110 | April• 2018
PARTISAN PROMISE
his apprentice butcher from Drouin,
in rural Victoria, had very little life ex-
perience behind him, but the Army
deployed him to Libya to protect the
besieged port of Tobruk. He arrived
in May 1941. “It was a case of keeping
’em out. Don’t let ’em in, that’s it. Fight
for your life,” he said later.
Following nearly three months of
relentless battle, Ern was wounded
by German machine-gun ire during
a patrol. He recovered and was then
sent to Egypt to fight in the pivotal
Battle of El Alamein. Captured by
German forces, Ern spent time in a
POW camp in Italy before eventually
ending up in Stalag XVIII-A/Z, a noto-
rious Nazi POW camp in Austria. Aftertwo years, along with fellow Austral-
ian Sergeant Arnold ‘Allan’ Berry, and
New Zealander Private Eric Baty, he
escaped from anArbeitskommando
(prison farm camp) near Graz and
spent two months on a desperate
light through irst Austria, and then
Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia.
Ern shared these wartime expe-
riences in 2009 in his memoirDan-
gerous Days: A Digger’s Great Escape,
which he co-wrote with author KimIt is impossible to look at the cap
and not wonder about its bloody his-
tory. It had two rightful owners, Boris
Puks*, a Croatian Partisan ighter, and
Ernest ‘Ern’ Brough, a World War II
veteran from Geelong, Victoria, who
gave it to me in 2009. My part in its
history is a small footnote compared
to the life it once led in the mountains
and forests of wartime Yugoslavia. he
cap arrived in the post not long after
I met Ern, accompanied by a note:
“Marc–agifttomefromPuksBo-
ris, 1944, at Cassma, Croatia.” When
I phoned Ern to thank him, he made
me promise to give it to the Austral-
ian War Memorial when he died. his
artefact now belongs where Ern had
intended. he voices of World War II
are fast disappearing and as Ern is still
alive, I want him to have the chance to
once again share his story.
A GREAT ADVENTURE
Six weeks after Ern turned 20, on
March 28, 1940, he enlisted in the
Second Australian Imperial Force.
CAPTURED BY GERMAN FORCES, ERN SPENT TIME
INAPOWCAMPINITALYBEFOREEVENTUALLY
ENDING UP IN STAL AG X V III-A / Z IN AUSTRIA- Boris Puks is called Puks Boris in Ernest
Brough’s book,Dangerous Days.