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The 2/3rd took part in the Allied victory In May 1941, after a one-month voyage from Sydney, the 'Ile de France' deposited the 2/3rd Machine Gun Battalion at Port Tewfik, near Suez on the Suez Canal. Next stop for the troops was a place called Hill 95 in Palestine close to Gaza Ridge where, 25 years before, General Chauvel's legendary Australian Light Horse had fought the Turkish Army.
'B' Company helped capture and defend the town of Jezzine. One of the roads into the town - cut into a steep rocky hillside and exposed in one section to enemy artillery - became known as the 'mad mile'. A 2/3rd motor cycle despatch rider recalls: "I used to ease the bike down, say a prayer and go for my life." The 'mad mile' is the subject of a well-known painting in the Australian War Memorial.
The invasion of Syria turned out to be a bigger challenge than the Allies had predicted. Australia played an important role in the Allied victory, as it had in Greece, Crete and Tobruk. In the Syrian campaign, however, Australian casualties equalled the combined total for Greece and Crete (excluding POWs). Australia also suffered heavier losses than its British, Indian and Free French allies.
After the Vichy French surrender in July 1941, the 2/3rd MG Bn became part of the army of occupation and was stationed at Fih, a mountain village behind Tripoli. In December, the young Australians experienced their first white Christmas. But the Battalion's happy existence at Fih was about to end, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor a few weeks earlier having focused Australia's attention on battlegrounds closer to home.
In January 1942, approximately 600 men from the 2/3rd MG Bn boarded a large converted liner, the SS Orcades at Port Tewfik, which was heading for an unknown destination. In the haste to leave, the Orcades sailed without the men's kitbags, the Battalion vehicles and drivers, and its Vickers machine guns, ammunition and stores. These were loaded onto smaller ships, along with the Battalion's remaining troops. Those aboard the Orcades were soon to regret this fateful oversight.
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