5.4 Second World War

In an article in the March 1970 issue of the Jock Column, Buller Cockcroft recounts that the Battalion was mobilized for war in 1940 and arrived at El Alamein in June 1941. It saw action at Sollum in January 1942 and moved to Zuweit el Shamus for a rest. Back to Sollum and then to Ain el Gazala, where the Battalion was in reserve to the 1st Division. From Gazala back to Acroma and finally to the Fortress of Tobruk. Buller Cockcroft earned a Mention-in-Despatches for his service in North Africa.

After the fall of Tobruk, Buller Cockcroft and many other South African and British soldiers were captured. His first clash with the Italian captors was at Derna. In an article in the Cape Times of 24 March 1978, Willem Steenkamp quotes an unidentified reader who wrote:

“There was and still is only one ‘Snakebite’, RSM Cockcroft, one-time ex-1TS and thereafter RSM of 2TS, in peace and war, and also one-time Empire bayonet champion… He refused to allow his men to sleep next to the latrines in the ‘Derna pig pen’… Result: When the Italian commandant was called, he was told he should be ashamed to have ice-cream sellers as comrades. The officer apologised, as he had no option in choosing his comrades. ‘Snakebite’s’ men did not sleep near the latrines but were moved to a cleaner area of the camp… His men worshipped him, as a man and friend.”

RSM Cockcroft was then imprisoned in Campo, P.G. 82, Laterina (near Arezzo, Italy), an Italian prisoner-of-war camp. He was appointed Capo Campo (Camp Leader) (the officers of the 2nd Transvaal Scottish having been moved elsewhere) and it was here that he really made his mark.

In a letter dated 28 June 1945 addressed to “Oflag VA, Weinsberg, Germany”, Capt. the Rev. J.A.A. Maund, Chaplain Campo PG 82, Italy had this to say:

“I desire to place on record an appreciation of magnificent work done in Campo 82 by RSM Buller Redvers Mark COCKCROFT, 2.T.S., South African Forces. On arrival at this camp, he was appointed Camp Leader… Through his vigorous action, his energetic leadership and organising ability, he obtained a high standard of discipline throughout the camp, with consequent lifting of the morale of the men… He neglected no aspect of camp life; but was unremitting in his efforts to organise entertainment and sports of all kinds and in his encouragement of such educational classes as could be arranged.”

In an article in the March 1974 edition of the Jock Column, Capt. W. Sheely of the 2nd New Zealand Expeditionary Force and who served as Chaplain of Campo 82 from September 1942 to September 1943 noted: “The strength of the camp varied between 3000 and 4000, and RSM Cockcroft had complete control of the entire organisation. Notwithstanding a lack of support and cooperation from certain of his WOs and NCOs, he did a magnificent job in maintaining a very high standard of discipline under extraordinarily difficult conditions. Internal administration was organised entirely by RSM Cockcroft and he personally supervised the running of every department. He watched the cookhouse closely and would permit of no irregularities whatever.

He organized his own Military Police to enforce his orders and to check those irregularities which were only too apt to crop up in a POW camp and he held his own Orderly Room to deal with delinquents. During his entire tour of duty, there was no occasion of breakdown of discipline and this was, in my opinion, entirely due to his personality… While his attitude was always entirely correct, he was extremely firm and would never allow the Italians to ‘get away’ with anything.

His personality was recognized by all the Italian officers, from the Colonel Commandant downwards and they all held him in great respect. He was continuously referred to by the Colonel Commandant and others as a ‘Bravo uomo’… By his unremitting efforts, he secured double rations for the men engaged in work, to an extent unknown in other camps in Italy… RSM Cockcroft was particularly assiduous in his correspondence with the Red Cross and it may be mentioned that the Red Cross parcel supplies arrived within a month of his occupation of office, and Italian tobacco supplies within six weeks. There were no breakdowns thereafter. He also worked hard to obtain musical instruments and in organising orchestras etc…

In fine, by his soldierly bearing and exceptional personality, he was a great credit to his regiment and to the U.D.F. and was admired by friend and foe alike.”

In his draft article for the Jock Column referred to earlier, Edward B. Newman comments: “His captors accorded him almost as much respect as that which he always commanded in his own lines. What he knew to be the prisoners’ rights under the Geneva Convention, he did not hesitate to demand – with who knows what vitally beneficial consequences for his fellow prisoners?…

Even behind Italian barbed wire he could not dissimulate his scorn of ‘Musso’s eight million macaroni bayonets’…

At one stage he was relieved of his Camp leadership. This was when the Detaining Power discovered that he habitually referred to the Italian Colonel-Commandant (in the latter’s hearing) as ‘the Chief Waiter’… But his unique ability to control men apparently persuaded his captors that they would be wise to turn a deaf ear to these ‘mannerisms’ of the refractory Springbok, and soon led to his reinstatement.

It is said that ‘Snakebite’ was the only man who could introduce law and order among the captive French Foreign Legionnaires. That sounds like sense to me. I have never encountered these reputed fire-eaters, but, from my own observations, I am led to believe that neither man nor devil would openly defy our RSM!”

In his book The Melancholy State, S.G. Wolhuter differs on the reason for ‘Snakebite’s’ temporary demotion as Camp Leader, stating that it was due to an altercation he had with the Commandant over the brutal treatment of a recaptured escapee.

It appears from an article in the Sunday Times Magazine of 8 April 1979 entitled “That day in ‘43” that Buller Cockcroft wound up in Fara Sabina camp, northeast of Rome:

“Of the 4000 inmates at Fara Sabina, half were South African, including Buller ‘Snakebite’ Cockcroft and well-known Natal sportsman, Bill Payne, who once ran the Comrades Marathon in football boots.”

In September 1943, a prisoner-of-war at the camp noticed that no one was guarding the compound. “Cautiously pushing open the gate, he waited for a shout or gunshot. Nothing happened. Within minutes, hundreds of prisoners were stampeding into the surrounding countryside… By next morning the escapees were dispersed through the neighbouring orchards and vineyards. For a week they lived an idyllic life with fine weather, no searches, plenty of food and hospitable contradini. The Fara Sabina escape was made possible by the confusion which followed the Italian signing of the Armistice on September 8, and the prompt desertion of many Italian soldiers, most of whom preferred to go home immediately, rather than wait for their German replacements… Nine days after the escape at Fara Sabina, the Germans started rounding up prisoners and the idyllic life came to an abrupt end… Many were recaptured and had to wait 20 months until VE day for freedom.”

In his article about RSM Gus Blume in the March 1970 issue of the Jock Column, Buller comments:

“Our hopes of an early release from captivity following Italy’s collapse were short lived. Our celebrated old enemy Erwin Rommel had his Panzers at Arezzo some 12 kilos from us and they swept down on us late one afternoon and we were then headed for Germany.” He was taken with thousands of other Commonwealth prisoners from Italy to Sagan in Silesia, where the Germans appointed him Vertrauensmann (Man of Confidence) for all the British and Commonwealth prisoners in Stalag VIIIC.

Sgt. Paul Boehmke of the 2nd South African Ack Ack Regiment became his Dolmetscher (official interpreter) and has the following comments (quoted in Maxwell Leigh’s book Captives Courageous): “ I’ve never known anybody as straight as Buller Cockcroft. And he was as hard on himself as he was on anybody else.

In Stalag VIIIC the Australian prisoners in the camp disliked him as Vertrauensmann because he couldn’t abide their casual, undisciplined conduct – and he let them know it – although he was harder on his own South African men than he was on them. Eventually, when the Aussie dissidents were at their most vociferous he called a meeting, climbed on to a table in the barracks and shouted:

‘Right, you bastards, if you want me to do so I’ll step down and you can elect your own camp leader’. There was dead silence. They knew there was no man better to treat with the detaining power. In fact, the detaining power had tremendous respect for him…”

In a note dated 1 May 1944 written on the back of a photograph of prisoners-of-war (and signed by many of them), J. Sanderson, Kommando Leader wrote: “Please accept this photo as a token of appreciation from Arbeit Kommando 4021 for the Just and competent manner in which you are performing the hard and arduous task as Camp Leader of Stalag VIIIC.”

Sgt. Boehmke’s narrative continues: “There came a change in the Kommandatur, however, and the new camp commandant, a real Nazi, couldn’t understand the discipline Cockcroft was able to instill in his own men. It was a complete enigma to him. He and people like him could accept the discipline of their own men, but that was dumb obedience. Our discipline was that of men who thought and appreciated the wisdom of complying, whereas their compliance was induced by fear.

Eventually, when the security authorities in the camp, the Abwehr, decided that Cockcroft was not kowtowing sufficiently to them, the commandant was only too happy to dump him as Vertrauensmann … Buller and his ‘staff’, who were all quartered with him in the same hut and referred to him not as ‘Snakebite’ but ‘The Boss’ were banished to Stalag 344 [Stalag VIIIB at Lamsdorf]. Once again, it wasn’t long before Buller had become the leader of the compound in which the British, South African and other Commonwealth prisoners were quartered.”

Maxwell Lee takes up the narrative:

“Although Snakebite was, in Boehmke’s words, ‘awe-inspiring’ and, as his sobriquet implies, a ‘hard taskmaster’, he was ‘extremely kind’.

He was supportive of men who were having a hard time and, among other things, hoarded his own ration of cigarettes to share among deserving cases. Although he neither smoked nor drank, he appreciated what tobacco meant to others.

‘The standards he set by his own precept were high. In his tam o’shanter with its red hackle, which he wore at all times, he was the epitome of self-discipline and personal tidiness and hygiene – a shining example of what he expected of those for whom he was responsible. How he contrived, without polish, to maintain a parade-ground shine on his boots throughout our captivity none of us could ever understand’…

A final statement on the character of Buller Cockcroft comes from the record of his conduct when the Germans began marching their prisoners of war westward away from the Russians advancing from the east. Instead of exercising his right to travel by rail with others of rank and those medically unfit to march, he chose to remain with his men on what turned out to be the Long March and completed the miserable journey to western Germany on foot.”

Unfortunately, it appears that this fine end note is not true. Buller Cockcroft subsequently told his daughter, Noel Thain, that he was too weak to join the march, ate soap to make himself ill, and travelled to western Germany by train.

We do not have the details of his eventual release from captivity, but assume that, along with many other South African prisoners-of-war, he was liberated from a Stalag in Western Germany after VE (Victory in Europe) day (8 May 1945) and flown to England.
We know that he spent some time in England and visited family friends in Cornwall and also travelled to Scotland. He was transported back to South Africa by ship.