Douglas Brass

War Correspondent

When the Second World War began in September 1939, Douglas Brass was based in New Zealand as a correspondent for the Melbourne Herald and some other Australian newspapers. He covered the New Zealand scene generally but also specifically its transition to wartime conditions. After returning to Australia late in 1941, he wrote two significant columns about the New Zealand war effort.

The first, published on 25 October and headlined ‘WITH 100,000 HOME GUARDS IN ITS ARMY … New Zealand Plans To Fight Invaders’, compared New Zealand’s home defence force with that of Australia’s Volunteer Defence Corps, how it was manned and organised and how it would operate in New Zealand’s challenging physical environment.

The second, a major article titled ‘These are the New Zealanders’, appeared on 29 November, some 10 days after the beginning of the Eighth Army’s attack on German and Italian forces during Operation Crusader in Libya. The New Zealand Division played a major role in this battle near the port town of Tobruk, where Australian forces had been besieged and had won plaudits for their staunch defence. Picking up on the Australian interest in this theatre of war, Brass profiled the troops who were now ‘doing the job in Libya that the A.I.F. did a year ago’ and who had been making ‘some of the biggest news of this battle’.

In February 1942, concerned about the progress of the war, Douglas Brass enlisted with the AIF and joined the Australian artillery. In November, however, he was discharged to become accredited as an Australian correspondent with the British forces in the Middle East, initially based in Cairo. The first column under his name, ‘ROMMEL’S KORPS SECOND RATE: Old Standards Gone’, was published on 8 January 1943.

Douglas in North Africa, July 1943

During January he was with the Eighth Army as it moved towards, and finally took, the Libyan capital, Tripoli. His major dispatch, ‘HOW 8th ARMY SWEPT AXIS FROM TRIPOLI: Graphic Frontline Story’, published on the 27th of that month, described the battle, including the role of ‘The New Zealanders, whose reputation in North Africa stands extremely high’. He also related how he joined other correspondents as ‘General Montgomery … wearing battledress, dusty with the miles, and slightly frayed … praised the work of his men’. After the fall of Tripoli, Brass returned to Cairo, then he hitchhiked the 1500 miles back to Tripoli. In a very evocative column, which appeared on 23 February, he wrote of the effects of the battle on the desert, the communities and the people: ‘It is a rough, hard-worn road of a dozen ruined towns, a hundred desperate actions, a thousand graves.’

The next phase of the North African battle was fought in Tunisia and Brass accompanied the Eighth Army as it fought its way north. His regular dispatches covered the course of the conflict, but he also spent time in the towns and villages after the troops had passed through,  describing how liberation felt for the local population. In March, back in Cairo, he cabled a lengthy report, published on the 19th, on how that city and its citizens were faring. In many respects there was little evidence of the war and the crowded streets and well-stocked shops made one feel ‘more remote from war here than in some of our Australian cities’.

But then it was back to the front line as the battle for North Africa headed towards a climax. By now Brass’s profile was growing beyond Australia, with what the Herald called his ‘vivid descriptive despatches’ appearing as ‘the main feature each day in the [London] Evening Standard. They became chief front-page news from the moment General Montgomery launched his latest offensive.’ In ‘Maoris Take Heights At Point Of Bayonet’, which appeared on 29 April, he told of the New Zealanders’ grim progress ‘up Takrouna’s steep forward slopes’ with ‘violent hand-to-hand fighting’. Brass frequently lauded the New Zealand troops and this was no exception: their ‘reputation among the Eighth Army formations is now at an extremely high level … There is a common saying in the Eighth Army when particularly sticky jobs have to be done: “You can leave it to the Kiwis.”

The end of the war in North Africa came abruptly shortly afterwards. Brass was at the forefront of the action, which he described in several dispatches. The fall of the country’s capital Tunis featured in ‘WITH AFRICA SAFE, WHERE NEXT? Douglas Brass Tells How BLITZ STRATEGY WON US TUNIS’ on 10 May. The final surrender of the German and Italian forces was the focus of two major dispatches, ‘Douglas Brass Watches DEATH of the AFRIKA KORPS’ on 13 May and, the following day, ‘AMAZING SURRENDER STORY … VAST ARMY STREAMS IN LIKE SHEEP Nazi Cape Bon Debacle’. Once again Brass’s extensive reports were widely praised. On 14 May they appeared on the front page of the Evening Standard, with the story headlined ‘London learns News From Brass’s Story’. His account of the surrender scenes was later included in African Victory, the British government’s official book on the Tunisian campaign.

In the lull following the desert victory, Brass returned to Cairo but continued to file dispatches on various topics, including one, on 21 June, about the training under way to establish an armoured brigade for the New Zealand Division.

Douglas in Taormina, Sicily, 1943

Douglas Brass and his conducting officers, Tripoli 1943

In July the battle to retake Europe started with the Allies’ airborne attack on Sicily. Brass reported on the action from Bizerta, on the north coast of Tunisia, on 12 July: ‘STORM TROOPS FLEW INTO SICILY IN AIR ARMADA.’ Once again his reports were covered prominently in London a day later: ‘Despatches from Douglas Brass take up seven columns in tonight’s Evening Standard. They are featured as the main news from special correspondents’. He continued to follow the battle up through Sicily, and, as the action passed through, also observed the impact on the inhabitants of the towns and villages.

After Sicily fell, on 3 September Brass reported on the attack of ‘the first Allied troops to set foot as an invasion force on the continental mainland’. Three days later he recounted his own experience of crossing to the Italian mainland in a ‘duck’, an amphibious landing craft. In early October he paid a visit to Corsica, where he was impressed by the way in which the diverse political communities had come together with the common objective of defeating the Germans. in one of his last dispatches from Italy, as the harsh winter weather took hold, Brass described the Eighth Army’s advance on to Rome in a 14 December article, ‘Cold Courage In Italy’s Mud’.

Soo after this his time in the field came to an end and by the end of 1943 he was in England, where he continued to contribute some war-related columns in 1944, covering such subjects as his perceptions of Generals Montgomery and Eisenhower, the effects of the unrelenting German bombing of London, and the preparations for the forthcoming invasion of France.

When the outstanding and prominent role of Australian war correspondents in the war was acknowledged in a long April1978 Canberra Times article, Douglas Brass was mentioned. Later in his career, Brass also covered the 1948 Arab–Israel conflict, and wrote powerful columns opposing Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War.