A7V "Mephisto" news

[Bruce_in_Oz]

The capturing unit, 26 Battalion, was a Brisbane-based infantry unit that had previously done some hard yards at Gallipoli. Hence "Mephisto" being shipped to my home city.

My maternal grandfather was a member of 26th at Gallipoli, and stayed with the unit when it was shuffled off to the Western Front. It appears that he was in a military hospital when "Mephisto" was recovered.

When WW2 was cranking up, the battalion was re-raised as the 2/26th. Sadly, many of those poor buggers ended in Changi, as "house guests" of the Emperor, and subsequently doing a little "civil engineering" up near the Burmese border. Some of the survivors of that effort were then shipped to Japan very late in the war. Some didn't complete the voyage as the POW ships in the convoys were not specially marked, and the often unescorted transports were worked over fairly hard by US submarines.

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