to work again.”
Tobruk shuddered under months of heavy raids. Overall, the 2/48th suffered 160 casualties, including 38 men killed and another 18 who died of their wounds. Mr McEvoy’s leg was seriously cut by barbed wire but he refused hospital treatment.
He left Tobruk in October 1941 aboard the HMS Kingston and after some leave, was sent to Syria
and Lebanon.
“By this time, the Germans had come down and they had taken Tobruk, what we’d held for a while
and then they kept coming. I thought this was going to end up in the desert again,” he said.
“So we came back down through Syria through Palestine and into Egypt – on July 10, 1942, we had our first battle in a place called Tel El Eisa, which became known as the first battle of Alamein.
“The tanks came through – 40 or 50 of them and we were on top of a hill and they came down, all around and all over us. We managed to beat them off. So they came again the next night and we beat them off again.”
Victory at El Alamein was secured but the losses were great - the 2/48th suffered a further 344 casualties, including 98 killed.
After the war, Bill joined the Rats of Tobruk Association in South Australia.
“Where they used to get 40 or 50 or 60 to a meeting, they now only get eight or nine,” he said.
“That’s the way it is. There are very few left out of the 2/48th. There wouldn’t be 30 Rats alive now in
South Australia and we once had three battalions – 2/10th, 2/43rd and 2/48th.”
Author - ADAM HOLMES
Click images to start slideshow.